ethena perpetual equity contracts could become the next major source of income for Ethena: the protocol wants to transfer its basis strategy from the crypto market to perpetual equity futures, where funding rates this year are noticeably higher than Bitcoin’s.
In the photo: Ethena CEO Guy Young next to Aave Labs founder Stani Kulechov.
Key Points
- Ethena plans to expand USDe basis trades to perpetual equity futures, where funding in 2026 was several times higher than Bitcoin’s.
- Open interest in such instruments grew from less than $1 billion in March to $6.2 billion, giving the protocol liquidity to launch a new strategy.
- This could become a new source of yield for USDe: higher funding rates, broader diversification, and less dependence on crypto market cycles.
Ethena Moves Beyond the Crypto Market
Ethena, known for its synthetic dollar USDe with a volume of about $4 billion, is seeking yield where demand for margin trading is currently growing most actively. The focus is on perpetual equity futures: this market has quickly scaled and already looks liquid enough to apply the protocol’s familiar strategy.
Open interest in perpetual equity contracts rose to $6.2 billion, whereas in March it was below $1 billion. For rate comparison, Ethena provides the following benchmarks:
- Hyperliquid: about 14% in recent months.
- Binance: about 17.5% in recent months.
- Bitcoin: low single-digit range over the same period.
The funding rate is influenced by demand for leveraged long positions, available liquidity, volatility, and the overall market condition. When traders are actively going long, funding usually becomes more attractive for those holding the opposing short position.
The equity strategy is still in the launch phase: Ethena expects to announce its first exchange partners and launch the first versions of the strategy in the coming weeks. Hyperliquid and Binance in this context serve as benchmarks for market funding rates, not as announced exchange partners for the new strategy.
Over a longer horizon, the team expects that perpetual contracts on real-world assets could surpass crypto derivatives in the share of USDe collateral within 12–24 months. If liquidity in such instruments continues to grow, RWA perpetuals could become not a niche addition for Ethena, but one of the main growth drivers.
The Same Basis Trade, but a Different Market
In this logic, a perpetual contract is a perpetual swap with no expiration date: a position can remain open as long as the trader maintains margin, and the balance between long and short positions is leveled through regular funding payments.
A regular futures contract is structured differently: it has an expiration date and contract settlement. A perpetual contract has no such date, so the funding rate plays a key role: if demand for long positions is higher, traders with longs pay those holding shorts, and vice versa.
The process looks like this: Ethena holds a collateralized exposure to the asset, opens an offsetting short in the perpetual contract, reduces directional risk through a hedge, and receives funding payments from traders with leveraged long positions. These payments become protocol income; then they work in the USDe yield model and can support its collateralization.
This scheme has become less profitable in cryptocurrencies. The market cooled, prices fell, and demand for leverage decreased. The dynamics of the average Bitcoin funding rate looked like this:
- 2024: 11%.
- 2025: 4.9%.
- 2026: 2.2% as of August 11.
The picture is different in the equity market. After reaching significant volumes, funding remained positive on 94% of days on Hyperliquid and 97% of days on Binance. The median equity rate reached 13.9%, while for Bitcoin it was 3.9%.
Another interesting feature that makes this trade more attractive than the crypto version is the naturally positive skew in funding distribution.
This is how Guy Young described the key difference in equities. According to him, equities often rise for extended periods, which means demand for leveraged long positions remains more stable. In cryptocurrencies, it is different: during bear phases, funding can quickly shrink or turn negative because traders lose interest in aggressive leverage.
Why the Equity Market Could Become Larger for USDe
The potential scale of the new direction is much greater than that of cryptocurrencies. In July, the global equity market was valued at about $166.5 trillion, while the total crypto market cap was about $2.2 trillion. At the same time, perpetual equity contracts themselves are still much smaller than their crypto counterparts.
This expansion is also important for Ethena because USDe supply fell below $5 billion after peaking at around $15 billion in 2025. The protocol needs new sources of yield to restore growth and reduce dependence on a single market cycle.
In parallel, the Ethena Foundation changed the ENA token economics: monthly unlocks for venture investors were canceled, and holders were offered to vote on directing Ethena business revenues to buy back tokens.
Last week, Ethena also announced a $1 billion credit line from FalconX. It can be used to support USDe in institutional overcollateralized loans.
This strategy also carries risks: funding rates may compress or turn negative, liquidity in new markets may be thinner than expected, and technological failures, margin requirements, and regulatory pressure could worsen results.
How This Looks in Market Terms
If describing the strategy in terms used by international traders, this is a basis trade, where the key elements are asset, futures contract, individual contract, collateral (finance), and hedge (finance). In the case of equities, equity (finance) is added, and demand for long positions is formed by sustained interest in margin trading.
Ethena’s main bet is simple: if equity funding remains strong and weakly correlated with Bitcoin funding, USDe will receive a more stable cash flow. For pegging USDe to the dollar, the link between collateral and hedge is important: assets provide the collateral base, short perpetual positions reduce price risk, and funding payments add cash flow. For the protocol, this is a chance to make yield less dependent on crypto market sentiment and prepare for real-world assets to take a larger share of collateral in the next 12–24 months.
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