Ethena-USDe achieves remarkable rise, driving the Decentralized Finance ecosystem recovery

Recently, the total issuance of USDe has shown explosive growth, jumping from 2.4 billion USD to 3.8 billion USD within a month, with a monthly increase of over 58%. This growth momentum is closely related to the market's optimistic sentiment following Bitcoin's new highs. As bullish sentiment rises, the funding rate increases have pushed up the staking yield of USDe, leading to its rapid expansion. Although there has been a slight retreat compared to earlier periods, the annualized yield of USDe still remains at a high level of around 25%.

In this wave of rise, MakerDAO unexpectedly became one of the biggest beneficiaries. Currently, Maker's daily average income has risen by over 200% compared to a month ago, setting a new historical high. This rise is closely related to the development of Ethena. The high staking yield of USDe has stimulated the lending demand for sUSDe and PT assets, and the scale of borrowing DAI on the Morpho platform using these assets as collateral has reached 570 million USD, with a borrowing utilization rate exceeding 80% and an annualized deposit yield as high as 12%. In the past month, Maker has seen a loan increment of over 300 million USD on the Morpho platform through the D3M module.

In addition, the borrowing demand for sUSDe and PT has indirectly increased the DAI usage rate in other channels. For example, the deposit interest rate of DAI on the Sparkfi platform has reached 8.5%. According to the balance sheet, the total amount of DAI loans issued by Maker to Morpho and Spark through the D3M module has reached 2 billion USD, accounting for nearly 40% of Maker's total assets. These two businesses alone have generated an annualized income of 203 million USD for Maker, contributing 550,000 USD daily to MakerDAO, which accounts for 54% of its total annualized income.

Ethena has become a key force driving the revival of Decentralized Finance. The optimistic sentiment brought about by Bitcoin's new high has pushed up funding rates, which in turn affects the staking yield of USDe. MakerDAO, with its complete liquidity chain and the "central bank attributes" granted by the D3M module, has become an important support for the rise of USDe. Morpho plays the role of a "lubricant" in this process. These three protocols together form the core engine of growth.

At the same time, some peripheral protocols such as AAVE, Curve, and Pendle are also benefiting from the rise of USDe to varying degrees. The borrowing utilization rate of DAI on the AAVE platform exceeds 50%, and the total USDS deposits are close to 400 million USD. The trading pairs related to USDe/ENA rank second, fourth, and fifth in trading volume on Curve, and hold the first and fifth positions in liquidity ranking on Pendle. Tokens like Curve, CVX, ENA, and MKR have all achieved a monthly rise of over 50%.

Whether this rise spiral can be sustained depends on whether the interest spread between USDe and DAI can exist for a long time. Influencing factors include: the sustainability of bullish market sentiment, whether Ethena can improve APY distribution efficiency through economic model optimization and market share enhancement, and competitive pressure from other platforms (such as interest-bearing stablecoin strategies launched by certain exchanges).

However, with the rise also comes concerns about the security of D3M. Some argue that D3M belongs to "unanchored money printing." From a balance sheet perspective, the DAI minted by D3M is collateralized by sDAI, with the final collateral evolving into "long and short synthetic asset positions with an LTV ratio exceeding 110%." Although D3M does not directly make DAI a non-fully collateralized stablecoin, it does increase some risks: an excessively high proportion of the D3M module may cause DAI to become a "shadow stablecoin" again; the operational, contractual, and custodial risks of Ethena may transmit to DAI; multiple intermediary steps may lead to risk stacking; and it may also lower the overall collateralization rate of DAI.