Ethena-USDe achieves rapid rise, Decentralized Finance ecosystem welcomes new opportunities

Recently, the total issuance of USDe has shown explosive growth, surging from 2.4 billion USD to 3.8 billion USD within a month, an increase of over 58%. This growth is primarily influenced by Bitcoin breaking new highs, which has heightened bullish sentiment in the market, driving up funding rates and thus increasing the staking yield of USDe. Although there has been a slight pullback compared to a few days ago, the annualized yield of USDe on November 26 still remains at a high level of around 25%.

At the same time, MakerDAO has become one of the biggest beneficiaries of this rise. Currently, Maker's daily revenue has increased by over 200% compared to a month ago, setting a new historical high. This is closely related to the development of Ethena. On one hand, the high staking yield of USDe has stimulated the lending demand for sUSDe and PT assets. For example, the total scale of borrowing DAI using sUSDe and PT as collateral on the Morpho platform has reached 570 million USD, with a borrowing utilization rate of over 80% and an annual deposit yield of up to 12%. In the past month, Maker has seen an increase of over 300 million USD in loans on the Morpho platform through the D3M module.

On the other hand, the borrowing demand for sUSDe and PT has also indirectly pushed up the DAI usage rate in other channels. For example, the DAI deposit interest rate on a certain lending platform has reached 8.5%. MakerDAO's balance sheet shows that the total amount of DAI loans issued to two major lending platforms through the D3M module has reached 2 billion USD, accounting for nearly 40% of Maker's asset side. These two alone have generated an annualized income of 203 million USD for Maker, equivalent to a daily contribution of 550,000 USD, accounting for 54% of MakerDAO's total annualized income.

The growth model of USDe has gradually become clear: the new highs of Bitcoin drive bullish market sentiment, pushing up funding rates, which in turn enhances the staking yield of USDe. MakerDAO, with its complete capital flow linkage and the "central bank attributes" of the D3M module, has become an important support for the USDe ecosystem. At the same time, a certain lending protocol has played the role of a "lubricant" in this process. These three protocols together form the core of the rise, while other related protocols, such as a certain lending platform, a certain DEX, and a certain derivatives platform, also benefit from the growth of USDe to varying degrees.

The sustainability of this growth model mainly depends on whether the interest rate spread between USDe and DAI can exist in the long term. Influencing factors include: the persistence 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 the recent launch of yield-generating stablecoin strategies by a certain exchange).

However, with the rise also comes concerns about the security of D3M. Although the D3M module allows for the direct dynamic generation of DAI, from a balance sheet perspective, these DAI are actually backed by sDAI as collateral. Considering that sDAI is ultimately borrowed as USDe, the collateral effectively becomes a long-short synthetic asset position with over 110% LTV.

Although D3M will not directly cause DAI to become an under-collateralized stablecoin, it does bring some potential risks: a high proportion of the D3M module may cause DAI to once again become a "shadow stablecoin"; the operational risks, contract risks, and custody risks of Ethena may be transmitted to DAI; the existence of intermediaries may further increase risks; at the same time, it may also lower the overall collateralization rate of DAI.

Overall, the rapid rise of USDe has brought new vitality and opportunities to the DeFi ecosystem, but it also requires vigilance against potential risks to ensure the long-term healthy development of the ecosystem.