Can Ethereal, the first airdrop project of the Ethena ecosystem, replicate the miracle of Hyperliquid?

Author: Azuma, Odaily Planet Daily

Ethena (ENA) may be one of the most impressive performing tokens in the past period.

Bitget market data shows that since bottoming at 0.194 USDT in early September, until yesterday's rebound to 1.33 USDT, ENA has achieved an increase of nearly 600% in the past two months.

There are many answers to this question. For example, the increase in contract funding rates during the bull market has led to a significant increase in Ethena's protocol income, and the supply of USDe has also increased significantly; another example is the Trump family project World Liberty's buying support for ENA; and the ENA fee switch promoted by Wintermute Opening up expectations; coupled with direct cooperation with BlackRock BUIDL, a new stablecoin product USDtb was launched... In addition, ENA is held and pledged Anticipation of branded airdrops is also seen as a key reason for the token’s continued rise.

Previously, two major projects that are highly business related to USDe, Ethereal and Derive (formerly known as Lyra), have successively officially announced that they will airdrop sENA holders (ie ENA pledge users). Ethereal plans to airdrop 15% of the token supply. Derive plans to airdrop 5% of its token supply. Currently, users who hold sENA on the chain can directly view the "mining" status of these two projects on the Ethena homepage.

Last week, Ethereal officials held a community conference call, during which they outlined Ethereal’s roadmap, features, advantages, and airdrops. It is worth mentioning that Ethereal developers have obviously noticed the amazing performance of Hyperliquid, another strong project recently, and mentioned that Ethereal hopes to build a "one-stop trading service" similar to Hyperliquid.

Ethereal: the first airdrop project of the Ethena ecosystem

Ethereal debuted on September 30 this year.

At that time, Ethereal founder Fells initiated a related proposal on Ethena, proposing to build an on-chain trading venue around USDe that supports spot and derivatives transactions. On the one hand, Ethena can profit from the expansion of USDe's utility, and on the other hand, Ethereal can trade on USDe. Seize the ecological hub position early in the growth period.

From an architectural point of view, Ethereal will serve as Layer 3 based on the Ethena network; from a business point of view, in addition to being equipped with a complete trading system, Ethereal will also support the deployment of other USDe-related applications (such as lending).

In order to gain support from the Ethena community and deepen the binding relationship, Ethereal stated in the initial version of the proposal that 15% of the tokens would be given to ENA pledgers as airdrops.

Latest news: Learn from Hyperliquid

In the latest community conference call, Ethereal team members emphasized Hyperliquid and believed that the key factor in the success of the project is "providing a complete set of transaction services", which solves the hidden problem of users needing to switch between different applications when performing different operations. Pain points, thus helping to retain users and funds.

In this regard, Ethereal founder Fells also re-described Ethereal's positioning - "a one-stop product that supports all DeFi operations", where users can conduct spot or contract transactions, rate arbitrage, lending, options and even prediction operations. At the same time, you can use sUSDe (pledged USDe) to obtain stable interest-earning income.

Fells added that he hopes to build Ethereal into a platform similar to CEX in terms of user experience, but at the same time Ethereal will also remain completely non-custodial and decentralized. For example, Ethereal will abstract away the gas payment link through a specific design, so users do not have to sign each transaction or pay gas fees.

Time plan: Q1 Mainnet launch

According to the time plan mentioned in the conference call, Ethereal expects the next development rhythm to be as follows:

• Testnet release: expected next month;
• The test gateway is stopped;
• Mainnet launch: expected in the first quarter of 2025;

Falls also mentioned that Ethereal’s specific functions will be launched in stages, starting with USDe perpetual contract trading, and then the combined margin model, lending and spot trading. Related businesses will most likely be launched in the first half of 2025. In addition, Ethereal will only support the trading of a few blue-chip tokens at the beginning of its launch. After users and liquidity accumulate, a new batch of trading pairs will be launched every week.

Ethena’s ecological expansion

Ethena's ecological territory is rapidly expanding. In addition to Ethereal mentioned in this article, Derive, a derivatives project formerly known as option protocol Lyra, will also issue coins in the first quarter of next year. At the same time, 5% of Ethena's tokens will be airdropped to sENA holders. Tokens.

Benefiting from the positive sentiment of the bull market, the funding rate in the contract market continues to be high, driving the yields of the Ethena protocol itself and sUSDe to rise. As of the time of publication, the supply of USDe is approaching the $6 billion mark, with a real-time yield of 27%.

At the same time, USDtb, a new stablecoin product launched in partnership with Ethena and BlackRock BUIDL, also makes up for Ethena's biggest shortcoming -the protocol itself and sUSDe will temporarily show negative returns during the negative fee cycle. The structure of USDtb is similar to traditional RWA stablecoins. Its stability is supported by reserve assets, and its income comes from government bond interest rates. After the supply of the stablecoin increases in the future, Ethena will experience negative fee cycles or fee income lower than government bonds. A reliable hedging window is obtained at the time of earnings, thereby solving the protocol's vulnerability to negative rates.

Arthur Hayes, the well-known milk king and founder of BitMEX, predicted earlier this year that "USDe will surpass USDT to become the largest U.S. dollar stablecoin." Although the supply scale of the two sides is still dozens of times different so far, combined with Ethena, it continues to Judging from the relatively high rate of return and the speed of ecological expansion, this is not impossible. And if this expectation can be realized, ecological sub-projects such as Ethereal that have seized the ecological hub position in the early stage will inevitably benefit, and then form value feedback to ENA again.