Ethena Labs’ USDe stablecoin provides a yield through a tokenized cash-and-carry trade.
Counterparty risk and a funding-rates reversal are two of the protocol’s main challenges.
Terra’s traumatic demise led to the bankruptcy of several other crypto firms, and left long-lasting scars across the industry. It blew up because UST, an algorithmic stablecoin, entered a death spiral following aggressive selling and a slump in the value of LUNA, which acted as collateral.
“It is a really weak, surface-level argument to compare what Ethena is doing to Luna,” Ethena Labs founder Guy Young said in an interview with Laura Shin on the “The core difference here is thinking about what’s backing the stable asset. So UST was backed by the LUNA token, which mooned up 100% and dumped 50% in a week. Ethena’s USD is fully backed and fully collateralized.”