Ethena releases 2025 roadmap, plans to include TradFi assets to support USDe

Ethena released its roadmap for 2025, with one of its priorities being the integration of TradFi assets. With this move, Ethena may add an extra layer of security to its synthetic asset, USDe. 

Ethena Labs released its roadmap for 2025, with goals of partnering with TradFi companies. In the past year, Ethena distributed its stablecoin to decentralized protocols, showing it was a reliable asset for lending and collaterals. Ethena survived 2024 despite doubts about the stability of USDe, boosted by the overall bullish trend. 

For the whole of 2024, Ethena achieved $276.47M, with peak earnings of $7.21M for November. The protocol managed to follow its roadmap of varied ETH scenarios, curbing the supply of USDe during slower market months. Toward the end of 2024, USDe expanded again above 6B tokens by December 20. Since then, the supply of USDe slid slightly to 5.9B, though still near peak supply. 

Currently, 4.2B of those tokens are locked in staking, with a premium price of $1.14. Staked USDe has a protective mechanism against mass withdrawals, thus protecting the $1 price for USDe. 

Ethena plans to offer sUSDe to traditional companies

After testing sUSDe for months with other DeFi protocols, Ethena will build a new product, iUSDe. The product will spread the stablecoin to traditional financial companies by parking the assets in a special smart contract. All TradFi partners will have access to the token’s yield without having to handle any on-chain transfers. 

By the end of January, Ethena plans to announce all partners who have accepted USDe exposure. The new use case will add legitimacy to USDe, which still suffers from doubts linked to the 2022 bear market and the risks for synthetic stablecoins. 

Ethena will seek out new partners throughout Q1, contacting asset managers, private funds, ETF product issuers, private trusts, and brokers. The goal is to offer direct exposure to passive income, including long-term holding of sUSDe. The end goal is to attract as much as $10B flowing into iUSDe products, balancing token issuance through both traditional and on-chain finance. If successful, the mission to target TradFi organizations may bring significant inflows into Ethena. 

Since Ethena taps the most active crypto markets, its stablecoin potential works at the scale of billions, already suitable for some forms of traditional investments. At the same time, the returns will be produced purely out of crypto assets, as Ethena has done in the first year of expanding its activity.

Ethena’s success hinges on expectations of a more active bull market in 2025

The decision to offer passive income to TradFi clients comes after the basis trade in the crypto market turned into a reliable source of income. By far, Ethena has tapped one of the largest reliable sources of real cash flow in the entire space. The 2024 bull market expanded the basis trade profitability by 300% while producing one of the favorable scenarios for Ethena. 

The basis trade for $110B in open interest may bring in $10B, based on the bullish scenario predictions. Ethena also presupposes a scenario where BTC rises to $200K in the coming year, further boosting the cash flows of the basis trade. However, the potential for earnings may be limited by the inherent unpredictability of the crypto market. 

Ethena’s involvement with the basis trade taps around 7% of the crypto market open interest. The supply of USDe is correlated to the mix of open interest shares and the price performance of Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH). In the case of an even more active bull market in 2025, USDe will grow, leaving space for traditional institutions to join.

The size of the basis within the crypto markets is not well understood. It is by far the largest potential source of real cash flow in the entire space and has increased more than 3x in the year since Ethena launched. Importantly, this is a sufficient scale to interest traditional finance as an opportunity.

In 2025, Ethena envisions falling interest rates, which will have a double effect on the crypto market. Increased liquidity and monetary easing will boost the crypto market, and Ethena’s products will offer more appealing returns.

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