Ethena Labs was founded by Guy Young, who previously spent six years at Cerberus Capital Management, a credit and private-equity firm; the project was announced in July 2023, headquartered in Lisbon. Founding Advisor Arthur Hayes, co-founder and former CEO of the BitMEX exchange, whose essay “Dust on Crust” was a major inspiration for the concept.
-
February 19, 2024: the USDe token launches, alongside a “Shard Campaign” points program that ran until supply hit $1 billion or three months had passed.
-
April 2024: the ENA governance token launches, priced initially at $0.30, with 5% of the total 15-billion supply airdropped to early participants.
USDe is technologically fundamentally different from the rest of this category: it does NOT hold its peg through fiat reserves (like USDT/USDC), nor through overcollateralized crypto locks (like Dai), but through a “delta-neutral” hedging strategy — ETH (or other collateral) deposited by users is paired with an equal-notional short futures position that cancels out price risk. Funding-rate payments from the short positions generate the yield paid to sUSDe (staked USDe) holders.