Ethena's October 2025 Governance Update

steakhouse
Mon, 17 Nov 2025 11:11:12 +0000
General

Welcome to October’s monthly governance update, summarizing Ethena’s major developments since the last update. This report highlights an analysis of the October volatility as well as major partnership announcements for Ethena’s Stablecoin-as-a-Service Business.

Key Takeaways

Oct. 10 - 11 Volatility Event

October 10 marked one of the most severe market corrections of the year, with total crypto market capitalization falling 21 percent (~ $850 billion) and open interest declining by $38 billion. Within this backdrop, USDe experienced a meaningful but short-lived dislocation on centralized exchanges, most notably Binance, while maintaining peg stability across decentralized venues and lending protocols. Link.

CEX Behavior: USDe traded as low as 0.65 USDT on Binance and 0.92 USDT on Bybit before normalizing within ~90 minutes. The deviation was driven by an internal oracle relying solely on Binance’s order book; Binance has since confirmed plans to move to a weighted index oracle.

DEX Behavior: On-chain liquidity pools (Fluid, Curve, Uniswap on Ethereum and Plasma) remained anchored around 0.99 throughout the event, processing ~ $790 million in volume (~30 % of total USDe trading).

Lending Markets: Aave and Pendle saw no material liquidations linked to USDe or sUSDe; aggregate liquidations totaled ~ $47 thousand across both assets.

Redemptions: ~ $1.9 billion in USDe redemptions (≈ 13 % of supply) were settled orderly between Oct 10 and 11 without Reserve Fund usage.

Outcome: USDe demonstrated operational resilience comparable to mature stablecoins; stress was isolated to off-chain venues rather than the protocol core.

Boom in Stablecoin as a Service

Ethena’s white-label issuance framework saw major adoption in October, marking a structural shift in how chains and protocols can deploy native, yield-bearing stablecoins. Multiple launches and partnerships established Ethena as the default “monetary backend” for their ecosystems.

Ethena partnered with Jupiter Exchange to develop JupUSD, the native stablecoin of the Jupiter ecosystem on Solana. JupUSD will integrate across all major Jupiter products including Jupiter Perps, where ~$750 million in JLP stablecoins will transition to JupUSD, and Jupiter Lend, where it will serve as the primary lending asset. Link.

Ethena partnered with Sui Network to introduce suiUSDe and USDi, two native dollar assets for Sui’s $30 billion ecosystem. suiUSDe is a Sui-native version of USDe, collateralized by USDe and partially backed by delta-hedged SUI. USDi is fully backed by USDtb, providing a fiat-anchored counterpart for payments and DeFi. Link.

Conduit, the leading rollup deployment platform powering over 55% of Ethereum L2s with more than $4 billion TVL across 60+ mainnet chains announced their integration, which will allow any Conduit-launched rollup to issue its own native, Ethena-backed stablecoin out-of-the-box at deployment. Link.

Caldera’s Stablecoin Module integrated Ethena’s Stablecoin as a Service stack, enabling every Caldera rollup to launch a native, rewards-bearing stablecoin. The partnership provides white-glove support for ecosystem rollups and embeds Ethena as the stablecoin infrastructure layer across Caldera’s growing modular ecosystem. Link.

Major Custody and Neobank Partnerships

Copper announced future direct custody and trading support for USDe and USDtb, enabling clients to earn yield, post collateral, and soon mint or redeem assets natively within the Copper platform. The collaboration provides institutional users seamless access to Ethena’s stablecoin infrastructure from within one of the industry’s most trusted custody solutions. Link.

Ethena partnered with UR Global, a licensed neobank that operates in 45+ countries, to integrate USDe directly into its multi-currency banking app. Through this partnership, Ethena becomes the engine behind a practical “DeFi savings account” that bridges crypto and traditional finance. Link.

First Federally Regulated Stablecoin

Ethena completed the transition of USDtb to Anchorage Digital, the only federally chartered crypto bank, making it the first stablecoin issued under U.S. federal oversight and in compliance with the GENIUS Act. This onshoring formalizes USDtb as a federally regulated stablecoin, providing a clear legal framework for issuance and redemption while reinforcing Ethena’s commitment to compliant, institution-grade infrastructure. Link.

Protocol Updates

TVL Milestone and Supply

USDe supply reached a new all time high of approximately ~$14.8 billion in early October before retracting closer to ~$10.1 billion since. Month to Date, it represents an approximately 31.4% decline.

Cross-Chain, Infrastructure & Ecosystem Growth

USDe’s footprint continued to expand across protocols and networks in October. USDe was added as collateral for HONEY on Berachain, while mStable launched mPT-sUSDe, combining Ethena yield with fixed APY exposure through Pendle and leverage on Aave.

On Aave’s Plasma instance, PT-USDe and PT-sUSDe each received $200 million in capacity, further integrating Ethena assets into money markets.

Meanwhile, Ethereal introduced USDe-denominated perpetuals, allowing traders to earn rewards on margin balances. Collectively, these launches deepen USDe’s role as a cross-chain collateral and settlement layer across DeFi.

DeFi Update

Collateral Adoption

Ethena assets continued to see broad adoption across major DeFi lending markets in October, but overall utilization declined.

On Aave v3 Core:

USDe ~886M/ 2.7b

sUSDe ~773M/1.7b

PT-sUSDe 27NOV2025 ~1.4B/2.4b

On Aave Plasma:

USDe ~411M/1.75b

sUSDe ~493M/1.58b

PT-sUSDe 15JAN2026 ~400M/400m

PT-USDe 15JAN2026 ~259M/400m

On Morpho:

PT-sUSDe-27NOV2025/USDC ~$31M

PT-USDe-27NOV2025/USDC ~$25M

Dex Liquidity

Liquidity on major DEXes decreased for the month, down from 252m on Oct. 1,2025 to 196m on Oct 29, 2025. Similarly, trading volume on DEXes fell month over month from 4.9B to 2.8B. Link.

Community Metrics

Transparency

Ethena published an on demand Proof of Reserves (POR) attestations, in response to community requests, following the Oct 10 - 11 volatility event. Link

Weekly PORs by HT Digital, Chaos Labs, Llama Risk and Chain link continued with the latest report, Oct 24, 2025, attesting that USDe remains overcollateralized by approximately 61.8m.

Protocol backing ratio: 100.57%

Reserve Fund: 61.8m

Total USDe supply: 10.730B

Total backing: 10.736B

USDe supply decreased month over month from 14.7B to 10.1B at the time of writing, a decrease of -31.3%.

Staked USDe (sUSDe) supply fell from approximately 5.86B to 5.11B, a much slower pace than the decrease of USDe supply. The resulting impact was a significant increase in the staking ratio from 39.72% to 51.34%.

Protocol yield on sUSDe trended down for the month as a result of market dislocations and efforts to ensure adequate liquidity for redemptions. The 7d MA APY fell from 5.95% to 3.83%, ~ 17 bps below comps such as the sUSDS rate.

Engagement Growth

Community participation in partner governance forums for Stablecoin as a Service and on X during October’s volatility surged as the community sought reassurance regarding protocol health. The community responded with many threads discussing the underlying mechanics surrounding October’s volatility, which ultimately has led to more confidence in the protocol overall.

Governance Participation

There were no Governance or Risk Committee proposals during the month of October, other than the aforementioned Volatility Analysis above.

Ecosystem Activity

Stablecoin-as-a-Service Expansion

Ethena’s white-label issuance stack saw its largest growth wave to date, launching across multiple top-tier ecosystems. MegaETH introduced USDm, a native stablecoin powering sequencer operations with yield-funded gas rebates. Jupiter Exchange announced JupUSD, the native stablecoin of its Solana-based ecosystem, while Sui Network unveiled suiUSDe and USDi, two Sui-native dollar assets built on Ethena infrastructure. Integrations with Conduit and Caldera now allow any new rollup or modular chain to deploy a native, Ethena-backed stablecoin at launch.

Institutional and Retail Access

CopperHQ added direct custody, trading, and soon native mint-and-redeem functionality for USDe and USDtb, broadening institutional accessibility. UR Global, a neobank live in 45+ countries, integrated USDe for global users bridging DeFi yield with mainstream financial access.

Regulatory Milestone

USDtb officially transitioned to Anchorage Digital, becoming the first federally regulated stablecoin issued under the GENIUS Act. The transfer of mint and redeem authority to Anchorage Digital Bank formalizes Ethena’s fiat-backed component under U.S. federal oversight and strengthens its regulatory standing for future institutional integrations.

DeFi and Ecosystem Integrations

USDe was added as collateral for HONEY on Berachain, while mStable launched mPT-sUSDe, combining sUSDe yield with fixed APY exposure through Pendle and leverage on Aave. Aave Plasma listed PT-USDe and PT-sUSDe with $200M capacity each, and Ethereal launched USDe-denominated perpetuals, enabling traders to earn USDe rewards on margin balances. Together, these integrations deepen Ethena’s role as a base collateral and settlement layer across DeFi.