Ethena ENA
Rank #54 by market cap
Last 7 days
▲1.40%What Ethena is
Ethena issues USDe, a dollar-denominated token that holds its value through a hedging strategy rather than through a bank account. ENA is the separate governance token of the protocol that runs it.
The mechanism is a standard trade from conventional finance. The protocol holds crypto collateral and simultaneously opens an equivalent short position in perpetual futures, so a fall in the collateral's price is offset by a gain on the short. The combined position is roughly stable in dollar terms, and the yield comes from the funding payments that traders holding long positions typically pay to shorts, plus any staking return on the collateral.
It is not a fiat-backed stablecoin and should not be reasoned about as one. The yield depends on funding rates being positive on average — during extended bearish periods they invert, and the protocol pays rather than earns, drawing on a reserve fund that is finite. The collateral is held with centralised custodians and the hedges are placed on centralised exchanges, so exchange failure or withdrawal restrictions are direct risks to the peg. It is a genuinely different design from the algorithmic stablecoins that collapsed in 2022, but different is not the same as risk-free, and the returns are compensation for real exposure.
Where ENA lives
Always verify a contract address against the project's own site before sending anything. Addresses are shown as published by the data source, not as an endorsement — and identical-looking tokens on other chains are the most common way people lose money here.
Price change
Ethena data synced 7m ago from CoinGecko. Figures shown in USD. This page is market information, not financial advice — and nothing here is a recommendation to buy or sell ENA.