With MakerDAO’s strategic acquisition of USDe, Ethena Labs has begun to distribute its governance token, ENA, and to airdrop a massive 750 million tokens.
Ethena Labs, the creators of the synthetic dollar, has revealed its distribution strategy for the token, its new governance token. Notable for its yield-producing USDe coin, the protocol intends to airdrop 750 million tokens, or 5% of the total supply of the currency. A cross-post was used to inform users of this change and encourage them to claim their portion of the airdrop. Then, according to Coingecko data, Token’s value increased by 8%, increasing its market capitalization to over $890 million as of August 2.
ENA Token’s Strategic Importance
The USDe token, which is the foundation of Lab’s ecosystem, was designed to function as a stablecoin by keeping its value closely linked to the US dollar. This is accomplished by combining short ether (ETH) perpetual futures positions with a unique blend of ether liquid staking tokens. Within the cryptocurrency space, this approach has drawn interest from both individual investors and institutional players.
Prominent stablecoin issuer MakerDAO has announced plans to lend 600 million DAI to Lab’s USDe token using Morpho Labs, a decentralized finance lending system. In reaction to the MakerDAO project, Ethena’s Head of Growth, Seraphim Czecker, stated, “Ethena TVL growth is on track with internal expectations.”
Because of a study done by BA Labs, a member of MakerDAO’s advisory council, which found strong user demand for the stablecoin, MakerDAO is confident in Ethena and USDe. The report recommended a significant distribution of MakerDAO’s stablecoin DAI to higher leverage USDe pools as a strategic priority.
Parallel to this, Ethena has begun a new airdrop phase called the “Sats” campaign, with the goal of incorporating Bitcoin into USDe as a collateral asset. Through the use of Bitcoin perpetual futures, the project hopes to have access to an extra $25 billion in open interest for hedging.
