Ethereal, the first airdrop project in the Ethena ecosystem: to be launched on the mainnet in Q1 next year; 15% of tokens are planned to be airdropped to ENA stakers

Original title: "Can Ethereal, the first airdrop project of Ethena ecosystem, replicate the miracle of Hyperliquid?"

Original author: Azuma, Odaily Planet Daily

Ethena (ENA) may be one of the most outstanding tokens in the past period of time.

Bitget market shows that since hitting the bottom at 0.194 USDT in early September, until yesterday's rebound to 1.33 USDT, ENA has achieved a nearly 600% increase in the past two months.

There are many answers to the reasons. For example, the contract funding rate rose in the bull market, driving Ethena's protocol revenue to rise sharply, and the supply of USDe also increased significantly; another example is the Trump family project World Liberty's support for ENA's purchase; and the expectation of the ENA fee switch being turned on by Wintermute; coupled with the direct cooperation with BlackRock BUIDL, a new stablecoin product USDtb was launched... In addition, the expectation of open airdrops for holding and staking ENA is also seen as a key reason for the continued rise of the token.

Previously, two major projects with a high degree of business relevance to USDe, Ethereal and Derive (formerly Lyra), have successively announced that they will airdrop to sENA holders (ie ENA staking users), of which Ethereal plans to airdrop 15% of the token supply and Derive plans to airdrop 5% of the token supply. Currently, users who hold sENA on the chain can directly view the "mining" status of these two projects on the Ethena homepage.

Last week, Ethereal officials held a community conference call, at which Ethereal's roadmap, functions, advantages and airdrops were outlined. It is worth mentioning that Ethereal's developers have obviously noticed the stunning performance of another strong project Hyperliquid in recent times, and mentioned that Ethereal hopes to build a "one-stop trading service" similar to Hyperliquid.

Ethereal: The first airdrop project of the Ethena ecosystem

Ethereal made its debut on September 30 this year.

At that time, Fells, the founder of Ethereal, initiated a related proposal on Ethena, proposing to build an on-chain trading venue around USDe that supports spot and derivative transactions. On the one hand, Ethena can profit from the expansion of USDe's utility, and on the other hand, Ethereal can seize the ecological hub position in advance in the early stage of USDe's growth.

From the perspective of architecture, Ethereal will serve as Layer 3 based on the Ethena network; from the perspective of business, in addition to being equipped with a complete trading system, Ethereal also supports the deployment of other USDe-related applications (such as lending).

In order to gain the support of the Ethena community and deepen the binding relationship, Ethereal stated in the initial version of the proposal that 15% of the tokens will be given as airdrops to ENA's pledge users.

Latest News: Learn from Hyperliquid

In the latest community conference call, Ethereal team members emphasized Hyperliquid and believed that the key factor for the project's success was "providing a complete set of trading services", solving the hidden pain point that users need to switch between different applications when performing different operations, which is more conducive to the retention of users and funds.

In this regard, Ethereal founder Fells also re-described Ethereal's positioning as "a one-stop product that supports all DeFi operations", where users can conduct spot or contract transactions, rate arbitrage, lending, options and even forecasting operations, and can use sUSDe (staking USDe) to obtain stable interest-bearing income.

Fells added that he hopes to make Ethereal a platform similar to CEX in terms of user experience, but at the same time Ethereal will remain completely non-custodial and decentralized. For example, Ethereal will abstract the payment of gas through a specific design, so users do not have to sign or pay gas fees for each transaction.

Timeline: Q1 mainnet launch

According to the timeline mentioned in the conference call, Ethereal expects the following development rhythm:

· Testnet release: expected next month;

· Test gateway shutdown;

· Mainnet launch: expected in the first quarter of 2025;

Falls also mentioned that Ethereal's concrete functions will be launched in stages, starting with USDe perpetual contract trading, followed by combined margin model, lending and spot trading. Related businesses are likely to be launched in the first half of 2025. In addition, Ethereal will only support the trading of a few blue-chip tokens at the beginning of its launch. After users and liquidity accumulate, a new batch of trading pairs will be launched every week.

Ethena's ecological expansion

Ethena's ecological landscape is expanding rapidly. In addition to Ethereal mentioned in this article, Derive, a derivative project formerly known as the options protocol Lyra, will also issue coins in the first quarter of next year, and will also airdrop 5% of tokens to sENA holders.

Benefiting from the positive sentiment of the bull market, the funding rate in the contract market continues to be high, driving up the yield of the Ethena protocol itself and sUSDe. As of the time of writing, the supply of USDe has approached the $6 billion mark, with a real-time yield of 27%.

At the same time, the new stablecoin product USDtb launched by Ethena and BlackRock BUIDL also made up for Ethena's biggest shortcoming - the protocol itself and sUSDe will temporarily show negative returns under the negative rate cycle. The structure of USDtb is similar to that of traditional RWA stablecoins. Its stability is supported by reserve assets, and its income comes from treasury bond interest rates. In the future, after the supply of this stablecoin increases, Ethena will obtain a reliable safe-haven window in the negative rate cycle or when the rate income is lower than the treasury bond income, thereby solving the hidden danger of the protocol being susceptible to negative rates.

Arthur Hayes, the well-known milk king and founder of BitMEX, predicted earlier this year that "USDe will surpass USDT to become the largest dollar stablecoin." Although the supply scale of the two parties is still dozens of times different, considering Ethena's current sustained high yield and ecological expansion speed, this is not impossible. If this expectation can be realized, ecological sub-projects such as Ethereal, which have seized the position of ecological hub in the early stage, will inevitably benefit, and then form value feedback to ENA again.

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