Ethena Joins Race for Hyperliquid’s Stablecoin With BlackRock-Backed Proposal

Decentralized finance protocol Ethena (ENA) submitted Tuesday a proposal to issue Hyperliquid’s upcoming stablecoin, joining a bidding race that has already attracted a slew of companies like Paxos, Sky, Frax and Agora.

The token would be fully backed by Ethena’s USDtb, a stablecoin issued with federally chartered bank Anchorage Digital and fully backed by BUIDL, the tokenized money market fund by asset management giant BlackRock and Securitize.

“We are excited to enable Ethena’s USDtb, which is 100% backed by BUIDL and uniquely positioned to offer institutional grade cash management as well as on-chain liquidity to Hyperliquid users,” said Robert Mitchnick, Blackrock’s head of digital assets, in the proposal.

If adopted, Ethena pledged that 95% of net revenue from USDH reserves would flow back to the Hyperliquid ecosystem, the proposal said. Ethena also said it would cover the costs of migrating existing USDC trading pairs on Hyperliquid to USDH to ease adoption.

The proposal comes as competition to win the issuance of Hyperliquid’s USDH stablecoin is intensifies. The decentralized exchange executed almost $400 billion in perpetuals trading volume last month, making it an attractive market for stablecoin providers to corner. Sky (formerly MakerDAO), Paxos, Sky, Frax, Agora and Native Markets threw their hat in the ring. Validators are set to vote on proposals on September 14.

Read more: Sky Pitches Genius-Compliant USDH Stablecoin With $8B Balance Sheet and 4.85% Yield