Through a private token sale, Decentralized stablecoin issuer Ethena has raised $100 million to create a new blockchain and a financial token fit for conventional finance (TradFi). This strategic move positions Ethena as a key player in aligning distributed finance (DeFi) with regulated financial institutions.
Completing in December 2024, the private auction saw investors pay an average price of $0.40 for Ethena’s governance token, ENA. After the news, ENA’s price shot to $1.30 in mid-December before falling sharply by seventy percent.
Strategic Allocations and Cooperation
Major players drawn to the funding round were Franklin Templeton, Fidelity Investments-affiliated F-Prime Capital, Dragonfly Capital Partners, Polychain Capital, and Pantera Capital Management. This support emphasizes the increasing curiosity in stablecoins and blockchain-based financial solutions.
Ethena also teamed with World Liberty Financial (WFLI), a distributed money project connected to American political leaders. By means of this cooperation, Ethena will combine a staked form of USDe with WFLI’s lending system, therefore enabling users to accumulate rewards in both sUSDe and WLF tokens.
Presenting iUSDe for Institutions of Regulated Finance
Founder Guy Young of Ethena Labs revealed in January 2025 the creation of iUSDe, a stablecoin meant especially for controlled financial institutions. Like sUSDe, iUSDe will have a transfer restriction system to guarantee adherence to financial rules while preserving blockchain technological advantages.
Young underlined that Ethena’s main goal for Q1 2025 is enabling the acceptance of iUSDe within conventional finance institutions, thereby linking DeFi and institutional finance.
Vision for the Future: Ethena
Ethena wants to grow its synthetic dollar ecosystem and create blockchain-based financial solutions catered for controlled markets with this new cash infusion. This project conforms with the larger trend of stablecoin acceptance in conventional finance, therefore confirming Ethena as a major player in the changing financial scene.
Despite several questions, Ethena has not formally responded to the $100 million funding round at the time of publishing.
