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Ethena dominated DeFi mindshare throughout 2024, and despite its synthetic dollars garnering plenty of criticism and concern upon launch, the team’s efforts have become one of DeFi’s most notable success stories this year as traders have flocked to the protocol.
There are signals that the basis trade tokenization play is just getting started as other DeFi players look to latch onto Ethena’s growth prospects.
In recent months, market froth has turbocharged Ethena revenues and transformed ENA into a top-performing crypto play, meanwhile, crypto credit providers have come to increasingly integrate USDe in their reach for yield.
Today, we explore Ethena’s 2024 success story 👇
🪙 An Explosive Rise
Ethena accepted its first public deposits on February 19, and within one month of mainnet, USDe’s circulating supply had flipped those of all but 5 stablecoin competitors.
Thanks to its sizable airdrop incentives and a well-timed launch into the hottest funding rate environment seen all year, USDe supply expanded unchecked to $2…