Original - Odaily
Author - Nan Zhi
today,Binance’s new coin mining launches the 50th phase of project Ethena (ENA), users can participate using BNB or FDUSD. Odaily will analyze Ethena (ENA) project business, new currency mining details and estimated token price in this article.
Ethena project background
Ethena Labs’ current main product is Delta-neutral Synthetic Dollars USDe. The creative inspiration for this product comes from Arthur Hayes, the founder of BitMEX. In March 2023, Arthur wrote an article called Dust on Crust》 article, the article talked about his idea for a new generation of stable currency Nakamoto Dollar, that is, to create a stable currency supported by equal amounts of BTC spot longs and futures shorts.
Ethena Labs implemented Hayes idea, but with ETH as the underlying asset, USDe is based on an equal amount of spot ETH and futures ETH short mortgage. The two are hedged to become a delta-neutral stable asset. Delta neutrality means USDes Mortgage casting positions are basically unaffected by ETH price changes, thus ensuring the reliability of the asset.
On the other hand, after ensuring asset stability, Ethena earns interest on USDe in two ways:
Pledge income from spot positions. Ethena Labs supports staking spot ETH through LSD protocols such as Lido to obtain annualized returns of 3% - 5%.
Short funding rate gains. Although the funding rate is highly volatile, in the long term, shorts are the party that earns positive funding fees. Ethena obtains higher but more volatile returns through this method, which currently ranges from 5-20%.
Financing situation
February 16, 24Ethena Labs completes US$14 million strategic round of financing at US$300 million valuation, Dragonfly, Brevan Howard Digital and BitMEX founder Arthur Hayes’ family office Maelstrom co-led the investment, with participation from PayPal Ventures, Franklin Templeton, Avon Ventures, Binance Labs, Deribit, Gemini and Kraken. This round of financing used Future Equity Simple protocol with token warrant structure.
On July 17, 2023, the encryption startup Ethena completed a $6 million seed round of financing, led by Dragonfly, and supported by trading platforms such as Deribit, Bybit, OKX, Gemini and Huobi, as well as BitMEX founder Arthur Hayes and his family office.
Agreement risk points
Last October, Austin Campbell, professor at Columbia Business School and founder and managing partner of Zero Knowledge Consulting, published an article dismantling the design structure of USDe. Austin pointed out in the article that he prefers to call USDe a structural note rather than a stable currency, and analyzed USDes four layers of potential risks:
The first is the security risk at the pledge level, whether the security and sustainability of the pledge node can be guaranteed;
The second is the security risk of futures contract opening platforms, whether it is DEX or CEX, there is the risk of hacker attacks;
The third is contract availability risk. Sometimes there may not be enough liquidity to conduct short selling;
The fourth is the funding rate risk. Although the funding rate for short positions is positive most of the time, there is also the possibility of turning negative. If the comprehensive rate of return after the weighted pledge income is negative, for stablecoins it is Quite deadly.
Launchpool Terms and Conditions
Mining start time:March 30, 2024 08:00 (UTC+8), lasting 3 days；
Transaction start time: 16:00 on April 2, 2024 (UTC+ 8)
Maximum supply of tokens: 15, 000, 000, 000 ENA;
Initial circulation: 1, 425, 000, 000 ENA (9.5% of the maximum supply of the token);
Total mining amount: 300, 000, 000 ENA (2% of the maximum supply of the token);
Mining pool: BNB mining pool can mine a total of 240, 000, 000 ETHFI (accounting for 80%), FDUSD mining pool can mine a total of 60, 000, 000 ETHFI (accounting for 20%)
price estimate
And calculated based on the previous BNB pool,The average annualized return for the first ten periods was 123%, assuming that the annualized rate of return of this mining is also 123%, calculated based on 3 days of mining, the price of the token is 0.45 USDT. Calculated based on AIs minimum rate of return of 0.18%, the guaranteed price is 0.18 USDT.
Based on a total token supply of 15 billion, when the price reaches 0.45 USDT, the FDV is $6.75 billion. The current pre-market trading market Aevo gives a higher price of about 0.65 USDT, corresponding to an FDV of up to $9.75 billion.
In addition, as the price of BNB rises rapidly, the yield is difficult to maintain the previous high level. ETHFI has even hit the lowest yield in the past ten periods. However, after the initial chip sell-off, ETHFI ushered in a rapid and violent wave. rise. Therefore, the highest price excluding the opening hour is added to this section for readers’ reference.
Reference reading: A brief analysis of Ethena Labs: Valuation of US$300 million, a stablecoin disruptor in the eyes of Arthur Hayes》
