Ethena-USDe rise rapidly, MakerDAO becomes an invisible beneficiary

Recently, the total issuance of USDe has shown explosive growth, rising from 2.4 billion USD to 3.8 billion USD within a month, with a monthly increase of over 58%. The main driver behind this growth comes from the optimistic market sentiment following Bitcoin's breakthrough to an all-time high, leading to an increase in funding rates, which in turn has boosted the staking yield of USDe. Although it has declined somewhat compared to previous days, the annualized yield of USDe on November 26 still remains high at around 25%.

At the same time, MakerDAO has become an unexpected winner in this wave of rise. Currently, Maker's average daily income has increased by over 200% compared to a month ago, reaching a new high. This significant rise is closely related to the development of Ethena. On one hand, the high staking yield of USDe has stimulated the lending demand for sUSDe and PT assets. On the Morpho platform, the total scale of borrowing DAI with sUSDe and PT as collateral has reached approximately 570 million USD, with a borrowing utilization rate exceeding 80%, and an annualized deposit yield of 12%. In the past month, Maker's D3M module has issued loan increments exceeding 300 million USD through Morpho.

On the other hand, the borrowing demand for sUSDe and PT has also indirectly pushed up the DAI usage rate through other channels. For example, the deposit interest rate for DAI on the Sparkfi platform has reached 8.5%. According to Maker's balance sheet, the total amount of DAI loans issued to Morpho and Spark through the D3M module has reached 2 billion USD, accounting for nearly 40% of Maker's asset side. These two businesses alone have generated an annualized income of 203 million USD for Maker, which is equivalent to contributing 550,000 USD daily to MakerDAO, accounting for 54% of its total annualized income.

In this rise ecosystem, Ethena has become the driving force behind the DeFi revival wave. The optimism brought by Bitcoin's new highs has raised funding rates, which in turn affects the staking yield of USDe. MakerDAO, with its complete and highly liquid funding links and the "central bank property" granted by the D3M module, has become an important supporter of the USDe ecosystem. Morpho plays the role of a "lubricant" in this process. These three protocols together form the core engine of the rise.

At the same time, other DeFi protocols such as AAVE, Curve, and Pendle have also benefited to varying degrees from the rise of USDe. The borrowing utilization rate of DAI on the AAVE platform exceeds 50%, with total deposits of USDS nearing 400 million USD. The USDe/ENA trading pairs rank second, fourth, and fifth in trading volume on Curve, and occupy the first and fifth places in liquidity rankings on Pendle. Tokens such as Curve, CVX, ENA, and MKR have also achieved monthly increases of over 50%.

The sustainability of this growth spiral mainly depends on the long-term existence of the interest rate spread between USDe and DAI. Influencing factors include: the sustainability of bullish market sentiment, whether Ethena can enhance APY distribution efficiency through economic model optimization and market share increase, and competitive pressure from other platforms.

However, accompanying the rise is concern about the security of D3M. Although D3M will not directly cause DAI to become an under-collateralized stablecoin, it does bring some potential risks, such as DAI possibly becoming a "shadow stablecoin" again, various risks from Ethena potentially transmitting to DAI, and a decrease in DAI's overall LTV.