The Symbiotic Relationship Between Ethena-USDe and MakerDAO: The Rise of a New Growth Model in Decentralized Finance

Recently, the total issuance of USDe has shown a significant rise, jumping from 2.4 billion USD to 3.8 billion USD within a month, with a monthly increase of over 58%. This growth trend is closely related to Bitcoin's price breaking new highs. The market's generally bullish sentiment has pushed up funding rates, thereby enhancing the staking yield of USDe, attracting more capital inflow. Although there has been a slight retreat compared to the previous period, the annualized yield of USDe remains at a quite considerable level.

At the same time, MakerDAO, as an important part of the DeFi ecosystem, has also benefited greatly from this trend. Its daily income has risen by over 200% compared to a month ago, setting a new historical high. This rise is largely attributed to the vigorous development of the Ethena ecosystem. The high staking yield of USDe has stimulated market demand for borrowing sUSDe and PT assets, while the scale of borrowing DAI collateralized by these assets on the Morpho platform has reached approximately 570 million USD, with a borrowing utilization rate exceeding 80%.

MakerDAO, through its D3M module, has provided a total of approximately 2 billion USD in DAI loans to Morpho and a certain lending platform, accounting for nearly 40% of its asset side. These two businesses alone have generated an annualized income of 203 million USD for MakerDAO, equivalent to 550,000 USD per day, which represents 54% of its total annualized income.

In this growth ecosystem composed of Ethena, MakerDAO, and Morpho, all parties benefit. USDe stakers obtain high but volatile returns through leverage, while DAI depositors enjoy relatively stable high yields. At the same time, arbitrageurs earn interest spreads by staking various assets to mint or borrow DAI, while advanced players achieve excess returns through complex Decentralized Finance protocols.

The sustainability of this rise model mainly depends on the maintenance of the interest rate spread between USDe and DAI. Influencing factors include the sustainability of bullish market sentiment, improvements in Ethena's economic model and market share, as well as competitive pressure from similar products launched by other platforms.

However, this rapid rise has also raised concerns about the security of the MakerDAO D3M module. Although the D3M does not directly cause DAI to become an undercollateralized stablecoin, it does increase some potential risks, such as DAI potentially becoming a "shadow stablecoin" again, and various risks from the Ethena ecosystem possibly being transmitted to the DAI system.

Overall, the collaborative development model of Ethena-USDe and MakerDAO demonstrates the innovative potential of the Decentralized Finance ecosystem, but it also requires market participants to closely monitor the associated risks to ensure the long-term healthy development of the entire ecosystem.