Ethena's ENA Soars 20% as Protocol Sees $750M Inflow Amid Rising Crypto Funding Rates

Ethena's token ENA (ENA) surged on Sunday to its highest price in four months, as the decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol behind the token saw a fresh wave of inflows amid a broader crypto rally.

The token, which serves as the governance token for Ethena, advanced roughly 20% during the day to over $0.50, topping that level for the first time since early February, according to CoinDesk data.

Ethena is benefiting from the recent surge in crypto prices, generating higher yields for investors. The protocol issues the dollar-pegged USDe, marketed as a "synthetic dollar" with its price anchored at $1. It uses bitcoin (BTC), ether (ETH) and Solana's SOL (SOL)as backing assets, pairing them with an equal value of short perpetual futures positions on exchanges. The strategy generates revenue on its backing derivative assets when the perpetual funding rates are positive and passes on some of the income as yield to investors.

Funding rates rose over the past few days after a long spell of near-neutral levels, CoinGlass data shows. The protocol's strategy now pays out almost 10% annualize yield to investors, more than double what money market funds pay out as a risk-free rate.

Perp funding rates on exchanges (CoinGlass) Amid higher yields, the protocol's USDe attracted over $750 million in fresh inflows through the last few days, per DefiLlama data. At $6.09 billion supply, USDe is just shy below its February record supply of $6.1 billion, the project's dashboard shows.

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