Ethena Adds Equities and Commodities to USDe Basis Trade, Closes HIP-3 Market on Hyperliquid

Ethena is broadening the collateral strategy underpinning its USDe stablecoin to include equity perpetuals and commodities, while simultaneously shutting down its HIP-3 market on Hyperliquid and overhauling ENA tokenomics in what the protocol is framing as a push to reignite growth.

The core of USDe has always been a delta-neutral basis trade: Ethena holds spot crypto assets and shorts equivalent perpetual futures positions, capturing the funding rate spread as yield. That mechanism has worked well in crypto-native markets, but it also ties the protocol's revenue directly to crypto market conditions and funding rate cycles. Expanding the same trade structure into equities and commodities is, in principle, a straightforward extension of the playbook into deeper, more liquid markets. Equity perpetuals on venues like Hyperliquid carry substantial daily volume, and commodity basis trades have a long institutional pedigree in traditional finance. The strategic logic is diversification: when crypto funding rates compress during bear markets, equity and commodity basis spreads may not move in lockstep, potentially smoothing USDe's yield profile across market cycles.

The simultaneous closure of the HIP-3 market on Hyperliquid is worth reading carefully. HIP-3 is Hyperliquid's framework for listing protocol-native tokens as perpetual markets, and Ethena's decision to exit that venue suggests either insufficient liquidity depth, disappointing trading activity, or a deliberate consolidation of the protocol's on-chain footprint ahead of the broader strategic pivot. Shutting down a trading venue is rarely a neutral signal. It indicates Ethena's team is making active trade-offs about where liquidity should concentrate, rather than spreading thin across every available market. The move mirrors a broader pattern visible across maturing DeFi protocols, where the proliferation of markets and venues that characterized 2023-2024 is giving way to more deliberate capital allocation. Aave V4 deposits hit $806 million after a 30% weekly surge, yet V3 still dominates at $31 billion, illustrating exactly this kind of liquidity consolidation dynamic within a single protocol family.

The ENA tokenomics overhaul runs alongside these structural changes. Tokenomics restructuring at this stage of a protocol's lifecycle typically signals one of two things: the team is responding to sustained selling pressure on the governance token, or it is attempting to better align incentives between liquidity providers, stakers, and the protocol treasury. Without specific details on the new token parameters, it is difficult to assess whether existing ENA holders face dilution. What is clear is that Ethena is treating this as a coordinated package, not a series of isolated decisions. Changing collateral strategy, closing a trading venue, and restructuring tokenomics simultaneously points to a deliberate reset rather than incremental adjustment.

The regulatory dimension deserves attention. Pure crypto basis trades exist in a relatively well-mapped regulatory space. Equity perpetuals are a different matter. Depending on jurisdiction and the specific instruments involved, trading equity derivatives could trigger securities law obligations that crypto-native protocols have historically sidestepped. Ethena will need to navigate that landscape carefully, particularly as regulators in the U.S. and EU continue to sharpen their frameworks around tokenized financial products. The operational complexity also rises: equity markets have defined trading hours, corporate actions, and counterparty structures that differ fundamentally from 24/7 crypto markets. Execution costs and liquidity constraints in equity perps may compress the basis spreads that make the trade attractive in the first place.

The broader trajectory here connects to a theme emerging across the DeFi space in 2026: protocols increasingly reaching toward real-world asset classes to sustain yield and grow total value locked as pure crypto yields normalize. The first onchain repo trade using a Marshall Islands digital bond, completed by Virtu and Tradeweb, illustrates just how far that integration is advancing at the institutional level. Ethena's equity perp expansion sits on the same continuum, even if the mechanism differs. Whether the protocol can execute cleanly across these new asset classes without introducing counterparty risk or regulatory friction will determine whether this pivot strengthens USDe's position or complicates it.