Decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol Ethena announced a strategic partnership with Donald Trump-backed World Liberty Financial on Dec. 18.
The partnership aims to integrate Ethena’s sUSDe token — a staked version of its USDe “synthetic dollar” — with World Liberty Financial’s Aave instance, enabling users to deposit USDe and receive rewards in both sUSDe and World Liberty’s WLF token.
Per an announcement posted to X:
“Should it pass, this proposal will enable World Liberty Financial users to benefit from sUSDe rewards and also WLF token rewards. This integration will increase stablecoin liquidity and utilization rates on the protocol, as sUSDe’s integration has on Aave’s Core instance.”
Proposal to onboard sUSDe
The Ethena Labs Research account submitted an official proposal to the World Liberty Financial community on Dec. 18 asking for approval to implement sUSDe “as the first new collateral asset to the World Liberty Financial market.”
According to a post on the community forum, sUSDe has already passed risk analysis on the Aave Core and Lido instances. If the proposal is implemented, the Ethena Foundation says it will “co-incentivize supply of sUSDe to come to the instance via its points program” to support the aforementioned dual rewards stream for users.
The Trump bump?
The partnership comes at a tumultuous time for World Liberty Financial, which has yet to find its footing among more established industry players. As Cointelegraph reported, the president-elect’s crypto business endeavor was something of a flop at its launch.
In its first 24 hours of trading after launching on Oct. 16, only 848.63 million WLFI ($12.7 million worth based on the presale price) was sold, leaving an additional 19.1 billion coins (worth approximately $287 million) unsold.
On Nov. 26, the company saw an influx of cash as Justin Sun, a cryptocurrency entrepreneur and somewhat controversial figure in the community, became World Liberty’s largest single tokenholder after purchasing $30 million worth of WLF.
Less than a week after Sun’s purchase, the company went to work spending the capital with purchases of Ether ETH
$3,671.72, AAVE AAVE$337.44, ENA ENA
$1.18, ONDO ONDO$1.90, Chainlink LINK$24.69, and cbBTC equaling roughly $30 million at the time of purchase.
