Stablecoins are one of the most lucrative business models in human history.

In Q1 2024, Tether's net profit was $4.5 billion.
At that time, the Tether team consisted of only about 100 people, meaning an average quarterly profit of $45 million per person.
By comparison: Goldman Sachs needs 45,000 employees to earn the same profit.
What is Tether's secret?
It is a perfect "shadow bank."
Utilizing the extremely low distribution costs of blockchain, it arbitrages the credit spread of dollars worldwide.
However, this highly profitable business also has deadly hidden risks.
Asset-side black box: Heavy reliance on the traditional banking system
Profit limitations: Profits closely tied to macro interest rates
Regulatory pressure: As a centralized entity, it is always within the scope of regulation
1. **Evolution of the Stablecoin Paradigm: From 1.0 to 3.0**
For this reason, the industry’s exploration of the "stablecoin trilemma" continues to evolve.
- 1.0 Era: MakerDAO (asset-backed collateral)
- 2.0 Experiment: Algorithmic stablecoins (trust-based)
- 3.0 Era: Synthetic dollars represented by Ethena
Ethena's core is to leverage derivatives hedging logic to achieve credit expansion outside the banking system.
Based on a "long spot + corresponding short position" delta-neutral strategy. USDe does not rely on external asset collateral but tokenizes the basis yield in the crypto market.
According to TVL data, USDe has risen to the fourth largest stablecoin globally, only behind USDT, USDC, and USDS.
2. **Ethena’s Key Layout: From Yield Protocols to Financial Infrastructure**
Recently, Ethena has been very active, clearly aiming beyond DeFi yield.
▌ Dynamic Unstaking Mechanism
The unstaking cooldown period for sUSDe has been upgraded from a fixed 7 days to a dynamic Cooldown system.
When the market is stable and liquidity is ample, the cooldown can be reduced to 1 day; when there is concentrated redemption pressure, the system will automatically extend it to 7 days.
▌ Focus on Perp Trading Scenarios
So far, Ethena has distributed over $2 million in incentives to @etherealdex and @hyenatrade.
USDe is no longer just an asset sitting in users’ wallets earning interest; it has become collateral and settlement currency for contract trading. When it becomes the "hard currency" in on-chain derivatives markets, its moat will be built by real trading demand.
▌ Deep Integration with Privy and WalletConnect Pay
Privy deep integration: linking 120 million accounts, directly embedding yield functions into various app frontends.
WalletConnect Pay integration: even enabling direct scan-to-pay! Achieving a perfect cycle of "earning on-chain, spending offline."
3. **Summary**
Historically, stablecoins are the only application in the blockchain industry that truly possesses "externality profits" and can cycle through periods.
If Tether has validated the commercial profitability of digital dollar distribution, then Ethena is attempting to solve the endogenous issues of stablecoins.