Ethena, a fast-growing crypto project with a “synthetic dollar” token positioned as an alternative to leading stablecoins like Tether’s USDT, saw its token jump Friday in digital-asset markets after founder Guy Young detailed plans for a new offering gear

There's also a planned integration with the messaging platform Telegram and the expected buildout of a dedicated Ethena network.

Fast-growing crypto project Ethena, whose “synthetic dollar” token serves as an alternative to leading stablecoins like Tether’s USDT, saw its token rally Friday in digital-asset markets after founder Guy Young outlined plans for a new offering targeting traditional financial institutions.

There’s also a planned integration with the messaging platform Telegram and the expected buildout of a dedicated Ethena network.

After Young shared a detailed blog post on the protocol's 2025 roadmap, the governance token ENA rose 16% to trade at $1.23, giving the cryptocurrency a market capitalization of $3.6 billion, data from CoinGecko showed.

The roadmap calls for Ethena’s entry into the traditional finance industry with a new product offering dubbed iUSDe, which is slated to roll out next month. The new product will be a variation of Ethena’s staked stablecoin sUSDe, except that iUSDe will come with a wrapper contract which enforces transfer restrictions at the token level. The additional mechanism will purportedly allow tradfi entities to use iUSDe.

“In this context Ethena will perform the role of an interest rate arbitrage vehicle which forces the convergence between capital flows and interest rate markets across DeFi, CeFi and TradFi,” wrote Young. DeFi is the industry shorthand for decentralized finance, CeFi stands for centralized crypto finance and TradFi represents traditional finance.

Plans for 2025 include integrating sUSDe within popular messaging platform Telegram, which has over 900 million users around the world. Having sUSDe within Telegram could serve as a mobile neobank for users to transfer, spend, and save, according to Young. Through Apple Pay, users on Telegram will be able to move from sUSDe to direct mobile tap payments on their phones. Neobanks provide online banking services without physical branches.

Ethena is also looking to evolve from a protocol that issues a single asset – namely, its flagship stablecoin – to an operational network in the new year.

The network will feature a token model similar to Binance’s BNB token where ecosystem applications set aside portions of their token supply to be airdropped to those who have staked their ENA tokens.

Two applications are already building on the Ethena network, Young noted. The first is Ethereal, a decentralized trading platform that runs its orderbook with sUSDe and relies on Ethena for liquidity. The second is Derive, an onchain options protocol building financial derivatives where sUSDe is the core collateral asset for the system. Ethereal is expected to launch its testnet next month and Derive is set to roll out its token in the next two weeks, per Young.

Ethena’s USDe stablecoin has garnered a market capitalization of over $5.8 billion, enough to rank it as the third largest stablecoin after Circle’s USDC and Tether’s USDT.

Wallet addresses that are identified as belonging to BlockTower Capital, Delphi Venture, CMT Digital, and Galaxy Digital are among the top holders of ENA, according to data from blockchain analytics firm Nansen.