stablecoin protocol review

Ethena

Synthetic dollar protocol issuing USDe and sUSDe with custody, hedge venue, mint/redeem, and liquidity dependencies.

partialhigh

TVL

$5.80B

Protocol reported or analyst-entered value.

Exposure

$4.90B

Mapped collateral and market exposure.

Dependencies

1 critical dependencies.

Markets

3 monitor signals configured.

Protocol facts

Static fields from the typed research record.

ProductsUSDe, sUSDe, Mint/redeem, Hedged backing

ChainsEthereum, Arbitrum One, Base

Categorystablecoin

Review statuspartial

Collateral, oracle, cap, and liquidation parameters by market.

1 rows

Market	Chain	Collateral	Oracles	LTV	Liquidation	Supply cap	Borrow cap	Utilization
USDe and sUSDe issuance	Ethereum	USDe sUSDe USDC USDT	oracle:ethereum:ethena:usde-usd	0%	0%	$4.40B	$0	77.0%

Findings separate the observed evidence from the analyst outcome.

Severity	Dimension	Finding	Outcome	Evidence	Sources
high	asset issuer	Backing depends on exchange and custody venues	Withdrawals can halt or peg can weaken.	USDe uses collateral and hedge infrastructure that is not fully onchain.	Ethena docs

Inbound and outbound trust assumptions touching this protocol.

Severity	Direction	Edge type	Dependency path	Analyst label
high	outbound	accepts collateral	Ethena -> USDe	Ethena USDe and sUSDe issuance accepts USDe as collateral or core liquidity
high	outbound	accepts collateral	Ethena -> sUSDe	Ethena USDe and sUSDe issuance accepts sUSDe as collateral or core liquidity
high	inbound	depends on	Pendle -> Ethena	Pendle sUSDe markets inherit Ethena cooldown and backing assumptions
medium	outbound	accepts collateral	Ethena -> USDC	Ethena USDe and sUSDe issuance accepts USDC as collateral or core liquidity
medium	outbound	accepts collateral	Ethena -> USDT	Ethena USDe and sUSDe issuance accepts USDT as collateral or core liquidity
low	outbound	settles on	Ethena -> Ethereum	Ethena deployment inherits Ethereum settlement risk

Public operational signals and review cadence.

Status	Monitor	Signal	Cadence
planned	Admin and guardian changes	Owner, guardian, Safe signer, threshold, and emergency role changes.	15 min after ingestion
planned	Oracle freshness	Heartbeat breaches, stale rounds, and large reference-market deviations.	5 min after ingestion
manual	Liquidity and cap shock	Supply cap utilization, borrow cap utilization, TVL drops, and liquidity depth changes.	Daily analyst review

Highest-severity paths that could transmit risk into or out of this protocol.

6 paths

Severity	Direction	Edge type	Dependency path	Analyst label
high	outbound	accepts collateral	Ethena -> USDe	Ethena USDe and sUSDe issuance accepts USDe as collateral or core liquidity
high	outbound	accepts collateral	Ethena -> sUSDe	Ethena USDe and sUSDe issuance accepts sUSDe as collateral or core liquidity
high	inbound	depends on	Pendle -> Ethena	Pendle sUSDe markets inherit Ethena cooldown and backing assumptions
medium	outbound	accepts collateral	Ethena -> USDC	Ethena USDe and sUSDe issuance accepts USDC as collateral or core liquidity
medium	outbound	accepts collateral	Ethena -> USDT	Ethena USDe and sUSDe issuance accepts USDT as collateral or core liquidity
low	outbound	settles on	Ethena -> Ethereum	Ethena deployment inherits Ethereum settlement risk