Exploring Growth and Challenges in the Athena Protocol Ecosystem

In this week's interview we have an in-depth discussion with Guy, the founder of Ethena Protocol. Guy discusses the challenges of scaling Ethena to billions in USD supply, the important role of Bitcoin and Ethereum derivatives as collateral, and how Ethena is able to generate the highest yielding USD-denominated asset in crypto. Additionally, we touch on risk management, governance, and the critical role centralized exchanges could play in Ethena's future. Hope you enjoy!

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Wormhole is a decentralized interoperability platform powering multi-chain applications and bridges. It provides developers with access to liquidity and users on over 30 leading blockchain networks, enabling use cases in DeFi, data queries, and governance. The platform is trusted by teams like Uniswap and Circle and, to date, the platform has facilitated the transfer of over 35 billion dollars through over 850 million cross-chain messages.

Claim your unique Wormhole NFT at

https://wormhole.com/0xresearch8-4099

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Pear is an innovative pair-trading exchange built on top of SYMMIO. Users can trade trending narratives with one click, from bluechip narratives such as long BTC, short ETH, right through to WIF vs BONK. SYMMIO’s intent-centric architecture enables deep liquidity, sourced off-chain and brought on-chain, and combined with Pear, have democratized access to complex trading strategies typically reserved for institutional traders.

Start trading today at: https://www.pear.garden/

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Avalanche is a smart contracts platform that scales infinitely and regularly finalizes transactions in less than one second. Its novel consensus protocol, Subnet infrastructure, and HyperSDK toolkit enable Web3 developers to easily launch powerful, custom blockchain solutions.

Build anything you want, any way you want, on the eco-friendly blockchain designed for Web3 devs.

Start building today at https://www.avax.network/

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Marinade is the leading Solana staking service that spreads your stake across 100+ top validators, distributes MEV rewards, and provides automatic downside protection with new Protected Staking Rewards.

Choose to liquid stake for mSOL for use in DeFi, or delegate your stake through Marinade Native, which gives you full custody of your SOL and no smart contract risk. Max performance for you, max performance for Solana.

https://blckwrks.co/Marinade

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Timestamps:

(0:00) Introduction

(6:03) Open Interest Constraint

(11:25) Negative Funding vs CEX Risks

(22:40) Wormhole Ad

(23:18) Pear Protocol Ad

(23:43) Marinade Ad

(24:22) Avalanche Ad

(25:04) Ethena BD & Partnerships

(29:05) ENA Incentives

(37:52) BTC Collateral & Real Yield

(42:54) sUSDe and USDe Usecases

(49:28) Protocol Owned Liquidity

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Disclaimer: Nothing said on 0xResearch is a recommendation to buy or sell securities or tokens. This podcast is for informational purposes only, and any views expressed by anyone on the show are solely our opinions, not financial advice. Dan, Sam, and our guests may hold positions in the companies, funds, or projects discussed.