The Surge in USDe Issuance: Ethena, MakerDAO, and the Recovery of Decentralized Finance

Recently, the total issuance of USDe has seen significant growth, jumping from 2.4 billion USD last month to 3.8 billion USD, with a monthly increase of over 58%. This growth is primarily attributed to the bullish sentiment in the market following Bitcoin's new highs, leading to an increase in funding rates, which in turn boosted the staking yield of USDe. Despite a slight pullback in recent days, the annualized yield of USDe remained at a high level of around 25% on November 26.

At the same time, MakerDAO has become another major beneficiary of this round of growth. Currently, MakerDAO's daily revenue has increased by over 200% compared to a month ago, setting a new historical high. This growth is closely related to the development of Ethena. The high staking yield of USDe has stimulated the lending demand for sUSDe and PT assets, among which the scale of borrowing DAI with these assets as collateral on the Morpho platform has reached 570 million USD, with a borrowing utilization rate exceeding 80%, and a deposit annualized yield of 12%. In the past month, MakerDAO's loan increment through the D3M module on the Morpho platform has exceeded 300 million USD.

MakerDAO's balance sheet shows that the total amount of DAI loans issued to Morpho and Spark through the D3M module has reached 2 billion USD, accounting for nearly 40% of its asset side. These two channels alone have generated an annualized income of 203 million USD for MakerDAO, equivalent to 550 thousand USD per day, accounting for 54% of the total annualized income.

Ethena has become a core force driving the recovery of Decentralized Finance. The growth model of USDe is clearly visible: the optimism brought by Bitcoin's new highs has pushed up funding rates, which in turn affects the staking yield of USDe. MakerDAO, with its complete funding flow chain and D3M module's "central bank attributes," has become an important support for the USDe ecosystem. Morpho plays the role of a "lubricant" in this process. These three protocols together form the core of the growth. At the same time, peripheral protocols like AAVE, Curve, and Pendle have also benefited to varying degrees from the growth of USDe.

The sustainability of this growth model mainly depends on whether the interest rate spread between USDe and DAI can exist in the long term. Influencing factors include the sustainability of bull market sentiment, whether Ethena can improve APY distribution efficiency through economic model optimization and market share enhancement, as well as competition from similar products launched by other trading platforms.

As growth occurs, concerns about the security of D3M have also emerged. Although D3M will not directly cause DAI to become an under-collateralized stablecoin, it does bring some potential risks: it could make DAI a "shadow stablecoin" again, various risks from Ethena may be transmitted to DAI, and it could also lower DAI's overall collateralization rate.

Overall, the synergy between Ethena and MakerDAO is driving a new wave of growth in the DeFi sector, but the sustainability of this growth model and potential risks still require close attention.