Synthetic dollar protocol and Layer-2 solution, Ethena (ENA) has raised $100 million from a private sale of ENA, its native governance token. The sale was completed in December 2024, with investors such as Franklin Templeton, Pantera, and Fidelity’s venture capital arm, F-Prime.
The ENA tokens sold at an average price of just under $0.40. Per CoinGecko, ENA is currently trading at around $0.41, down more than 50% from its January high of $1.29.
Funds From Private Sale To Be Used In Building New Ethena Layer-1 Network
The $100 million raised funds will be used to support the building out of its new layer-1 chain, Ethena Network. The funds will also be used to create a broad ecosystem for the network.
Lastly, a percentage of the money will be used to support the upcoming launch of Ethena’s institutional product, iUSDe. The iUSDe product, which was announced in January, is an attempt to export its staked USDe product, sUSDe, to legacy finance.
Ethena’s existing decentralized stablecoin, USDe, has recently cemented itself as the fourth-largest stablecoin, with a nearly $6 billion market cap. Ethena’s USD-pegged stable coin averages over $120 million daily, per CoinGecko.
Ethena $100M Private Token Sale⚡️
📑 About:@Ethena_labs is a synthetic dollar protocol built on Ethereum that provides a crypto-native solution for money.
🤝 Investors:@Dragonfly_xyz, @Polychain, @PanteraCapital, @FTI_US and @FPrimeCapital.
👉 https://t.co/JujDmBRQFi pic.twitter.com/sgprbg4lag
— Fundraising Digest (@CryptoRank_VCs) February 24, 2025
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Ethena Going Full Steam Ahead With Its Institutional iUSDe Offering
Like its sUSDe product, iUSDe is a reward users receive when staking their USDe on the Ethena platform. However, the user token is aimed at institutions.
It employs a wrapper mechanism that can program transfer restrictions, meaning that it can be held and used by traditional financial entities subject to regulatory oversight.
One year ago, in February 2024, Ethena Labs announced it had raised $14 million in a strategic funding round. The round was completed with a $300 million valuation. Dragonfly and BitMEX founder Arthur Hayes’ family office, Maelstrom, co-led it.
Hayes was widely criticized in late December last year after dumping more than $8 million of ENA tokens just hours after tweeting that ‘Ethena is impressive’.
The response to his bullish posting on ENA at the time was met with a lot of pushback as many were quick to post blockchain receipts of Hayes sending ENA to Binance to be dumped.
(Source)
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Ethena $100M Raise Key Takeaways:
- Synthetic dollar protocol and Layer-2 solution, Ethena (ENA) has raised $100 million from a private sale of ENA, its native governance token.
- The $100 million raised funds will be used to support the building out of its new layer-1 chain, Ethena Network. The funds will also be used to create a broad ecosystem for the network.
- Mind Of Pepe (MIND) is a hot new AI agent aiming to dethrone market leader AIXBT. Early signs are positive, as MIND has raised over $6.8 million in a little over a month.
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