Ethena Labs published are roadmap for 2025 on January 3, including the unveiling of a Telegram payment and savings application based on the sUSDe stablecoin, aiming to provide a “neobanking experience.”
This initiative allows users to send, spend and store money directly from the messaging app. Additionally, users can effortlessly transition between savings and instant mobile payments through Apple Pay integration.
According to Ethena Labs:
“A dollar with yield is the most important savings tool on earth for preserving wealth, and it is the only crypto-backed product that has the potential to reach a billion users outside of Bitcoin.”
Network to compete with Tether
The roadmap highlighted that Ethena’s vision remains to rival Tether as a cornerstone in the crypto ecosystem by evolving from a single-asset issuer to an on-chain financial innovation platform called Ethena Network.
Developers can use Ethena’s infrastructure to create new DeFi applications using sUSDe as a foundation. Furthermore, the sENA token plays a key role in this strategy, building value in a model similar to Binance’s BNB.
Ecosystem applications have allocated a significant portion of their token airdrop supply to sENA holders, aligning incentives and driving growth.
Ethereal and Derive, two applications announced to be built on Ethena Network, are also essential parts of Ethena’s roadmap for this year. Ethereal is a perpetual and spot exchange powered by sUSDe that runs on its own application-specific blockchain. It has embedded native rewards and Ethena’s liquidity support.
Derive is an on-chain protocol for options products. sUSDe is the main collateral and the document states that the upcoming token launch is expected to catalyze further adoption.
The dollar is the backbone
Ethena’s roadmap highlighted the importance of dollars as the backbone of on-chain capital flows, from payments and settlements to core DeFi primitives such as lending and derivatives.
According to the document, the goal is to become an infrastructure provider where any dollar-based DeFi protocol can be rebuilt and its economics improved.
Furthermore, it predicts the expansion of new stablecoin-based products powered by sUSDe to be unveiled this quarter. The products include perpetual products, prediction markets, gambling financing platforms and collateralized loans.
