Ethena partners with TON to offer USDe to one billion Telegram users

Decentralized stablecoin platform Ethena has partnered with The Open Network (TON) to make its stablecoins available to Telegram’s user base of over one billion people.

The partnership, announced on May 1 at Token2049 in Dubai, will see the deployment of Ethena’s USDe (USDE) and Ethena Staked USDe (sUSDe) natively within the TON blockchain.

The sUSDe variant will be integrated under the name tsUSDe, enabling Telegram users to access US dollar-denominated savings directly within Telegram.

The deployment involves two major Ethena integrations, including one in the custodial Wallet in Telegram and the second in the TON Space wallet, a self-custodial wallet integrated in the messenger.

Announcing the news on X, Ethena described its TON integration as “one of Ethena’s most meaningful launches to date.”

“Telegram has truly global distribution across its billion users, with presence in emerging economies in regions like Asia, Africa and Latin America,” it added.

According to Ethena, the integration will be progressively rolled out in stages in May, as the deployment involves three major product lines, including support by Wallet in Telegram, non-custodial wallets like TON Space and TON Keeper, and decentralized finance (DeFi) applications on TON.

The partnership marks the beginning of a long-term collaboration between Ethena and the TON Foundation, with future plans potentially targeting Ethena-enabled neobanking, peer-to-peer payments and DeFi lending and trading.

While Ethena’s sUSDe has been redeveloped entirely to be TON native smart contracts, in a new asset called tsUSDe, the native USDe stablecoin is planned to be introduced on TON via the LayerZero interoperability protocol.

Additionally, eligible tsUSDe holders within major TON wallets will receive a 10% annual percentage yield in TON, along with Ethena rewards on balances of up to 10,000 tsUSDe per wallet.

The announcement comes amid Ethena’s USDe stablecoin ranking the fourth-largest stablecoin by market value, following Sky’s (formerly Maker) USDS (USDS), Circle’s USDC (USDC), and the world’s largest stablecoin, Tether’s USDt (USDT).

At the time of writing, USDE had a market capitalization of $4.7 billion, 39% down from USDC’s market cap and just a tiny 3% of USDT’s market cap, according to CoinGecko.

The TON Foundation has been closely collaborating with Tether, as well, connecting TON to Tether’s USDt ecosystem with LayerZero in February 2024.

As part of its ambitious scaling plans, TON expects to connect its ecosystem to at least 100 chains, including Ethereum, Tron and Solana.

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