Ethena Labs Enters USDH Race as $5 Billion Mandate Heats Up

* Ethena Labs joins the competition to issue Hyperliquid's USDH stablecoin. * The winner will manage $5 billion in liquidity for Hyperliquid’s decentralized derivatives platform. On September 9, 2025, Cointelegraph reported that Ethena Labs has become the sixth contender in the race to issue Hyperliquid’s USDH stablecoin. The winner will secure a $5 billion liquidity mandate for Hyperliquid, one of the industry's fastest-growing decentralized derivatives exchanges. Paxos, Frax Finance, Agora, Native Markets, and Sky (formerly MakerDAO) are also vying for the position. Ethena aims to distinguish itself with several bold proposals. The lab’s plan centers on backing USDH exclusively with USDtb, a stablecoin directly connected to BlackRock’s BUIDL fund. Additionally, Ethena proposes allocating 95% of reserve revenue to the Hyperliquid community, a strategy that offers significant financial incentives. To amplify its bid, Ethena has also committed $75 million in ecosystem incentives to foster platform adoption and development. Ethena’s submission also integrates unique features tailored to Hyperliquid’s ecosystem, including the creation of a synthetic dollar called hUSDe and collaborations with Securitize to bring tokenized funds to the platform. To bolster security, the lab proposes delegating USDH oversight to a “guardian network” composed of elected Hyperliquid validators. The selection of the USDH issuer will be determined by a forthcoming Hyperliquid network upgrade and a validator vote. Meanwhile, heightened interest in the competition has fueled a surge in the value of Hyperliquid’s native token, HYPE, which recently achieved a record high of over $55. According to CoinMarketCap, as of 20:19 UTC on September 9, Hyperliquid (HYPE) was priced at $53.437, following a 6.826% increase in 24-hour trading volume. During the same period, Ethena USDe (USDe) was valued at $1.001, showing a modest 0.022% change in volume.