Ethena vs Lido

USDe is Ethena’s synthetic dollar backed by delta‑neutral ETH perpetual hedge positions rather than off‑chain treasuries. The collateral basket auto‑rebalances between spot ETH, LSTs and short perps so the net delta remains near zero, turning staking rewards and funding rates into protocol revenue. USDe launched on Ethereum in January 2024 and surpassed $2 billion supply within five months, with deep secondary liquidity on Curve and Bybit.

Lido is the largest liquid‑staking protocol, minting stETH and other LSTs that track underlying validator balances 1:1 minus a 10 % reward fee. Its dual‑dao governance splits responsibility between the Lido DAO and the protocol’s Node Operator Registry, reducing centralisation risk. By May 2025 over 9 million ETH—roughly 30 % of staked supply—was custodied under Lido smart contracts.