With Ethena Pay’s Earn+ “one-tap 12%,” I’d suggest reading the fine print before you click.
Where does the 12% come from? It’s not a money printer. The vault uses USDe/USDT looping loans on Aave V4 on Avalanche, targeting roughly 11x leverage. The official materials say it themselves: leverage, incentives disappearing, or problems with USDe itself could all wipe out your principal.
More importantly, people have been digging into the on-chain data: the base rate for USDe there is 0, and the bulk of the yield—5.75%—comes from USDe rewards issued by Merkl. And according to one person, those expire on October 30. The 2.91% cost of borrowing USDT is still ticking. Once the subsidy stops, work out for yourself how much spread is left with 11x leverage.
And here’s the uncomfortable bit: @eldarcap nailed it. This is a third-party product. Upshift provides the vault, Steakhouse runs the strategy, and Ethena is just the interface. You bear all the risk. The marketing page puts 12% in the biggest type and “you bear all the risk” in the fine print. We’ve seen this playbook too many times.
It’s initially available only to Pro and VIP users, with a cap of around $4.5 million. A big chunk was snapped up right away, while KOLs started posting “ONE TAP 12%.” It’s easy to deposit with one tap. Whether a 24-hour withdrawal window is enough to get out when things go wrong is another matter.
I can understand earning 5–6% on stablecoin savings. The extra yield is something you’re buying with leverage and subsidies—not “dollar interest.”
#Ethena #DeFi
Where does the 12% come from? It’s not a money printer. The vault uses USDe/USDT looping loans on Aave V4 on Avalanche, targeting roughly 11x leverage. The official materials say it themselves: leverage, incentives disappearing, or problems with USDe itself could all wipe out your principal.
More importantly, people have been digging into the on-chain data: the base rate for USDe there is 0, and the bulk of the yield—5.75%—comes from USDe rewards issued by Merkl. And according to one person, those expire on October 30. The 2.91% cost of borrowing USDT is still ticking. Once the subsidy stops, work out for yourself how much spread is left with 11x leverage.
And here’s the uncomfortable bit: @eldarcap nailed it. This is a third-party product. Upshift provides the vault, Steakhouse runs the strategy, and Ethena is just the interface. You bear all the risk. The marketing page puts 12% in the biggest type and “you bear all the risk” in the fine print. We’ve seen this playbook too many times.
It’s initially available only to Pro and VIP users, with a cap of around $4.5 million. A big chunk was snapped up right away, while KOLs started posting “ONE TAP 12%.” It’s easy to deposit with one tap. Whether a 24-hour withdrawal window is enough to get out when things go wrong is another matter.
I can understand earning 5–6% on stablecoin savings. The extra yield is something you’re buying with leverage and subsidies—not “dollar interest.”
#Ethena #DeFi