Ethena and Securitize team up in $1b tokenization contest

Stablecoin issuer Ethena has partnered with tokenization platform Securitize to apply for the USDtb stablecoin to be included in Sky’s $1 billion tokenization competition.

Ethena (ENA) and Securitize have announced their joint submission for Sky’s Spark competition, which aims to use BlackRock’s tokenized US treasury fund BUIDL as its main reserve asset.

BlackRock launched BUIDL, the largest tokenized US treasury wealth fund by market cap, in March 2024. Ethena and Securitize hope to leverage its role in the Tokenization Grand Prize, which is focused on bringing $1 billion in tokenized public securities to Sky, formerly MakerDAO.

Sky-based lending protocol Spark announced the competition in June this year, offering real-world asset issuers the chance to win up to $1 billion in liquidity. Spark opened applications for the competition on August 12, 2024.

Along with the USDtb application, Ethena and Securitize also made an offer for the possibility of swapping Ethena for its other stablecoin, USDe. This will enable the ecosystem to manage the reallocation of assets between the two stablecoins during Sky’s interest rate cycle.

Ethena Labs wrote about

Ethena contributes approximately $120 million to Sky’s annual revenue; this accounts for approximately 30% of the decentralized finance platform’s total earnings, with collateral support allocated only 13%.