YZi Labs, affiliated with Binance and its founder Changpeng Zhao, has invested in the developers of a surprise altcoin.
YZi Labs (formerly Binance Labs) has announced that it will increase its investment in Ethena (ENA) Labs to support the company’s growth.
This step aims to expand the use of Ethena’s USDe on both centralized exchanges and the DeFi ecosystem, create a stronger asset on BNB Chain, and accelerate the development of new products USDtb and Converge.
Ethena’s total assets locked (TVL) has surpassed $13 billion, while USDe quickly became the fastest USD-based crypto asset to surpass the $10 billion threshold. Currently, USDe is the third-largest dollar-based asset in the crypto world by market capitalization.
YZi Labs made its first investment in Ethena as part of its Season 6 Incubation Program in February 2024. At the time, Ethena, which hadn’t yet launched its product, had attracted attention with its crypto-native synthetic dollar model built on a delta-neutral hedging strategy. “We were impressed by the team’s vision and their innovative, bank-free, yield-generating stablecoin model,” said Nicola Wang, YZi Labs’ Investment Director.
According to the company, with the support of YZi Labs, Ethena will accelerate its growth on the BNB Chain and expand its integrations with centralized exchanges and DeFi applications. It also plans to launch a fiat-backed stablecoin called USDtb, compliant with GENIUS regulations, and launch an institutional consensus layer called Converge, developed with tokenization partners Securitize and BlackRock.
