Users deposit ETH or LSTs on Ethena and can mint a USDe synthetic stablecoin in return. USDe generates yield from the staked Ethereum as well as the funding & basis spread from perpetual and futures' markets. A portion of this yield is then distributed to USDe stakers (expense).

Ethena is a stablecoin issuer and asset management protocol built on Ethereum. Ethena was founded by Guy Young and launched in 2024.

ENA tokenholders own and govern the protocol. They currently take a cut of the total yield generated (revenue). Ethena's investors include Dragonfly, Franklin Templeton, Brevan Howard Digital, etc.

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Ethena

# Ethena Expenses Methodology

## 1. Overview

Ethena expenses represents the operational costs incurred by the Ethena protocol related to staking rewards distribution and partner payouts. This metric captures the daily USD value of tokens transferred for these expense purposes, providing insight into the protocol's cost structure for maintaining its stablecoin ecosystem. The calculation tracks three main expense categories: transfers to staking rewards distributors, partner payout distributions, and Ethena USDe payout operations.

## 2. Data sources

- **Ethereum Transfer events**: Parsed ERC20 `Transfer` events from Ethereum blockchain for Ethena USDe (`0x4c9edd5852cd905f086c759e8383e09bff1e68b3`), USDC (`0xa0b86991c6218b36c1d19d4a2e9eb0ce3606eb48`), and USDT (`0xdac17f958d2ee523a2206206994597c13d831ec7`) tokens
- **End-of-day price feeds**: Token price data for USD conversion of transfer amounts
- **Token metadata**: Decimal precision information for proper token amount calculations

## 3. Step-by-step calculation

### Component A: Staking rewards distributor transfers
- **Purpose**: Captures Ethena USDe tokens sent to the staking rewards distribution system
- **Logic**: Filters Transfer events where Ethena USDe tokens are sent TO the staking rewards distributor address (`0xf2fa332bd83149c66b09b45670bce64746c6b439`). These represent costs for distributing staking rewards to Ethena USDe holders. Each transfer includes `block_timestamp`, `transaction_hash`, `log_index`, token details, and transfer `amount`
- **Key fields**: `amount` (transfer value), `token_address` (Ethena USDe), `to_address` (staking distributor), `version` ('staking reward distributor')

### Component B: Partner payout transfers  
- **Purpose**: Captures USDC and USDT tokens sent to partner payout multisig addresses
- **Logic**: Filters Transfer events where USDC or USDT tokens are sent TO either of two partner payout multisig addresses (`0xd0ec8cc7414f27ce85f8dece6b4a58225f273311` and `0xf19c433c6b288e487b767595886321f89a3cbf17`). These represent partnership-related expense distributions that may occur in different months than corresponding revenue
- **Key fields**: `amount` (transfer value), `token_address` (USDC or USDT), `to_address` (partner multisig), `version` ('partner payout')

### Component C: Ethena USDe payout distributions
- **Purpose**: Captures Ethena USDe tokens sent FROM the main payout multisig
- **Logic**: Filters Transfer events where Ethena USDe tokens are sent FROM the Ethena USDe payout multisig address (`0x71e4f98e8f20c88112489de3dded4489802a3a87`). These represent direct Ethena USDe distributions as operational expenses
- **Key fields**: `amount` (transfer value), `token_address` (Ethena USDe), `from_address` (payout multisig), `version` ('Ethena USDe payout')

### Daily aggregation and conversion
- **Time grouping**: All transfers are grouped by day using `timestamp_trunc` to create daily expense totals
- **Business classification**: Each transfer is categorized under 'Interest' business line, 'stablecoin_issuers' market sector, 'stablecoin_issuer' business segment, and 'Ethena USDe' product
- **Currency conversion**: Token amounts are converted to USD using end-of-day price feeds and adjusted for proper decimal places using the `convert_to_usd_and_correct_decimals` macro

### Final aggregation
- **Combining components**: Daily transfers from all three expense categories are summed together to create total daily expenses
- **Schema standardization**: The `finalize_metric_cost_of_revenue` macro applies standard metric formatting, validates business identifiers, and implements gap filling with zeros for dates without transfers
- **Chain filtering**: Results are filtered to include only supported blockchain networks
- **Expense mapping**: The final step renames `cost_of_revenue` field to `expenses` to match the target metric schema

*This methodology was automatically generated by Token Terminal's methodology analyzer.*

Total project operating and incentive expenses.

EthenaENA

Expenses

Expenses

Competitive landscape

Chain breakdown