Ether.fi is launching its own US dollar stablecoin, ether.fi USD, on Ethena's white-label stablecoin service, the two companies announced on Tuesday. Ethena will manage reserves, minting, redemptions and compliance end to end, while ether.fi owns the brand and the distribution.
The token gives ether.fi a way to earn on money already sitting in its products. The protocol, which built its business on liquid restaking, holds more than $300 million in stablecoin deposits across its platform, and its Cash card has processed around $1 billion in cumulative spend across more than 100,000 active cards since launching in 2024, according to ether.fi . Ethena framed the pitch plainly: "The best stablecoin neobanks will move to own the entire stack and earn from idle deposit balances alongside their broader product suite."
Neither company has said when ether.fi USD will go live, which chains it will run on, how revenue will be split, or what will back it. The backing is the detail that matters most. Ethena's white-label product lets issuers back their token with USDe, Ethena's synthetic dollar, which holds spot crypto against short perpetual futures positions and earns from staking and funding rates. Issuers can also use USDtb, a token issued by Anchorage Digital Bank and backed by traditional reserve assets in a structure Ethena describes as GENIUS Act-compliant, or other stablecoins. A card balance backed by USDe would carry funding-rate and derivatives-venue exposure that a Treasury-backed token would not, and ether.fi users have no way yet of knowing which they will hold.
Ether.fi joins Jupiter, MegaETH and Sui on Ethena's white-label platform, which issues JupUSD, USDm and suiUSDe respectively. For Ethena, the white-label business is a way to grow distribution at a time when its flagship product has contracted. USDe has a market capitalisation of about $4.96 billion, according to CoinGecko , roughly a third of the nearly $15 billion it reached in October 2025.
Ether.fi is following a pattern set by payments apps, exchanges and DeFi protocols that have moved to issue their own dollars so they can retain reserve income they would otherwise pass to Tether or Circle. The points to watch are the backing disclosure and whether ether.fi moves existing Cash card balances into its own token by default once it launches.
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