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It took Ethena’s new vault on Coinbase exactly four days to cross the $100 million deposit mark. For a product that essentially asks centralized exchange users to dip their toes into DeFi-style yields, that’s a pretty emphatic answer to the question of whether there’s demand.
The Steakhouse High Yield USDC Vault launched around June 11-12 and hit the nine-figure milestone by June 15. The vault is curated by Steakhouse Financial and built on the Morpho protocol, facilitating lending with Ethena’s synthetic dollar, USDe. Think of it as a bridge: Coinbase’s familiar interface on one side, DeFi yield mechanics on the other, with users walking across without needing to understand every plank beneath their feet.
How the vault actually works
The vault accepts a diversified range of collateral, including Ethena-linked assets like USDe and its staked counterpart, sUSDe, and targets yields higher than Coinbase’s existing Prime USDC vault.
The Prime vault, by contrast, plays it conservative. It focuses on blue-chip collateral, the digital asset equivalent of government bonds. The Steakhouse vault is willing to take on more exotic collateral in exchange for juicier returns. Same exchange, very different risk appetites.
For those unfamiliar, USDe is Ethena’s synthetic dollar token. It maintains its peg not through bank reserves like USDC or USDT, but through a delta-neutral hedging strategy involving crypto derivatives. In English: Ethena holds long spot positions and short futures positions simultaneously, collecting funding rate payments along the way.
The Morpho protocol handles the lending infrastructure underneath. By integrating Morpho into the Coinbase app, users get access to DeFi-grade yields without ever leaving the platform they already know.
Why Coinbase is betting on Ethena
This vault represents the first formal product collaboration between Coinbase and Ethena. Coinbase serves as Ethena’s primary custodian and wallet provider, making it the backbone of USDe’s infrastructure in many ways.
The partnership details were initially released around June 2, roughly ten days before the vault went live.
What this means for investors
But investors should understand the risk profile clearly. USDe’s yield generation depends on funding rates in crypto derivatives markets. During prolonged bearish periods, those rates can turn negative, meaning the mechanism that produces yield could theoretically become a cost. The delta-neutral strategy also carries smart contract risk and counterparty risk with the exchanges where hedging positions are held.
The regulatory dimension adds another layer of uncertainty. Yield-bearing digital assets remain a hot topic for regulators globally, and products that blur the line between centralized and decentralized finance tend to attract scrutiny from both sides.
Disclosure: This article was edited by Editorial Team. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.
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