Ethena’s Prelaunch Futures Surge 22% as ENA Token Is Set To Go Live Next Week

Decentralized finance protocol Ethena will airdrop 750 million ENA tokens to USDe holders on April 2.

Aevo’s prelaunch futures tied to ENA surged over 20% early Friday.

Prelaunch futures tied to decentralized finance protocol Ethena’s impending governance token ENA surged on Friday, implying a market capitalization of over $500 million at inception.

The ENA/USD pre-debut futures listed on the decentralized exchange Aevo changed hands at 73 cents during the Asian trading hours, representing a 22.29% gain on a 24-hour basis.

Ethena, home to the $1.3 billion USDe token, will airdrop 750 million ENA, equating to 5% of the total supply, to USDe holders on April 2. Traders who unlock, unstake, or sell their USDe before April 1 will not be eligible for the airdrop.

The stated airdrop figure and the going market price implied by prelaunch futures mean the token could debut with a market capitalization of $547.5 million. The market cap is determined by multiplying the circulating supply with the going market price. Meanwhile, ENA’s fully diluted market value (FDV) could be over $10 billion. The FDV uses total supply to calculate the market value.

The double-digit surge in the ENA prelaunch futures likely resulted from Binance announcing a launchpool for users to stake their BNB and FDUSD farm ENA tokens. Binance launch pool, often called a centralized yield farming service, is a popular way for users to participate in early-stage projects.

“The @ethena_labs prelaunch market on Aevo is up 20% on the back of their Binance Launchpool announcement,” Aevo said on X.

ENA farming on Binance launchpool will start on March 30 at 00:00 UTC and be open for three days. The leading cryptocurrency exchange will list ENA on April 2, allowing trading in ENA/BTC, ENA/USDt, ENA/BNB, ENA/FDUSD and ENA/TRY pairs.

Aevo’s pre-listing perpetual futures are similar to “I owe you” or IOU futures offered by some exchanges. Once the token goes live, the pre-listing perpetuals reference the token’s spot price and collect funding rates from traders to keep perpetuals in sync with the spot price.

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