Ethena said its yield-generating "synthetic dollar" token will be integrated into BlackRock's (BLK) Aladdin risk management platform as the crypto protocol is deepening its relationship with traditional finance firms.
The Monday announcement sent Ethena's governance token ENA (ENA) up about 8% on the day as investors welcomed another high-profile institutional partnership.
Aladdin is BlackRock's portfolio construction and risk management platform used by banks, insurers, pension funds and asset managers overseeing more than $20 trillion in combined assets.
Ethena also said BlackRock's tokenized money market fund, BUIDL, will serve as the primary reserve asset for a forthcoming white-label product.
The firms also unveiled a $100 million liquidity facility that will allow eligible holders of BlackRock's tokenized Treasury fund, BUIDL, to exchange their holdings for USDC, USDtb and other supported stablecoins outside traditional market hours, and convert those assets back into BUIDL.
"We believe stablecoins and tokenized real-world assets to be inextricably linked," Robert Mitchnick, BlackRock's head of digital assets, said in a statement. "This liquidity facility enables a level of frictionless interoperability that is core to the unique utility that tokenizing treasury funds makes possible."
The announcement is the latest in a series of partnerships between global asset managers and decentralized finance protocols.
Earlier this year, BlackRock expanded its tokenized money market fund through a partnership with Uniswap and also invested an undisclosed amount in the decentralized exchange's UNI token. Private markets giant Apollo Global Management (APO) struck a deal with lending protocol Morpho to bring tokenized private credit assets onchain.
Ethena has been increasingly focused on expanding to institutions as well. Asset manager Janus Henderson, which oversees roughly $480 billion, recently made a strategic investment in ENA and planned to use USDe for treasury management while exploring ways to distribute the token through exchange-traded products. Ethena also announced plans to allocate $250 million to Securitize's tokenized AAA-rated collateralized loan obligation fund, deepening its exposure to tokenized credit markets.
Earlier this month, Coinbase Ventures disclosed its first investment in Ethena and unveiled plans to bring Ethena products to Coinbase's user base. Ethena also expanded its relationship with Anchorage Digital to support institutional lending through Anchorage's collateral management platform.
"The next phase of digital asset adoption will be driven by infrastructure that allows traditional institutions to interact with onchain financial products through familiar systems and workflows," Ethena founder Guy Young said in a statement.
UPDATE (June 29, 14:20 UTC): Adds further detail and comments from Ethena and BlackRock executives.
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