BlackRock's Aladdin adds Ethena's USDe in $100M stablecoin push

BlackRock's Aladdin platform registered Ethena Labs' synthetic dollar USDe as an approved digital asset, giving institutional investors access to the $3 billion tokenized Treasury market through a new $100 million liquidity facility.

"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.

Under the expanded partnership, Ethena will support a $100 million liquidity facility through Securitize, the tokenization platform and regulated transfer agent for BlackRock's USD Institutional Digital Liquidity Fund, known as BUIDL. Eligible BUIDL clients can exchange tokens for USDC, USDtb and other supported stablecoins, and convert them back outside regular market hours, the companies said Monday. BUIDL, launched on Ethereum in 2024, holds about $3 billion in total value locked, according to DefiLlama data.

The move positions Ethena's USDe — a synthetic dollar backed by crypto assets rather than fiat reserves — alongside traditional stablecoins like Circle's USDC within BlackRock's ecosystem. Tokenized U.S. Treasury funds account for nearly half of the broader real-world asset tokenization market, with about $15 billion onchain, according to RWA.xyz data.

How USDe Differs From Traditional Stablecoins

Unlike USDC and Tether's USDT, which are backed by highly liquid fiat-based assets, Ethena's USDe is a synthetic dollar designed to generate additional yield through hedging strategies. The stablecoin's inclusion on Aladdin — BlackRock's enterprise investment and portfolio management platform used by institutional investors to track, analyze and manage risk — marks a significant step in bridging decentralized finance with traditional finance workflows.

BlackRock and Ethena already collaborated on USDtb, the Ethena stablecoin issued by Anchorage Digital Bank and backed primarily by BUIDL. A year ago, the two firms teamed up with Securitize to enable round-the-clock atomic transfers between BUIDL and USDtb.

"In the case of tokenized treasury funds in particular, this liquidity facility enables a level of frictionless interoperability that is core to the unique utility that tokenizing treasury funds makes possible," BlackRock's Global Head of Digital Assets Robert Mitchnick said.

The partnership shows growing institutional appetite for digital dollar infrastructure and could accelerate adoption of tokenized real-world assets among traditional asset managers. With BUIDL's $3 billion TVL and Ethena's expanding footprint on Aladdin, the collaboration sets a precedent for how major asset managers may integrate blockchain-based financial products into their existing systems.

This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.