Terminal Finance, a spot decentralized exchange built for trading yield-bearing stablecoins and institutional assets, has announced it has surpassed $280 million in pre-deposit total value locked, ahead of its upcoming launch. The figure reflects the combined capacity of three pre-deposit vaults, which collectively reached their caps of 225 million USDe, 10,000 WETH, and 100 WBTC.
The DEX launch is planned for the end of the year, with the token generation event (TGE) expected to align closely around that period. The pre-deposit TVL is publicly verifiable via DeFiLlama, which tracks Terminal’s vault activity and growth.
Terminal's Role in the Ethena Ecosystem
Acting as the de facto DEX of the Ethena ecosystem, Terminal operates independently but is incubated by Ethena. At launch, the platform will feature USDe, sUSDe, and USDtb (backed by BlackRock BUIDL) as its core pairing assets, enabling trading against major assets including ETH and BTC. Yield-bearing stablecoins form the foundation of the DEX, offering composability across DeFi ecosystems.
"At Terminal, we’re building the deepest liquidity pools to trade Ethena’s synthetic dollar, USDe, against any asset, from crypto to tokenized real-world assets. By designing the DEX around a yield-bearing dollar, Terminal benefits from improved economics by default. This makes liquidity bootstrapping significantly more efficient for token issuers and sets a new standard for capital productivity in DeFi."
- Sam Benyakoub, Co-Founder & CEO
Innovative Yield Skimming Mechanism
Terminal’s Yield Skimming mechanism sets it apart from conventional decentralized exchanges. The system captures the yield generated by yield-bearing assets such as sUSDe and reinjects it into the DEX economy. This design benefits liquidity providers, traders, and token holders by enhancing the efficiency and economics of on-chain markets.
Participant Rewards and Ethena Integration
More than 10,000 wallets participated in Terminal’s pre-deposit phase, and early participants will receive airdrop rewards as part of the TGE. According to public information on Ethena’s website, up to 10% of Terminal’s governance token supply may be distributed to sENA holders based on the Terminal Points system. Points tracking began June 28, and final eligibility, allocations, and timing will be confirmed closer to the TGE.
"Ethena assets have become an engine for DeFi rewards, powering most major Ethereum-based applications today at a billion-dollar scale. The Terminal team has taken this concept, building their spot DEX using sUSDe at its core, to drive additional value to users. We're proud that the Terminal team is a core part of the Ethena ecosystem."
- Nick Chong, Head of Strategy at Ethena
Future Expansion
Looking ahead, Terminal aims to expand across multiple blockchains alongside Ethena’s USDe growth strategy and become the leading liquidity hub for yield-bearing stablecoins in DeFi.
About Terminal Finance
Terminal Finance is a spot decentralized exchange incubated by Ethena Labs, purpose-built for trading yield-bearing stablecoins and institutional assets. By integrating Ethena’s synthetic dollar USDe and its yield-bearing counterpart sUSDe, Terminal benefits from improved economics by default.
During its pre-deposit phase, Terminal attracted over $280 million in deposits and secured integrations with leading DeFi protocols, including Pendle, EtherFi, and Morpho. Designed to be the liquidity hub of the Ethena ecosystem, Terminal connects yield, liquidity, and token issuance across chains, creating a sound foundation for the next generation of on-chain markets.