Did EthenaPay pay more than staked USDe?

It depended on the balance. In September 2026 sUSDe paid 4.83% a year after compounding, its growth over the month compounded to a full year. EthenaPay's rates, the rates its payments were set at, were higher than that on the part of a balance within the caps of its Daily Boost, a daily top-up over a base rate, and lower on the part above them. EthenaPay is this site's name for Ethena Pay, Ethena's payment app and card, which paid daily rewards on the USDe held in its wallets on the Avalanche blockchain. USDe is Ethena's synthetic dollar, and sUSDe is what a holder receives for staking USDe in Ethena's staking contract on Ethereum, a vault in which each sUSDe can be redeemed for more USDe as rewards are paid in.

Ethena Pay's terms set three tiers, Standard, Pro and VIP. From September 17 EthenaPay's rates came to 5.02% a year after compounding on the first $5,000 of a Standard balance and 6.07% on Pro and VIP balances up to their caps of $100,000 and $1,000,000. Balance above a cap earned only the base rate, 4.0% until September 16 and 4.5% from September 17, and sUSDe paid more than the base rate on every day. Across all EthenaPay balances the two came out level for September, 4.70% a year before compounding, a simple yearly rate, against 4.72% for sUSDe. In the first eight days of October EthenaPay's balances earned 5.39% before compounding and sUSDe 4.89%.

At EthenaPay's rates from September 17 and sUSDe's 4.92% over the same days, to October 8, a Standard balance would have earned less than sUSDe above about $6,200, a Pro balance above about $369,000 and a VIP balance above about $3.7 million. sUSDe's rates come from the price at which deposits into and withdrawals from the staking contract changed hands. EthenaPay's come from the site's Daily Boost review, which compared each reward payment with its wallet's average balance over the day the payment was for.

Two ways to be paid on USDe

Ethena's documentation, read on October 12, said USDe itself earned no rewards and a holder had to stake it to receive them. Staking moved USDe into the contract in exchange for sUSDe. Ethena paid rewards into the contract in USDe every 8 hours, and each payment vested over the following 8 hours, so the USDe each sUSDe could be redeemed for could only rise or stay flat. The rewards came from the protocol's revenue on staked Ethereum and from the funding and basis spread on its hedges, which changed from day to day, and the documentation said that in some periods no rewards might be paid. Unstaking had a cooldown, which the contract set at one day when this review read it on October 12. Ethena did not offer sUSDe to people who lived or were registered in the European Union or the European Economic Area.

EthenaPay paid two daily rewards in USDe. Its Pricing page and FAQ said the base rate was one Ethena Pay did not set. Those pages and its Terms of Use said the Daily Boost, or Boost, topped it up to the tier's total, 5% a year for Standard and 6% for Pro and VIP, on balances up to $5,000, $100,000 and $1,000,000. Balance above the cap earned the base rate only. The Boost accrued only in a month in which the user made a qualifying card transaction or other activity Ethena Pay specified, and the Terms called it a discretionary promotional incentive that could be reduced to zero and was not interest or yield.

The rates compared, September 1 to October 8

The rates are a year after compounding. EthenaPay's are the rates its payments were set at, which the Daily Boost review found compound to the stated rate over a year. Payments to a single wallet did not always follow them. In September payments were missed on some days and came to two or three times the usual amount on others. From September 17 to 28, of 4,825 wallet-days with 100 USDe or more, a wallet-day being one wallet on one day, the base payment came within 1% of the 4.5% rate on 1,903 and was not made on 451, as that review describes. Over the month the base payments still came within 0.3% of their rates. The Boost fell on September 16 and the base rose on September 17, so for September 16 alone the rates were 4.52% on the first $5,000 of a Standard balance and 5.56% for Pro and VIP, against 4.99% for sUSDe.

These two rows are a year before compounding, the period's growth times 365 over its days. EthenaPay's figure divides everything its two reward accounts paid for those days by the USDe its wallets held, weighted by time. The 13,064.13 USDe behind its 4.70% for September is the total the site's cash-flow review counted, which that review put at 4.6% a year of the average end-of-day balance. The two rates differ only in the balance they divide by.

sUSDe's rate followed the weekly payments

sUSDe's rate changed every day, between 4.49% a year on September 5 and 5.28% on October 1. Ethena paid the contract the same amount at each 8-hour payment for a week at a time and changed the amount every Friday in the weeks read, between 02:24 and 02:55 UTC, to between 52,598.97 and 59,215.34 USDe a payment. The contract received 5,174,575.33 USDe in 90 payments in September. Ethena's documentation said the protocol's revenue changed from day to day, and no page read said how the weekly amount was set.

Each payment was shared over all the USDe behind sUSDe, which rose and fell as USDe was staked and unstaked. Rebuilt from the contract's records as the method section describes, that USDe averaged most on September 5, about 1,417 million, the day of sUSDe's lowest rate, and about 1,219 million on October 9. So the week from October 2 paid less a payment than the week from September 4, 54,933.39 USDe against 56,881.00, and still paid more on each day wholly inside its week, at least 4.93% a year against at most 4.78%.

sUSDe paid more than EthenaPay's base rate on all 38 days and less than the Pro and VIP rate on all of them. It paid more than the Standard rate on 10 days. Eight of them, September 13 and 14 and September 26 to October 1, fell in the two weeks with the largest payments. The other two were September 16, when the Standard rate dipped to 4.52%, and October 8, when sUSDe led by about 0.001 of a point. Its lowest day from September 17 on was 4.64%.

Where a balance stood against sUSDe

The Boost paid its rate only up to the cap, so above the cap a balance's rate fell toward the base rate of 4.5%. The table applies EthenaPay's rates from September 17 to a few balances, against sUSDe's 4.92% over the same days, September 17 to October 8.

The balance at which EthenaPay's rate fell to sUSDe's was about $6,200 for Standard, about $369,000 for Pro and about $3.7 million for VIP. sUSDe's rate moved by more than half a point from September 17 to October 8, so those balances moved with it, and at sUSDe's 5.01% for October 1 to 8 they were about $5,100, $306,000 and $3.1 million. The Daily Boost review found no wallet with more than 1,000,000 USDe on October 8, so the VIP figures rest on the terms alone, and found that 21.3% of the USDe in EthenaPay wallets that day sat above a cap.

How this review measured

A browser read every Deposit and Withdraw record of the staking contract, 0x9d39a5de30e57443bff2a8307a4256c8797a3497, and every RewardsReceived record from 00:00 UTC on August 30 to the end of October 10, through block 26,165,481 on Ethereum, from the Routescan explorer API. sUSDe follows ERC-4626, the token standard for vaults, and each Deposit and Withdraw record gives the USDe and the sUSDe that changed hands, so USDe divided by sUSDe is the price at that moment. The review used the 2,325 records of 0.001 sUSDe or more and took the price at each midnight UTC on a straight line between the records either side of it, which were never more than four hours apart. No payment was made and no vesting window ended between those two records at any midnight, so the price ran in a straight line between them.

A rate after compounding is the period's growth compounded to a full year, and a rate before compounding is the growth times 365 over the period's days. The USDe behind all sUSDe rises with deposits and vested payments and falls with withdrawals. The explorer refused a call to the contract at a past block, so the review fitted one figure, 1,337.3 million USDe at 00:00 UTC on August 31, the average of what each day's rate implies, then added every deposit and vested payment read and took away every withdrawal. Each day's vested payments over that day's average USDe then matched the rate measured from the price to within 0.001 of a percentage point on all 40 days from August 31 to October 9. The match also tests the records read, since leaving out a deposit or withdrawal of 500,000 USDe at noon on September 5, September 20 or October 5 would have widened the largest gap to between 0.0012 and 0.0020 of a point. It does not show why USDe was staked and unstaked or how Ethena set each week's amount.

The contract's own price on October 12, 1.252629 USDe per sUSDe, was 0.03% above the price at 00:00 UTC on October 10, in line with the rate of the days before. EthenaPay's rates and its rates across all balances come from the Daily Boost review's results, which this review checked against the cash-flow review's total for September. Ethena's documentation, Ethena Pay's Pricing page, FAQ and Terms of Use and the site's own files were read on October 12 UTC.

What the comparison leaves out

The rates are those of these days, not what either will pay. sUSDe's rate changes with Ethena's weekly payments and with how much is staked, and Ethena Pay can change or end the Boost. The two sit on different blockchains. Moving USDe between Avalanche and Ethereum takes time and fees, unstaking sUSDe waits out its cooldown, and this review counted neither. The terms required a card transaction or other qualifying activity in each month for the Boost, and the Daily Boost review found that wallets that had never made a card payment were paid it, which the chain cannot explain. The terms also set minimum and maximum eligible balances without giving them, the Pricing page and FAQ did not say how a user could become Pro or VIP, and the Pricing page said caps per user, per household, per device and for the whole program might apply. The chain shows wallets, and one person may hold more than one wallet.

Reproduce the numbers

The main script checks every input against its recorded hash and stops before writing its tables if any of its 46 checks fails. The chain read's script fetches the public data again. Download sUSDe by day, the periods, the balances, or the calculation files and source inputs.

sUSDe price             = USDe / sUSDe in a Deposit or Withdraw record
rate after compounding  = (price at end / price at start) ^ (365 / days) - 1
rate before compounding = (price at end / price at start - 1) x 365 / days
September, sUSDe        = (1.250760617761 / 1.245922457046) ^ (365 / 30) - 1 = 4.83%
rate from the payments  = payments vested in a day x 365 / the day's average USDe behind sUSDe
daily share of rate r   = (1 + r) ^ (1 / 365) - 1
EthenaPay on balance B  = (1 + share(base) + share(Boost) x min(B, cap) / B) ^ 365 - 1
balance where they meet = cap x share(Boost) / (share(sUSDe) - share(base))

The EthenaPay dashboard tracks wallets, balances, spending and rewards, and the methodology page defines the site's figures.

Analysis of public blockchain data and published product terms. Not investment advice.