BlackRock and Ethena Labs announced Monday a deepened collaboration that is set to give institutional investors using Aladdin greater access to Ethena's products, including improved liquidity for BUIDL.
The partnership seeks to deepen BlackRock's engagement with digital dollar infrastructure and expand the role of tokenized real-world assets (RWAs), according to the companies. BlackRock's Aladdin platform helps institutional investors track, analyze, and manage risk across their portfolios.
As part of the agreement, 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 (BUIDL).
"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 new setup will enable eligible BUIDL clients to exchange BUIDL tokens for USDC, USDtb, and other supported stablecoins. Clients can also convert those stablecoins back into BUIDL outside of normal market hours, the companies also said.
"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.
Unlike traditional stablecoins such as Circle's USDC and Tether's USDT — which are backed by highly liquid, fiat-based assets — Ethena's USDe is a synthetic dollar with the potential to generate more yield.
BlackRock and Ethena's existing ties
BlackRock and Ethena already have a collaboration in place around USDtb, the Ethena stablecoin issued by Anchorage Digital Bank and backed primarily by BUIDL.
Launched in 2024 on Ethereum, BUIDL is one of the world's largest tokenized U.S. Treasury funds. Among RWAs, tokenized Treasurys account for nearly half of the overall market with about $15 billion onchain, according to RWA.xyz.
A year ago, Ethena and Securitize teamed up to enable round-the-clock atomic transfers between BlackRock's BUIDL fund and Ethena's USDtb stablecoin.
According to DeFi Llama data, BUIDL shows that the fund maintains a total value locked of roughly $3 billion.
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