Ethena taps Anchorage to custody off-chain loan collateral

Ethena Labs has hired Anchorage Digital to custody off-chain collateral for its institutional lending business and will use Anchorage’s Atlas Collateral Management platform to monitor collateral in real time, automate margin calls and execute rules-based actions. The agreement was announced Tuesday.

Under the deal Anchorage will act as collateral manager for Ethena’s institutional lending activity. Atlas will track collateral levels and loan thresholds, trigger margin processes automatically and carry out pre-set responses if positions approach liquidation or breach limits. Anchorage Digital Bank is the U.S. issuer of Ethena’s institutional stablecoin USDtb.

Ethena began shifting to overcollateralized institutional loans in April as part of an overhaul of USDe reserves. The company stated the change reduces reliance on perpetual futures used to maintain its dollar peg through basis trades and aims to widen sources of liquidity for institutional clients.

The arrangement keeps collateral in Anchorage custody rather than moving assets fully on-chain, separating custody from protocol execution. Anchorage will hold client assets and enforce collateral rules through Atlas while Ethena runs lending operations and issues stablecoins tied to its reserve mechanics.

Anchorage’s Atlas is built to automate monitoring and margining to limit manual intervention and speed responses to market moves. Ethena views the feature as necessary for institutional-scale lending.

The companies cited regulatory and operational reasons for the structure. Keeping collateral with a regulated custodian lets Ethena offer institutional counterparties custody profiles and compliance controls they expect, while allowing the protocol to access decentralized lending rates and on-chain settlement when appropriate.

Guy Young, Ethena’s founder, described Atlas Collateral Management as providing “the controls, custody, and operational standards required to support that next phase of growth,” and said Ethena is building “for a future where crypto-native financial products serve increasingly sophisticated institutions.” Nathan McCauley, Anchorage co-founder and CEO, noted that institutions want crypto-native capital without sacrificing custody, controls or operational rigor and that Atlas allows protocols to combine the speed of decentralized finance with institutional standards.

Anchorage has previously integrated off-chain custody with access to on-chain lending, including a January partnership that allowed assets kept in cold storage to support borrowing on-chain without transferring the assets on-chain.