How to Earn Shards With Ethena Labs Shard Campaign

Users can earn Shards by buying, locking, and staking USDe, along with inviting people to use Ethena. These tasks have no pool limits, although users should still monitor partner tasks to see if they are able to earn extra Shards by completing them. 

Key Takeaways

• Ethena Labs is a synthetic dollar protocol with the aim to revolutionize DeFi through a censorship-resistant approach.

• The USDe token is the project’s Ethereum-based stablecoin which acts as a synthetic dollar that achieves stability through shorting ETH. 

• Investors such as Dragonfly, Binance Labs, Bybit, and more have participated in a fundraising round that successfully raised $14 Million.

Ethena Labs is a synthetic dollar protocol built on the Ethereum blockchain that focuses on providing a crypto-native yield-bearing stablecoin not reliant on traditional banking system infrastructure. 

The project’s Ethereum-based stablecoin, USDe, is positioned as a synthetic dollar rather than a stablecoin and is designed to achieve stability by hedging price exposure through shorting ETH using perpetual swaps. Ethena Labs also refers to USDe as the project’s ‘internet bond’ product, which offers a dollar-denominated savings instrument with the benefits of DeFi. 

Founded in 2023, Ethena Labs has attracted attention from notable investors such as Dragonfly, OKX Ventures, Bybit, Deribit, and others who participated in the first seed round and raised $6.5 million. A recent fundraising round successfully raised an additional $14 million with investors including Brevan Howard Digital, Galaxy Digital, and Hashed, bringing the project’s total raised to $20.5 million and valuation to $300 million. 

To mark the official launch of USDe to the public, Ethena Labs launched their Shard campaign to represent and track how much a user contributes to the ecosystem. The campaign will be split across multiple short-duration seasons, referred to as epochs, that will reward different activities involving USDe. 

Users can earn Shards through the activities listed below. At the time of writing, the Shard campaign is in Epoch 2 which is in collaboration with Pendle Finance. 

Do take note that at the time of writing, there is no official announcement from Ethena Labs regarding a token release, and proceeding with the steps below is not guaranteed to result in receiving airdropped tokens.

Ethena Labs will conclude the Shard campaign in May or when the USDe supply reaches $1 billion, whichever happens the soonest. On top of the short timeline, the value of Shards being rewarded will decrease as the campaign carries on. This means that being early will result in a higher number of awarded Shards. That is why now is a good time to start exploring the Ethena ecosystem and interacting with USDe!

Step 1: Connect Wallet

Head over to https://www.ethena.fi/ to access the Shard campaign. Here you can either provide an invite code or click Enter the Ether to be redirected to the join page. 

Click on Connect Wallet and choose from the various wallet options.

Step 2: Buy USDe

At the top menu, click on Buy to access the buy USDe page. 

Once you have input the amount you want to buy, confirm the transaction in your wallet.

Do take note that Ethereum gas fees are quite high at the time of writing and will likely continue to remain high in the near future. For this guide, transaction gas fees were averaging at $40. As such, we highly recommend that you take this into consideration when deciding how much you want to invest and if it is worth the gas fees. You can also check in during different times of the day to see if the gas fees are lower.

In this example, we are sending 1,000 USDC tokens in exchange for 997.2 USDe tokens and paying $31.20 in gas fees.

Step 3: Lock USDe

At the top menu, click on Liquidity to access the page. 

Click on Lock for USDe on Ethena which is listed as the second pool.

Then input the amount of USDe you want to lock and confirm the transaction in your wallet. Do note that when unlocking, the tokens will only be available to withdraw after seven days.

Step 4: Stake USDe

At the top menu, click on Stake to be redirected to the page. 

Input the amount of USDe you want to stake and then confirm the transaction in your wallet. Do note that when you unstake, your USDe tokens will only be available to claim seven days later.

Step 5: Invite People to Ethena

On the main Shard campaign page, you will be able to view and copy your referral link to share with others. 

Sidenotes

Each epoch of the Shard campaign will be in partnership with different projects. The first was with Curve Finance while the current one, epoch 2, is with Pendle Finance. Due to high demand and popularity, the activities in collaboration with partner projects tend to reach maximum capacity quickly. 

At the time of writing, the task in relation to Pendle has already met its limit. On top of that, the pool to provide liquidity and lock LP tokens has also reached its limit. Hence, this guide is to help you fulfill the steps directly related to the Ethena ecosystem which have no pool limits. Each task is optional and you should only proceed with what you are comfortable with. 

In the meantime, you can also keep an eye out for the partner tasks because Ethena Labs will occasionally increase the pool size or other users may withdraw their tokens and free up some space in the pool. 

Conclusion

Ethena Labs is gearing up to introduce a new financial experience on the Ethereum blockchain through their synthetic dollar protocol. They intend to provide an alternative to traditional stablecoins through USDe and various financial services through stability and yield generation. The Shard campaign will reward active users as part of their efforts to grow the community and ecosystem activity.

Airdrops are highly speculative and as mentioned above, following the above steps is no guarantee of an Ethena Labs airdrop, as there is no token release announcement at time of writing. Finally, note that this article is not meant to serve as financial or investment advice, and users should do their own research before depositing funds and interacting with any crypto protocol.