Ethena and Securitize pitch upcoming BlackRock-fueled stablecoin in Spark's $1 billion tokenization play

Stablecoin issuer Ethena and tokenization platform Securitize are pitching Ethena’s upcoming stablecoin USDtb for Spark’s $1 billion tokenization competition.

The Spark competition, referred to as a Tokenization Grand Prix , is handing out up to $1 billion of liquidity to selected onboarding partners. Spark is a lending platform in the Sky ecosystem, which was rebranded from MakerDAO (with its core stablecoin DAI becoming USDS). The results will be confirmed by Sky token holders in a governance vote.

The application includes a proposed swap facility for USDtb and USDe — another stablecoin issued by Ethena — aimed at enabling the Sky ecosystem to manage allocations between these assets in response to interest rate changes. 

The USDtb stablecoin will see its reserves invested in BlackRock’s USD Institutional Digital Liquidity Fund (BUIDL), which was tokenized by Securitize. BUIDL will make up more than 90% of its initial backing. Ethena claims that this is a higher percentage than other stablecoin issuers.

Ethena currently contributes approximately $120 million in annual revenue to the Sky ecosystem, representing nearly 30% of its total revenue, the project claims.