Another decentralized stablecoin giant has joined the growing list of contenders to issue Hyperliquid’s stablecoin USDH.

Ethena Labs pitched itself as the “ideal partner for USDH” in a Tuesday proposal, outlining plans to back USDH entirely with USDtb, a stablecoin backed by BlackRock’s BUIDL fund and issued through the Anchorage Digital bank.

Ethena pledged to return 95% of reserve revenue to the Hyperliquid community, cover migration costs from USDC to USDH, and commit at least $75 million in ecosystem incentives.

The USDe issuer also proposed launching a Hyperliquid-native synthetic dollar called hUSDe, having already purchased the ticker weeks ago, intended to “drive significant spot and hedging flow activity” through Hyperliquid.

Ethena said its commitments to the Hyperliquid ecosystem are not conditional on winning the USDH bid.

“We believe Hyperliquid is one of the most impressive and important stories to emerge in the last 20 years not only within crypto, but all of tech and finance,” said the Ethena team.

This story is an excerpt from the Unchained Daily newsletter.

On Sept. 14, Hyperliquid validators will decide between Ethena, Sky, Paxos, Frax, Agora and Native Markets’ proposals. 

But according to Dragonfly Managing Partner Haseeb Qureshi, the outcome of the validator vote might have been decided long before it started.

“Native Markets’ proposal came out almost immediately after the USDH RFP was announced, implying they had advanced notice. Everyone else scrambled over the weekend to put something together. So this whole USDH RFP was basically custom made for Native Markets,” wrote Qureshi on X, citing USDH bidders who spoke off the record.

Qureshi’s view was contested by Nansen CEO Alex Svanevik. Nansen runs the largest Hyperliquid validator through a partnership with HypurrCollective.

“Our teams have put a ton of effort into reviewing proposals and speaking with bidders to find the best alternative for HL [Hyperliquid],” said Svanevik.

“We’ve even encouraged players on the fence to push forward with their proposal to make the process even more competitive.”