Decentralized finance protocol Ethena Labs has partnered with Anchorage Digital, a digital asset infrastructure provider, to expand its presence in institutional lending through Anchorage Digital's Atlas Collateral Management platform, which manages institutional-grade digital asset collateral.

 

 

As Ethena Labs seeks to deepen its involvement in institutional lending, the partnership will see Anchorage Digital act as collateral manager for Ethena's institutional lending activities. This arrangement allows Ethena to focus on deploying capital for loans, while Anchorage Digital manages and safeguards the associated collateral under its custody.

 

"Institutions want access to crypto native capital, but not at the cost of custody, controls, or operational rigor. Atlas Collateral Management lets protocols like Ethena Labs meet institutional borrowers where they are, combining the speed of DeFi with the standards institutions require," said Nathan McCauley, Co-Founder and CEO of Anchorage Digital.

 

Through the Atlas Collateral Management platform, Anchorage can monitor collateral and loan thresholds in real time, support margin processes, and execute rules-based actions when necessary. Because the collateral remains under Anchorage's custody and does not move on the chain, Ethena can access traditional institutional lending markets without requiring institutions to adopt blockchain native custody solutions or interact directly with DeFi smart contracts.

 

For borrowers, the collaboration provides access to crypto native credit while allowing them to maintain their existing custodial, compliance, and risk management frameworks. Atlas offers protocols a streamlined way to expand into institutional lending without building and maintaining their own collateral management, monitoring, and liquidation infrastructure.

 

The partnership between Ethena Labs and Anchorage Digital builds on an existing relationship. In July 2025, Ethena partnered with Anchorage Digital Bank, the first federally chartered crypto bank in the United States, to become the primary issuer of USDtb, Ethena Labs' institutional-grade stablecoin.

 

As part of its broader push into institutional lending, Ethena recently partnered with Solana-based DeFi platform Jupiter and Bitwise Asset Management to launch an institutional-grade USDe lending market on Jupiter's lending platform.

 

The partnership between Anchorage Digital and Ethena Labs comes at roughly the same time as Coinbase's investment in Ethena Labs, which included the purchase of an undisclosed amount of ENA tokens. Coinbase and Ethena are working together to launch on-chain savings and finance products for Coinbase's more than 100 million users.