Ethena Pay has launched Earn+, an in-app feature that gives its users higher rewards on their dollars. Under the hood, Earn+ deposits flow into an Upshift vault curated by Steakhouse, which runs the vault’s underlying strategy using Aave V4 on Avalanche.
What is Ethena Pay?
Ethena Pay is a payments and savings app from Ethena that launched in about 50 countries in September. Users hold a USD balance in the app, spend it, and earn rewards on it automatically. Earn+ provides a second option for users who want a higher rewards rate on part of their balance.
How does Earn+ work?
Three partners each play a distinct role in bringing Earn+ to users. Upshift provides the vault infrastructure that holds deposits, Steakhouse curates the vault and runs its strategy, and Aave V4 provides the lending markets the strategy uses.
Users choose how much of their USD balance to move into Earn+ and review it before confirming. Earn+ has no lock-up period, and withdrawals are processed within 24 hours and paid back into the user’s USD balance. Deposits are capped by Ethena Pay’s account tiers, at $20,000 for Standard users, $50,000 for Pro users, and $200,000 for VIP users.
Why Aave V4?
A strategy like the one powering Earn+ requires the ability to borrow reliably at scale, and Aave has spent more than six years building the deepest liquidity in onchain lending. Aave V4 carries that forward with a Hub and Spoke architecture, where Liquidity Hubs pool deposits and Spokes are the markets that borrow from them, each with its own collateral and risk rules. On Avalanche, this lets the strategy supply USDe and borrow USDT from the liquidity pooled in the Avalanche Hub, making the strategy reliable for Ethena Pay's user base.
Earn+ is the latest example of an app using Aave as the yield layer for its users, joining exchanges, wallets, and fintechs that build onchain savings products on top of Aave’s trusted markets.
Note: Earn+ is a third-party product offered through Ethena Pay. Aave does not operate, curate, or manage the vault.