USDe has fallen below myth, and Ethena @ ethena_1abs is standing at the crossroads of fate. TVL plummeted from $14.8 billion to $7 billion, incubation project Terminal terminated, and USDe was once unanchored at $0.65 on Binance - a star protocol once seen as the "third pole of stablecoins" undergoing the most brutal stress test. Looking back at the cause of this round of sharp decline, it is not the failure of the hedging mechanism, but the collective stalling of the "leverage arbitrage flywheel". During the peak growth period, a large number of users use USDe as collateral and borrow USDC for 5-10 times revolving loans, amplifying returns through positive interest rate spreads. But when USDe APY fell to 5.1% and Aave borrowing costs remained around 5.4%, the arbitrage space was completely flattened. The combination of the 10/11 anchor detachment event triggered panic, and leveraged positions were closed in a chain, causing TVL to naturally evaporate exponentially. To make matters worse, Ethena's self built ecosystem has also suffered hard losses. The incubated exchange Terminal was forced to announce its closure due to the inability of its partner public chain Converge to go online. The "growth pillar" that originally absorbed $280 million in liquidity was directly withdrawn, indicating the failure of Ethena's "self built public chain ecosystem" strategy. But Ethena didn't stop in her tracks. In order to break free from dependence on leverage spreads, it has shifted its growth focus to "stablecoin infrastructure services (SaaS)" and launched a white label platform, allowing different public chains to directly issue their own US dollar assets based on Ethena. This B-end route is rapidly blossoming: Collaborate with Sui to launch suiUSDe and RWA supported USDi; Collaborating with Jupiter to launch the Solana based core stablecoin JupUSD; Deeply integrated with Nunchi, the deployment provider of Hyperliquid HIP-3, making USDe a margin asset for perpetual contracts. Ethena has also evolved from a "high-yield deposit protocol" to a DeFi dollar liquidity layer+multi chain stablecoin infrastructure. It is worth noting that despite a significant decline in TVL, Ethena's profitability remains very strong We have captured over $600 million in revenue in the first three quarters of this year, with Q3 revenue reaching as high as $151 million. And top institutions have also added against the trend - Multicoin has just bought ENA and stated that "yield will become the ultimate weapon of stablecoin competition". TVL's halving does not mean the end of the story, it means Ethena's first growth curve has ended. What truly determines whether it can cross the cycle is whether it can complete the transformation from a 2C high-yield savings tank to a 2B stablecoin infrastructure.