RWA News: Ethena, Securitize Tap Arbitrum, and Celestia to Merge Blockchains, Launching in Q2

Ethena and Securitize Aim to Launch Mainnet in Q2 for Real World Asset (RWA) Focused Blockchain Tap Arbitrum and Celestia

The teams claim that the Converge blockchain will provide fast block generation, allow users to pay for gas in Ethena tokens, and will support both public and permissioned applications.

Author: Christian Sandor, Margot Nijkerk | Edited by: Parikshit Mishra Updated: Apr 17, 2025 2:49 PM Published: Apr 17, 2025 12:59 PM

What you need to know:

• According to the project's technical update, the Converge blockchain from Ethena and Securitize will use Arbitrum and Celestia to achieve fast block times, use USDe and USDtb as gas tokens, and a validator network secured by staked ENA.
• Securitize CEO Carlos Domingo said in an interview that Converge plans to launch its mainnet by the end of the second quarter.
• The network will support both public DeFi applications and open institutional products, bringing traditional finance and cryptocurrencies together on one platform.

Decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol Ethena and tokenization company Securitize have announced that they will use part of Arbitrum's Celestia technology and data infrastructure for their real-asset-focused, Ethereum-compatible blockchain, with plans to launch the mainnet in the second quarter of this year.

The Converge chain aims to provide fast block generation by allowing users to pay gas via Ethena's USDe and USDtb, while building security and safeguards through its network of Converge validators — the two protocols underpinning the project that were outlined in a technical update shared with CoinDesk.

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“We are planning to launch the testnet very soon, in the next few weeks, as we have been working on this for some time,” Carlos Domingo, co-founder and CEO of Securitize, told CoinDesk in an exclusive interview. “Then we will move to the mainnet: our goal is to do this before the end of Q2.”

Domingo added that the specific timing of the public rollout also depends on third-party integrations such as Anchorage for storage support, Fireblocks for key management, and other DeFi apps the project partners with.

Connecting RWA and DeFi

The Converge platform, unveiled last month, aims to bridge the fast-growing tokenized real-world asset (RWA) sector with the DeFi space, building on the existing ecosystems around Ethena and Securitize and their multi-billion dollar assets.

Ethena has quickly established itself as a powerful DeFi platform, leading the yield stablecoin trend with its $5 billion USDe “synthetic dollar” token. Meanwhile, Securitize has issued nearly $4 billion worth of tokenized assets from traditional financial giants like Apollo and Hamilton Lane, as well as BlackRock’s blockchain-based money market fund token BUIDL. The latter is also the key asset backing Ethena’s $1.4 billion USDtb stablecoin.

“Converge’s ambitious goal of attracting tens of billions of institutional capital to the blockchain requires providing users with high performance and enhanced security guarantees,” said Guy Yang, founder of developer Ethena Labs.

To achieve this lofty goal, Converge's chain performance is based on a custom sequencer for the block

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