Arthur Hayes bought over 1.25 million ENA before the vote on the USDH stablecoin at Hyperliquid.
The Ethena project is competing for the USDH ticker.
His competitors included Native Markets, Paxos Labs, Sky, Frax Finance, and Agora.
Co-founder of the Maelstrom investment fund Arthur Hayes purchased Ethena (ENA) tokens worth approximately $995,000, according to Arkham Intelligence. This transaction took place over two days ahead of the key voting by Hyperliquid validators regarding the USDH stablecoin.
It should be noted that the team of the Hyperliquid platform announced the launch of the latter on September 5, 2025.
According to the analytical platform, Hayes initially purchased tokens worth $521,000 on September 8, 2025, and on September 10 spent $473,000 on 578,956 ENA. In total, he acquired over 1.25 million ENA.
Ethena is one of the main contenders in the race for the USDH ticker. Its proposal, backed by BlackRock, involves using the stablecoin USDtb as collateral through the BlackRock BUIDL fund, directing 95% of revenues to Hyperliquid, and covering the costs of migrating trading pairs from USDC.
«Ethena's proposal is a strong application from one of the most dynamic and impressive ecosystems in the crypto industry,» said David Lavandt, head of research at FalconX.
He emphasized that the market capitalization of USDe exceeds $13 billion, and the platform has already processed $23 billion in redemptions and buybacks without failures or security issues.
However, some market participants doubt that Hayes's purchase is directly related to the voting.
«His move looks like personal positioning rather than support for Ethena solely for the USDH votes,» said Kirby Ong, founder of HypurrCollective.
He added:
«Key factors will be the alignment of validators with stakers and whether market forecasts turn into real on-chain votes».
Competition for USDH is intensifying. Native Markets is currently considered the favorite with a 90% chance of winning, according to Myriad Markets data.
Paxos Labs, backed by PayPal, has also submitted its updated proposal. It promised to direct the majority of profits to the Hyperliquid fund and has also agreed with Kraken to list USDH and HYPE from day one.
Other participants in the race include Sky (USDS, formerly DAI), Frax Finance, and Agora, which warned about the risks of Native Markets' dependence on Stripe but promised to fully return profits back to Hyperliquid.
«The final outcome on Sunday will depend on which team can gain the most trust and demonstrate long-term value for the ecosystem,» summed up Ong.
It should be noted that VanEck plans to prepare an application to launch a spot Hyperliquid ETF.
