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Decentralized financing today is still largely an Ouroboros, as Vitalik has ever noticed.
Protocol income and costs are realistic and they prove that the technical works. That’s important! But these income flows are still largely the current-reducing result of speculative capital that passes between traders in a circular, self-under-undergiving cycle.
Protocols such as Pendle saw this state of affairs, refused to judge and then easily built the best possible product to take advantage of this Ouroboros-like economy.
Do you want a fixed yield? Buy Pendle Principal tokens (PT). Prefer farming points with expectations of large airdrops? Buy Yield tokens (YT). It’s that simple.
What Pendle has created is not new. It is the traditional equivalent of zero-coupon bonds, interest rate swaps or forward tariff agreements.
But Pendle has extracted these traditionally structured products extremely good at Defi. In 2024, Pendle grew up to $ 4.4 billion and daily average trade volumes up to $ 96 million – an increase of 20x and 100x, respectively.
Pendle is so successful that it is actually one de facto Token launchpad related to an ICO, but better.
In the weeks prior to the Berachain’s Genesis AirDrop, Berachain Pendle markets gathered, for example, more than a billion in TVL from users who want to deliver trade on Berachain assets and Game AirDrops.
Pendle’s 2025 Outlook
Co-founder of the Pendle TN Lee announced the big plans of the protocol for 2025 last week.
There are a large number of small pieces of noting upgrades, such as dynamic reimbursements for yield trade and improvements to the VepenDle Token Head Percheschap.
But the most striking upgrade seems to be the plans of Pendle to focus the most lucrative source of yield in crypto: Perps financing percentages.
As part of this “Boros” (a play on Ouroboros?) Initiative, Pendle enables traders to exchange to deliver trade opportunities.
Source: Pendle
This would enable protocols such as Ethena to lock up predictable financing revenues, which would entail fixed APYs for Susde holders.
In hyper-filled Perps markets such as Memecoins, long traders can also cover themselves against their PERPS positions by locking in a predictable, fixed financing percentage.
Pendle also plans an extension to non-EVM chains Solana, Hyperliquid and Ton. Solana already has a growing market for yield trade, although it is still small compared to Pendle.
Finally, Pendle comes for Tradfi. The pitch is simple: “Why do 8% remain in a 5-year corporate bond when you can enjoy a WBTC-PT revenue of 17%?”
This is part of the team’s plans to launch a KYC’D product for regulated entities and Islamic funds to gain access to crypto yields.
The pendulum sling winds and seems to be even harder in the coming year. With its planned extensions to direct non-EVM chains and Tradfi-Liquidity, these movements are extending the objective of Pendle’s Target Addressable Market beyond the spot lecture markets on Ethereum and the broader crypto sector itself.
