Pendle (PENDLE)

Pendle (PENDLE) is the token of Pendle, a decentralized finance protocol that lets users trade the future yield of crypto assets. Pendle takes an asset that earns income, such as staked ether or a yield-bearing dollar token, and splits it into two parts: a principal token (PT) and a yield token (YT). PENDLE is used to vote on the protocol and to share in the fees it earns.

PENDLE is the governance and reward token; PT and YT are separate tokens created for each market and expire on a set date. Pendle is often described as bringing the tools of the bond market to crypto, because buying a PT works much like buying a zero-coupon bond at a discount.

Picture an apple tree. The tree itself is the principal, and the apples it grows over the next year are the yield. Pendle lets you sell the two separately. One person can buy the tree at a discount, knowing they will get the full tree back at the end of the year. Another can buy just the apples, betting that the harvest will be bigger than expected.

The person who buys the tree knows exactly what they will earn, which is useful for someone who wants a fixed, predictable return. The person who buys the apples gets a lot of exposure for a small outlay, but if the harvest disappoints they can lose most of what they paid. PENDLE is the token for the orchard owners: it gives a vote on how the market runs and a share of its income.

Pendle was founded in 2020 by a team led by TN Lee, who serves as its chief executive, and launched on Ethereum in June 2021. A redesigned version, Pendle V2, launched in late 2022 and introduced the vePENDLE system, in which holders locked tokens for a chosen period in return for voting power and fees. The protocol grew strongly in 2024 as users traded the yields and points of liquid restaking tokens and of Ethena's sUSDe, and it now runs on several networks, including Arbitrum and BNB Chain. On 6 August 2025 Pendle launched Boros on Arbitrum, a separate platform for trading the funding rates of perpetual futures. In January 2026 it announced that vePENDLE would be replaced by sPENDLE, a simpler staking token.

Each Pendle market wraps a yield-bearing asset and splits one unit of it into one PT and one YT with the same maturity date. At maturity the PT can be redeemed for one unit of the underlying asset, while the YT collects all the yield paid until then and becomes worthless afterwards. Users trade both on Pendle's own automated market maker, and their prices reveal the market's expected yield, called the implied APY. Pendle's documentation gives it as:

• $\text{YT price}$ is the price of the yield token, in units of the underlying asset.
• $\text{PT price}$ is the price of the principal token in the same units.
• $\text{Days to expiry}$ is the number of days until the market matures.

For example, if a PT trades at 0.97 and its YT at 0.03 with 180 days to expiry, the implied APY is $(1 + 0.03 \div 0.97)^{365 \div 180} - 1 \approx 0.0637$, or about 6.4 percent a year. A buyer who holds that PT to maturity locks in roughly that rate, compounded as in the annual percentage yield. A YT buyer profits only if the yield actually earned beats it.

• Governance. Staked PENDLE votes on which markets receive token incentives and on other protocol matters, part of Pendle's governance.
• Fee sharing. Stakers receive a share of the protocol's swap fees and the fee it takes on yield collected by YT holders.
• Incentives. New PENDLE is issued as rewards to liquidity providers in Pendle markets, which keeps trading costs low.

Under the sPENDLE model announced in January 2026, staked tokens can be withdrawn after 14 days or immediately for a 5 percent fee, and existing vePENDLE holders received boosted balances according to their remaining lock.

Pendle adds layers on top of other protocols, so a failure in an underlying asset, such as a stablecoin losing its peg or a staking token being hacked, flows through to its PT and YT holders. Yield tokens are highly leveraged bets on future rates and can lose most of their value. Critics also note that much of Pendle's growth has come from users chasing airdrop points, a source of demand that may fade, and that token emissions dilute holders who do not stake. Smart-contract risk remains, as with all yield farming.

• Pendle
• Pendle documentation