Pendle

About

Pendle is a permissionless yield-trading protocol that enables users to execute various yield-management strategies. It integrates with core yield-generating primitives such as Liquid Staking Tokens (LSTs), Liquid Restaking Tokens (LRTs), stablecoins, and RWAs, offering two main products: Pendle V2 (spot yield trading for fixed yield, long yield, and liquidity provision) and Boros (margin-based trading of yields including off-chain funding rates). The protocol acts as a second-order derivative layer that tokenizes yield into Principal Tokens (PT) and Yield Tokens (YT), which are traded on a custom capital-efficient AMM.

Where Does Yield Come From?

Pendle's core idea is yield tokenization — splitting a yield-bearing asset into two separate pieces.

First, any token that earns yield (like stETH, which is staked ETH that grows over time) is wrapped into a Standardized Yield token (SY). This just gives all different yield tokens a common format. Then the SY is split into two tokens:

Principal Token (PT) — Think of this like a zero-coupon bond. It gives you the right to get back the original asset (the "principal") when the market matures. You get a fixed yield because you buy PT at a discount today and redeem it for the full amount later.
Yield Token (YT) — This gives you the right to all the floating (variable) yield produced by the underlying asset in real time. You can claim that yield at any point before maturity.

Both PT and YT are traded on Pendle's own Automated Market Maker (AMM — a type of trading pool). The AMM is designed to be capital-efficient, with adjustable parameters that control how the price reacts to interest rate changes. Swap fees are also charged dynamically based on movements in interest rates.

So how do different participants earn?

Fixed yield (buying PT) — You buy PT at a discount below its face value. At maturity, each PT redeems 1:1 for the underlying asset, no matter what happened to the yield along the way. Your return is locked in upfront.

Long yield (buying YT) — You get leveraged exposure to the future yield of the underlying protocol. As the protocol generates yield, YT holders receive it in real time. If the yield is higher than expected, you profit — but if it's low, you may lose.

Liquidity provision — You deposit SY and PT into an AMM pool. As a provider, you earn:

Swap fees from traders using the pool,
PENDLE incentive rewards,
The underlying yield from the SY portion of your deposit,
An implicit fixed yield from the PT portion.

All these rewards accrue to Liquidity Provider (LP) token holders automatically — no extra staking step required.

Boros (margin yield trading) — Users put up collateral to take long or short positions on Yield Units (YU). Each YU represents the yield from one unit of collateral in the underlying yield-bearing asset (for example, the BTC/USDT funding rate from Binance). Positions must stay above a maintenance margin threshold, or they get liquidated or auto-deleveraged.

Governance and extra rewards

PENDLE incentives for LPs and protocol fees can be adjusted through on-chain voting using vePENDLE (a voting escrow system — lock up PENDLE to get voting power). Some markets also distribute the native rewards of the underlying protocol directly to LP holders — for example, COMP from Compound or AAVE from Aave.

Persons

TN
CEO & Co-Founder
Toan Vuong (UncleGrandpa925)
Engineering Lead

Audits

Audit / Date	Findings	Verdict
0xleastwood—	Critical0 High0 Medium6 Low9 Info10	With no critical or high-severity findings, the audit indicates Pendle V2's core design had no showstopper vulnerabilities at the time, though the six medium-severity items warranted fixes before mainnet deployment, and several design-level risks (reward gaming, cross-chain sync, Celer message reliability) require ongoing operational vigilance.
0xleastwood28-07-2022	Critical0 High0 Medium2 Low7 Info13	The audit identified two medium-severity issues that could allow reward manipulation, along with several low-severity concerns around edge cases and gas optimizations, but found no critical or high-severity vulnerabilities in the Pendle V2 Liquidity Mining codebase.
Ackee Blockchain25-04-2022 - 20-05-2022	Critical0 High0 Medium3 Low5 Info3	The audit found no critical or high-severity issues; the 11 findings range from Informational to Medium severity and all are considered addressable, making Pendle V2's audited codebase appear safe for deployment once the reported issues are remediated.
Christoph Michel (CMichel)25-08-2022	Critical0 High3 Medium4 Low6 Info3	The three high-severity bugs were all confirmed and fixed, and the medium-severity issues were also addressed, meaning the major risks identified during the audit were resolved before deployment. The residual low and informational items are either acknowledged edge cases or best-practice improvements that do not pose material threats to the protocol's core safety.
Christoph Michel (CMichel)15-08-2022	Critical0 High0 Medium2 Low1 Info1	No high or critical issues were found; the two medium findings and the informational item were fixed, while the low finding was acknowledged. Overall the audit indicates the liquidity mining contracts are of high quality with only residual acknowledged design caveats around reward funding and cross-chain broadcast incentives.
ChainSecurity15-08-2024	Critical0 High0 Medium2 Low9 Info8	The codebase provides a good level of security with no critical or high-severity issues; the two medium-severity findings were corrected, and remaining low-severity open findings were acknowledged or risk-accepted by Pendle Finance.
Dedaub01-07-2022	Critical0 High0 Medium0 Low4 Info4	The audit found no critical, high, or medium severity vulnerabilities, indicating a well-engineered codebase at the time of review; the two unresolved low-severity items (time-bandit attack surface and division-by-zero guard) pose minimal practical risk under stated assumptions but are worth addressing for defense-in-depth.
Dingbats—	Critical0 High0 Medium1 Low6 Info6	The audit identified one medium-severity issue and a handful of low-severity and informational findings, all of which were remediated or acknowledged before deployment, indicating a thorough review of the Pendle V2 codebase with no residual critical or high-risk vulnerabilities.
Dingbats—	Critical0 High0 Medium0 Low1 Info3	All four findings (one Low, three Informational) were resolved by the Pendle team, leaving no open issues in this Part 2 scope. The audit indicates the code is in a safe state for deployment with respect to the contracts reviewed.
Spearbit26-07-2024	Critical0 High1 Medium2 Low5 Info4	All one high-risk and two medium-risk findings were resolved by Pendle before deployment, and the majority of low-severity issues were fixed, while acknowledged items reflect conscious design trade-offs rather than exploitable flaws.
WatchPug28-06-2022	Critical0 High3 Medium0 Low1 Info4	WatchPug identified three High-severity issues (fund loss via reward token/base token overlap and Yearn vault share accounting) that were all fixed, alongside several acknowledged informational risks; the audit indicates the core codebase was remediated for critical threats before deployment, though residual design risks around liquidity bootstrapping and reward token overlap remain acknowledged.
WatchPug15-07-2022	Critical0 High3 Medium1 Low4 Info1	WatchPug's follow-up audit uncovered 3 high-severity logic flaws (decimal mismatch, broken redemption, and unfair swap pricing) plus 1 medium and 4 low-severity issues, all of which were fixed by Pendle, strengthening the protocol's core yield and swap mechanics before deployment.
WatchPug22-07-2022	Critical0 High1 Medium1 Low0 Info1	This follow-up audit identified one high-severity and one medium-severity issue, both of which were fixed by the Pendle team, and one informational finding acknowledged as a design risk for certain SCY types, leaving the protocol in a remediated state for the scope reviewed.
WatchPug02-08-2022	Critical0 High0 Medium1 Low2 Info9	The audit uncovered one medium-severity voting logic flaw and two low-severity issues, all of which were fixed, alongside several informational findings and gas optimizations; the resolved medium issue removes the primary risk in the voting controller, leaving no critical or high residual concerns from the audited scope.
WatchPug02-10-2024	Critical0 High0 Medium0 Low0 Info1	The single informational finding (potential underflow in latestRoundData() under high-rate/long-maturity scenarios) was fixed; no critical, high, medium, or low severity issues were identified for the SparkLinearDiscountOracle contract.
WatchPug26-05-2023	Critical0 High0 Medium1 Low0 Info3	The audit found one medium-severity manipulation vector in the LP Oracle's hypothetical-trade price calculation, which was resolved by the development team; the three informational findings were acknowledged and do not pose an immediate security risk, leaving the overall contract logic in a reasonable state for the audited commit.
WatchPug26-05-2023	Critical0 High1 Medium0 Low0 Info0	The single high-severity finding regarding incorrect PT-to-Asset rate calculation under index divergence was acknowledged and fixed; no further vulnerabilities were identified in the scoped contracts.
HickupHH3—	Critical0 High0 Medium0 Low0 Info2	The audit found no exploitable vulnerabilities, only two minor informational issues that were both promptly fixed, indicating a low-risk codebase for the upgradable factory changes.
WatchPug23-10-2025	Critical0 High0 Medium2 Low0 Info3	The audit found no critical or high-severity vulnerabilities; the two medium-severity issues were either fixed or acknowledged, and the three informational items were resolved or noted, indicating a solid security baseline for the MarketV6 contracts.
HickupHH3—	Critical0 High0 Medium0 Low0 Info1	The audit found no security vulnerabilities in the PendleMarketV7 changes, with only a single acknowledged informational item about retroactive cooldown behavior, indicating a clean security review for the scoped modifications.
WatchPug11-01-2026	Critical0 High0 Medium0 Low0 Info2	The audit found only two minor informational issues (unused error messages and unused imports), both addressed (acknowledged or fixed), indicating the MarketV7 codebase had no material security vulnerabilities at the time of review.
WatchPug11-01-2026	Critical0 High0 Medium0 Low0 Info5	The audit found no exploitable security vulnerabilities; all five findings were observations and code-quality notes, with two fixed and three acknowledged by the team.

Backers

Pendle's homepage features a "Trusted By The Best" section displaying the logos of Amber Group, Galaxy (likely Galaxy Digital), Binance, OKX, Bybit, Fasanara Digital, and Republic Digital as trusted backers/partners. CoinGecko data reflects that 12.07% of the PENDLE token allocation was designated for investors, and Pendle is categorized under the "YZi Labs (Prev. Binance Labs) Portfolio" category, indicating Binance Labs (now YZi Labs) as an investor. The Pendle 2025: Zenith blog post (signed by "TN," CEO & Co-Founder) states the Pendle team was first formed in mid-2020 but does not disclose specific funding rounds, amounts, or dates.

Legal

Legal form

Inc (corporation / company)

Registration jurisdiction

Republic of Panama

Status and notes

Operator is Univerum Innovations Inc, an entity established under the laws of the Republic of Panama (disclosed in Section 1 of the Terms of Use). The Terms of Use (last revised 9 December 2025) and Privacy Policy are linked from the main site footer at docs.pendle.finance. The Terms specify Singapore governing law and SIAC arbitration in Singapore. Legal/privacy contact: [email protected]. No separate imprint page found; all legal disclosures are within the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy documents.