Pendle's 2025 Growth and Boros Launch: A New On-Chain Yield Infrastructure Play

In 2025, Pendle has emerged as a cornerstone of decentralized finance (DeFi), redefining the landscape of yield derivatives and institutional-grade on-chain infrastructure. With Total Value Locked (TVL) averaging $5.8 billion and peaking at $13.4 billion, the protocol has demonstrated exponential growth, driven by its innovative tokenization of yield streams and the strategic launch of Boros, a funding-rate derivatives platform according to reports. This analysis evaluates Pendle's trajectory as a high-growth DeFi yield primitive, emphasizing its institutional adoption and the transformative potential of Boros in bridging traditional and crypto-native markets.

Record Growth and Revenue: Pendle's 2025 Metrics

Pendle's 2025 performance underscores its role as a critical infrastructure layer for DeFi. The platform facilitated $47.8 billion in trading volume and settled $58 billion in fixed yield, reflecting a 161% year-over-year increase according to data. Annualized protocol revenue reached approximately $40 million, a testament to its robust economic model and liquidity demand according to reports. These metrics highlight Pendle's ability to scale while maintaining efficiency, a key factor for investors seeking exposure to high-growth DeFi primitives.

The launch of Boros in 2025 further accelerated Pendle's expansion. Boros introduced tokenized perpetual funding-rate exposure, enabling traders to speculate on interest rate movements without holding underlying assets according to analysis. Early operations of Boros recorded $80 million in open interest, $5.5 billion in notional volume, and $730,000 in annualized revenue according to reports. By addressing the volatility of funding rate cash flows, Boros has positioned Pendle as a leader in institutional-grade derivatives, offering tools for risk management and yield optimization.

Institutional Adoption: Partnerships and Real-World Utility

Pendle's institutional-grade appeal is bolstered by strategic partnerships with protocols like Ethena, Aave, and Euler Finance according to reports. These collaborations expanded liquidity, collateral options, and real-world utility for the PENDLE token, while Boros' On-Chain Yield Units (YUs) enabled delta-neutral strategies for protocols like Ethena, allowing them to hedge price fluctuations while earning funding fees according to analysis.

A pivotal development was the integration of USDe yield markets with Ethena, which tokenized fixed yields in a crypto-native environment. This innovation aligns with Pendle's vision to bridge the $140 trillion fixed-income market to DeFi, offering institutions a transparent and efficient infrastructure layer according to reports. Additionally, Boros' cross-exchange arbitrage capabilities-allowing YUs to be traded for BTC and ETH perpetual contracts on platforms like Binance and Hyperliquid- generated $2.2 billion in ETH and $600 million in BTC trading volumes in September 2025. Such liquidity dynamics underscore Pendle's role in democratizing access to institutional-grade yield strategies.

Risk Management and Derivatives Innovation

Pendle's architecture, built on Principal Tokens (PTs) and Yield Tokens (YTs), enables users to trade future yield, effectively hedging against volatility or locking in fixed returns according to analysis. The platform's AMM design, enhanced by dynamic parameters and on-chain oracles, reduces impermanent loss for liquidity providers, further attracting institutional capital according to reports.

Boros' tokenization of funding rate income streams has also addressed a critical gap in DeFi derivatives. By converting unstandardized funding rates into tradable assets, Boros allows institutions to manage macroeconomic risks through strategies akin to traditional interest rate derivatives (IRDs), such as fixed-rate swaps according to research. This innovation is particularly valuable in a macroeconomic environment marked by central bank rate hikes and crypto market volatility.

Investment Thesis: A High-Growth Yield Primitive

Pendle's 2025 growth metrics, coupled with Boros' institutional-grade derivatives, present a compelling case for investors. The protocol's TVL of $4.36 billion in May 2025 according to reports and its ability to tokenize $69.8 billion in settled yield according to analysis highlight its scalability and market demand. Furthermore, the development of a KYC-compliant Citadel platform for regulated capital markets according to reports signals Pendle's readiness to attract institutional capital while maintaining compliance.

For investors, Pendle represents a dual opportunity: exposure to a high-growth DeFi primitive and a stake in the infrastructure underpinning institutional-grade yield trading. As DeFi continues to mature, Pendle's role in bridging traditional and crypto-native markets-through innovations like Boros-positions it as a key player in the next phase of on-chain finance.