DeFi: Pendle one step away from reaching 1 billion dollars of TVL

The DeFi Pendle platform is one step away from reaching 1 billion dollars of Total Value Locked (TVL). The surge of interest has come in these first months of 2024. 

The DeFi Pendulum and the $1 billion Total Value Locked horizon 

Pendle, a decentralized finance (DeFi) platform that offers returns in the form of tradable digital tokens, is one step away from reaching 1 billion dollars of Total Value Locked (or TVL). 

“2nd metric unicorn just in time for New Year’s Eve. Many more to come in the future”

On DefiLama, at the time of writing, Pendle’s TVL has reached $992 million. But looking at the chart, it is clear that this surge of interest has exponentially increased since the beginning of this 2024.

Specifically, on January 1, 2024, Pendle’s TVL was at $233 million, marking the start of the race to a million. In just one month, Pendle’s TVL tripled, reaching $611 million by early February. 

Not only that, the graph shows an even steeper rise for these first 10 days of the month, which in fact sees it approaching 1 billion dollars. 

Pendle as a pioneer in Liquid Restaking Token Finance (LRTFi) DeFi 

The current strong interest in Pendle seems to reevaluate its work, emphasizing the Liquid Restaking Token Finance (LRTFi).

This is a new sector of DeFi that allows liquidity of staked assets through the issuance of liquid restaking tokens (LRT), allowing users to earn rewards while their original assets are locked to ensure network services.

In this regard, the developer of Pendle RightSide said:

“The influx of interest in Liquid Restaking Tokens has been the main driver of Pendle’s recent growth […]. Pendle is one of the early pioneers of LRTfi and offers users a unique proposition to speculate on yields and EigenLayer points.”

The addition of “innovation zone” on Binance and the launch of the Real-World Asset (RWA) based product

The race to increase Pendle’s TVL, albeit at a slower pace, began in the summer of 2023. 

Specifically, during the month of July, the Pendle token (PENDLE) was added to Binance’s “innovation zone” program. This caused the price of PENDLE to fluctuate like a roller coaster, jumping from $0.8 to $1.3 in a few minutes, then dropping to $1 and back to $0.8.

At that moment, even Pendle’s TVL had risen from 123 to 153 million dollars in just one month. 

Not only that, in the month of August 2023, Pendle then announced the launch of its first product based on real-world assets (RWA).

This is a combination of MakerDAO’s Boosted Dai Savings (sDAI) and Flux Finance’s stablecoin fUSDC. 

Through RWA, Pendle has started offering users the usual returns in the form of tradable tokens but with additional earnings derived from traditional sector revenues. In fact, it is the sDAI and fUSDC that generate returns from traditional financial sectors. 

Returning to the present day, at the time of writing, PENDLE is worth $2.90, with a pump of +132% in the last month, and +3080% in the last year.