#27 @Pendle_fi Interview!
2nd interview, any special protocol you guys want me to interview?
#27 @Pendle_fi Interview!
📍In this thread
Recap of Pendle
Story of Pendle
Pendle Vision
Thinking process of adding new listing
Challenges to overcome
Alpha
Kindest thing someone did
📍What is Pendle Finance?
Pendle is a yield-trading protocol that lets users buy crypto assets like ETH, LOOKS and APE at a discount.
📍Story of Pendle
The founding team is made up of many of my long time friends. We worked together on several projects since 2017 but it wasn’t until DeFi Summer in 2020 when the idea of Pendle struck us.
Back then, the play in DeFi was to rotate your funds between the new farms that were popping up. Sometimes this would last for days,weeks if you’re lucky, but most of the time the farms would only last for hours before a newer, better, more profitable alternative presented itself and this got us thinking - how great would it be to lock in those juicy APYs and get all of those rewards upfront.
So we started researching the concepts of fixed rate products, interest rate swaps, and that’s when we realized the huge opportunity that was lacking in DeFi.
The fixed rate market is the biggest segment in traditional finance and if we could somehow bridge and replicate the need for this onchain, a lot more of this money would start flowing into DeFi.
With that, we started ideating around solutions that could leverage the composability of DeFi to enable fixed rate products, and that’s how Pendle was born.
📍Vision of Pendle
Our vision is for Pendle Finance to be come DeFi’s premier portfolio management too. Since DeFi summer in 2020, yield has always been a big part of the crypto narrative.
And just like asset prices, yields can be extremely volatile in DeFi too. Learning how to properly manage these risks, these yield will be the key to unlocking the full potential of DeFi.
The fixed income market is a trillion-dollar segment in traditional finance, the largest segment there is, and we believe Pendle Finance can help bridge the demand between TradFi and DeFi.
When someone wants to manage DeFi yield, we want Pendle to be at the very top of their mind, that is our vision.
📍The thinking process when adding new yield bearing tokens into pendle’s listing?
There are many considerations when it comes to supporting an asset, it can be the recent traction of the protocol, or how interesting or appealing an asset is when it comes to yield trading.
E.g Our recent support Aura rETH-WETH is not only thematic of the recent LSD hype, but also because we believe that there will be legit, interesting use cases in building a yield-trading vertical on top of the LSD ecosystem. But keep in mind that this is only the very beginning.
Ultimately, Pendle’s goal as a yield-trading asset platform is to be completely permissionless. We’ve already got the technical foundation set up in the form of EIP5115, which standardizes all yield-bearing tokens, allowing them to be super composable.
With this and our new AMM model in place, Pendle can allow permissionless listing of yield assets by anyone, and this in our opinion will be the key to democratizing DeFi yield trading.
📍Challenges to overcome
At its core, yield derivative remains to be a complex financial product that is out of reach for most crypto users. Education will continue to be a major focus of ours to bridge this gap in knowledge.
Simplifying the Pendle UI/UX will also be another important front in breaking down the barrier of entry for our users. We’re already doing this with the introduction of a Simple UI, abstracting away all the complexity of yield-trading through “buying assets at a discount”, and we will continue to improve this to help make yield-trading accessible to everyone in DeFi.
📍Alpha to share with the community
We’re looking to be more involved in the LSD narrative! Aura rETH-WETH is the just the first step of many to come. We’re also on the lookout for a good L1/L2 ecosystem to expand to, and many on Discord have already speculated what this might be
Keep an eye out for announcements, and definitely hop into our Discord if you want to learn more about Pendle and our plans for the future!
📍what is the nicest/ kindest thing someone in crypto has ever done for you?
That honour would have to go to my fellow co-founders, for their belief and commitment in taking the plunge with me in starting Pendle.
We have a common goal, a common vision, and there’s no one else I’d rather have beside me in building towards the future.
Thank you for reading & @pendle_fi team!
There will be a personal interview with co-founder @tn_pendle soon as well!