🧵 PANews Original｜Interview with Pendle Co-Founder TN LEE: V2 Consolidates, Boros Takes Off — Building the “Apple” of DeFi 1/ From @KyberNetwork to @pendle_fi, TN LEE’s decade-long entrepreneurial journey has spanned nearly every major cycle in DeFi’s evolution. As one of the earliest builders in the space, he has witnessed the rise of liquidity mining, yield farming, LST/LRT, and RWA. During the DeFi Summer boom, he identified interest rates as the core variable driving both capital flows and user behavior—an insight that ultimately led to the creation of Pendle, an innovative protocol centered around interest rate derivatives.

2/ “V2 + Boros”: A Dual Product Strategy for Yield Innovation In a recent interview with PANews, @tn_pendle emphasized that Pendle has no plans to offer spot or perpetual trading, choosing instead to focus entirely on interest rate products—aiming to build the best interest-rate infrastructure in DeFi and beyond. Pendle currently operates under a dual product framework: “V2 + Boros.” - V2 focuses on scalable expansion in the stablecoin and mainstream yield markets. - Boros targets leveraged interest rate trading, exploring product-market fit for new markets such as funding rates and staking yields.

3/ Building the “Apple” of DeFi Since its launch in 2020, Pendle has evolved from a high-APY yield aggregator into a leading protocol. In 2024, it achieved a major breakthrough through integrations with EigenLayer, the LRT ecosystem, and yield point tokenization mechanisms, driving its TVL to a peak of $13.5 billion. TN LEE describes Pendle as following an “Apple-style brand architecture,” with Pendle as the umbrella brand and all underlying products channeling value accrual back to the PENDLE token. Looking ahead, the team plans to expand into RWA and Bitcoin yield markets, broadening the scope of interest rate trading across asset classes.

4/ Simplifying Yield Access, Powering DeFi’s Next Growth Cycle On the user experience front, Pendle abstracts PT (Principal Tokens) into “fixed deposit”–like products to lower entry barriers for everyday users, while YT (Yield Tokens) offer flexibility for advanced traders. TN LEE highlighted that DeFi’s growth relies not only on protocol innovation but also on open collaboration and ecosystem synergy.

5/ Looking forward, TN LEE believes RWA yields and Bitcoin-based sustainable yield will serve as the two core engines driving DeFi’s next growth cycle.