Pendle: yield aggregators rating breakdown
Yield tokenisation, 13 chains
The most transparent design in the category, because it is not really discretionary at all: Pendle splits a yield-bearing asset into a principal token and a yield token, and lets the market price them. A depositor buying PT knows the exact fixed return and maturity at the moment of purchase — no strategy can be changed under them, because there is no strategy, only a maturity date. $1.18bn locked across 13 chains.
The most transparent design in the category, because it is not really discretionary at all: Pendle splits a yield-bearing asset into a principal token and a yield token, and lets the market price them.
How the score is built
Each criterion is scored 0–10 and weighted. The median column is the middle score across every entry in this ranking, so a row reads as a position rather than a number.
| Criterion | What we measured | Weight | Score | Category median | Rank | Weighted gap |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Who moves your money, and what happened last time | none — the position is a fixed claim to maturity discretion over your deposit · sourced · 2026-08-27 · source | 30% | 8 | 7 | 1 of 8 | +0.30 |
| Can you see what you actually own? | — | 22% | 9 | 7 | 1 of 8 | +0.44 |
| Size and survival | — | 20% | 10 | 6.5 | 1 of 8 | +0.70 |
| What they take | — | 18% | 8 | 6.5 | 2 of 8 | +0.27 |
| Chains and assets | 13 chains · sourced · 2026-08-27 · source | 10% | 9 | 7 | 2 of 8 | +0.20 |
Measured 27 August 2026 · weights and method · decided by size and survival, worth +0.70 points against the median
Who moves your money, and what happened last time: 8/10
Who can change a strategy, how fast, and whether a timelock or a multisig stands between a compromised key and your deposit. Then every incident on record with what happened to depositors: Yearn’s DAI vault lost about $11m to a price-manipulated Curve strategy in February 2021 and repaid users from the treasury; a misconfigured legacy contract cost roughly $10m more in April 2023, with no comparable make-whole. Same protocol, opposite outcomes.
Scored 8 of 10 against a category median of 7, which places it 1st of 8 among yield aggregators on this criterion. At a 30% weight that is 0.30 points above the median contribution of the weighted total. The best score in the category is 8, the worst 5.
Can you see what you actually own?: 9/10
Whether the current strategy and its underlying positions are published in a form a depositor can read, whether the advertised APY is net of fees, and whether historical performance is available rather than a trailing best number. A vault that shows a yield and not its composition is asking for trust it has not evidenced.
Scored 9 of 10 against a category median of 7, which places it 1st of 8 among yield aggregators on this criterion. At a 22% weight that is 0.44 points above the median contribution of the weighted total. The best score in the category is 9, the worst 5.
Size and survival: 10/10
Total value locked at a stated timestamp, and how long the protocol has operated through full market cycles. In a category where the product is discretion, a long record is itself evidence.
Scored 10 of 10 against a category median of 6.5, which places it 1st of 8 among yield aggregators on this criterion. At a 20% weight that is 0.70 points above the median contribution of the weighted total. The best score in the category is 10, the worst 4.
What they take: 8/10
Published performance and management fees, quoted from the protocol’s own documentation, and whether the displayed APY already has them deducted. Where a protocol’s fee schedule is not stated plainly in its own docs, that is recorded as a finding rather than estimated.
Scored 8 of 10 against a category median of 6.5, which places it 2nd of 8 among yield aggregators on this criterion. At a 18% weight that is 0.27 points above the median contribution of the weighted total. The best score in the category is 9, the worst 5.
Chains and assets: 9/10
Chains with real deposits and the range of assets supported, from public data at a stated timestamp.
Scored 9 of 10 against a category median of 7, which places it 2nd of 8 among yield aggregators on this criterion. At a 10% weight that is 0.20 points above the median contribution of the weighted total. The best score in the category is 10, the worst 5.
Other measurements
Its nearest neighbours in this ranking
| # | Entry | Size and survival | How it differs |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2 | Spark Savings | 10 | Level on size and survival; the gap is elsewhere. |
| 3 | Convex Finance | 9 | Behind by 1 on size and survival. |
Questions about this score
What is the difference between PT and YT on Pendle?
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PT is the principal: it matures at par on a known date, so buying it at a discount locks in a fixed return. YT is the yield stream: it pays whatever the underlying asset earns until maturity and is worth zero afterwards, so it is a leveraged bet that yields stay high. They are opposite positions and the interface will happily sell you either — buy the wrong one and the outcome is not a smaller profit, it is a structurally different trade.
Is a fixed yield on Pendle actually risk-free?
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No. The rate is fixed; the asset underneath is not. If the token you bought principal exposure to loses its peg, gets exploited, or its issuer fails, your fixed claim is against something impaired. Pendle removes manager discretion from the equation, which is a real improvement — it does not remove the risk of the thing you chose.