Pendle's on-chain interest rate swap platform Boros recorded $245 million in peak daily open interest on Dec. 26, 2025, when eight funding-rate markets carrying $177 million combined OI expired — a volume profile that positions the protocol as a quiet beneficiary of the intensifying competition between Hyperliquid, Lighter and Aster for perpetual futures market share.

That same week, Lighter's LIT token went live at a circulating market cap of $695 million and a fully diluted valuation of $2.8 billion, according to data compiled by Blockworks and DeFiLlama. Lighter led perps DEX volume over the trailing 30 days with just over $200 billion traded, ahead of Aster's $172 billion and Hyperliquid's $161 billion. Hyperliquid — the only one of the three operating without active token incentives — generated roughly $47 million in protocol revenue over the period, making it the clear revenue leader regardless of the volume rankings.

In an announcement thread ahead of the TGE, the Lighter team wrote that "the value created by all Lighter products and services will fully accrue to LIT holders" and that the labs entity will operate at cost. The token allocation splits total supply evenly between ecosystem (50%) and team and investors (50%), with 25% of supply airdropped to points holders from Seasons 1 and 2. The protocol generated $8.76 million in revenue over the trailing 30 days, implying annualized revenue of $105 million — values that put LIT at a price-to-sales ratio near 7x and an FDV-to-sales ratio of roughly 27x.

What is Boros and how does it work?

Pendle launched Boros in early August 2025 as an onchain venue for trading funding rates — the periodic payments exchanged between long and short perps positions. Rather than betting on price, traders speculate on funding-rate trajectories for specific perps markets, with each position carrying a fixed maturity.

Mechanically, the protocol packages funding-rate exposure into Yield Units (YU), analogous to Pendle's Yield Tokens (YT) in its v2 markets. A trader going long 2 YU-BTCUSDC-Hyperliquid at a 10% implied APR commits to paying a 10% fixed rate while receiving the floating funding rate equivalent to a 2 BTC position on Hyperliquid. The reverse applies for shorts. Settlement aligns with the underlying exchange's funding cycle: every eight hours for Binance markets and hourly for Hyperliquid markets.

Why does Boros matter if it still trails Pendle v2?

The platform has expanded rapidly since launch. Cumulative notional trading volume stands at approximately $6.8 billion, with a median monthly volume of around $1.5 billion over the past four months. Daily OI follows a cyclical pattern — peaking around maturities and contracting after redemptions — much like Pendle v2.

Current OI sits at roughly $88 million. Boros has generated about $300,000 in cumulative revenue since inception, averaging $67,000 per month, with liquidation fees totaling just $1,300. Two fee streams make up the bulk: a flat swap fee layered on top of implied APR and a 0.2% fee applied to the fixed APR leg at settlement.

Which venues are gaining share inside Boros?

Boros launched in August with only BTCUSDT and ETHUSDT perps on Binance, then expanded to Hyperliquid, OKX and the HYPE asset over subsequent months. As of Dec. 29, OI was split between Binance (37%), Hyperliquid (35%) and OKX (29%) — a near-even distribution that marks a sharp shift from Binance's early dominance.

ETH-USD remains the largest market by OI, followed by BTC-USD and HYPE-USD. The venue-agnostic design lets Boros capture structural growth in perps without concentrating exposure on any single exchange. That feature could prove decisive as more sophisticated participants enter the space to hedge funding payments on longs, hedge funding receivables on shorts, or run cash-and-carry trades.

What does the next six to twelve months look like?

Pendle currently derives less than 5% of its revenue from Boros, but the protocol is positioned to become Pendle's primary growth vector and could eventually rival or exceed v2. The bull case rests on Boros becoming DeFi's default interest rate derivatives venue — extending beyond funding rates to stablecoin yields, money market rates and liquid staking token yields — while capturing perps-specific flow first.

If real-world asset perpetuals on equities and commodities gain regulatory clearance and traction with traditional firms, those desks will likely demand yield instruments on TSLA, gold and hundreds of other assets that Boros uniquely enables. The protocol's venue-agnostic architecture and a maturing OI curve make it the sleeper candidate in a market that has otherwise narrowed to a Hyperliquid-versus-Lighter narrative.