Exploring Pendle Comps on Solana
Solana's flown past $10B TVL, but fixed yield hasn't taken off yet. Why?
Intro
Pendle went live on HyperEVM just four weeks ago, and has rapidly achieved $800M in TVL. This sparked my curiosity, and over the past weekend I dove deep. Pendle splits yield-bearing assets into principal tokens (PTs) and yield tokens (YTs), a DeFi primitive allowing users to hold fixed value or speculate on variable yield. I wanted to learn about the best yield opportunities in the ecosystem, many of which are being executed at size. As I continued exploring these leveraged strategies, I kept asking myself one question:
Why hasn’t this model taken off on Solana?
In theory, Solana is positioned perfectly, with TVL flying past $10B and new yield-bearing assets popping up everywhere. The degen chain seemed to be lacking degen yield plays, and I was determined to find out why. It turns out there are a few SOL-native Pendle comps out there, including Exponent, RateX, and Sandglass. None of them have achieved anything close to Pendle’s traction, nor have any of them even launched a token.
Pendle’s 2025 Zenith Roadmap highlighted their plans to expand PT offerings to non EVM ecosystems, and what better place to start than Solana? The launch would add billions to their TAM, and with no clear market leader, their brand would solidify them in the spotlight. Given Solana’s expansive developer ecosystem and deep liquidity, it’s surprising that none of the comps have fully captured this billion-dollar opportunity.
The Three Comps
Sandglass
Launched by the Lifinity team in April 2024, Sandglass was the first pool-based yield trading protocol on Solana. Just like Pendle, it splits yield-bearing tokens into PTs and YTs, allowing users to bet on price and yield moving in opposite directions. Sandglass entered the market just as TVL on Solana had recently tripled in size, yet failed to sustain growth despite the advantage.
Sandglass remains a niche platform today, with the lowest liquidity and trading volumes when compared to RateX and Exponent. There is no native token for the Sandglass platform, with no value accrual to the LFNTY token either. Sandglass never scaled beyond a niche userbase and thus sits at the bottom of Solana’s yield trading sector. The first-mover advantage meant nothing for Sandglass without deep DeFi integrations or a native token.
Exponent
Exponent looked like the breakout candidate that Solana was waiting for, but its dominance was short-lived. The team raised $2.1M led by RockawayX to build the leading Fixed Income market on Solana DeFi. Exponent holds the distinction of being the only Solana yield platform on Kamino, as principle tokens for kySOL and fragSOL are available on Kamino’s lending markets. This allows PTs on Exponent to be lent as collateral, creating unique looping opportunities that were not previously possible on Solana.
Exponent peaked with over $130M TVL in July before seeing rapid outflows after their largest market of fragSOL reached maturity. The maturity date also marked the end of Fragmetric’s Season 1 of airdrop incentives. Much of its TVL was concentrated in a handful of wallets farming these rewards. Without sticky liquidity, Exponent rapidly lost over 60% of its value, experiencing $55M in outflows over the following two days. Just like its competitors, Exponent lacks a native token, and this rapid TVL dip highlights the challenge for yield trading platforms to sustain liquidity without extensive points incentives.
RateX
RateX launched in October 2024, positioning itself as Solana’s leveraged yield exchange. The platform provides unique tooling for leveraged YT trading, and an XP rewards system for users to speculate on a future airdrop. The protocol design is notably more complex than its competitors. RateX targets an advanced trading userbase, which can limit the appeal to a broader audience.
RateX has solidified its spot as the market leader today, but only because Solana hasn’t produced a true Pendle. Over 55% of deposits on the platform are concentrated in fragSOL, as airdrop farmers aim to maximize their Fragmetric points. Their native XP leaderboard shows several whales farming points, raising questions about long-term sustainability and the extent of their userbase. Without any DeFi lending integrations, RateX’s TVL dominance is fragile, supported by temporary airdrop farming inflows.
Competitor Comparison
Pendle’s $10B+ TVL shows how dominant a yield tokenizing and trading protocol can become with compounding incentives and deep DeFi integrations. Even Pendle’s Hyperliquid deployment dwarfs Solana’s native experiments, despite launching just weeks ago. In theory, the market leader on Solana should already be managing over $1B in TVL if it were to match Pendle’s market dominance on ETH mainnet. Furthermore, applying the same logic with the PENDLE token, this Solana market leader would have a 9-figure native token. Rather, all three competitors remain with 8-figures of TVL, no deep DeFi integrations and no native tokens.
Part of this gap is tied to systemic reasons, rather than placing all the blame on protocol design. Solana LSTs are worth ~$5B in total, but they haven’t yet seen the same growth flywheel that Lido’s stETH did on Ethereum. Jito is the market leader, but shares liquidity with competitors such as Marinade and Blaze. Solana’s fast airdrop cycles invite capital to rotate aggressively between points farming strategies, rather than parking funds in longer-term plays. These structural considerations have made it difficult for any one Pendle comp to establish market dominance on Solana, which has left the ecosystem without a clear leader.
The Missing Catalyst
Exponent’s rapid growth throughout Q2 2025 made it look like Solana finally had a breakout market leader. As soon as the July 10 PTs matured and Fragmetric’s airdrop season ended, the protocol wiped out months of growth within days. Kamino’s support for Exponent’s PT-kySOL and PT-fragSOL showed great progress as an early milestone, but has failed to establish a sticky user base as both markets are well below their supply caps.
Pendle’s 2025 story has been a true breakout, and shows exactly what Solana is missing. Since the proposal to launch Pendle PTs on Aave went live, TVL has increased more than $7B in under 5 months. Combined with major integrations on Morpho and Euler, Pendle has cemented its spot as the industry leader, enabling looping and advanced yield strategies at scale.
A huge share of this growth came from Ethena’s USDe and sUSDe pools, attracting incredible inflows and filling up multi-billion dollar vaults. This demand has been driven by speculation surrounding a second ENA airdrop, as DeFi farmers use Pendle to leverage their yield and airdrop exposure.
It’s important to note that Pendle isn’t solely carried by Ethena and Aave looping. Their highly-polished and customizable UX paired with cross-chain credibility has solidified their brand as the most trusted yield tokenization platform in all of DeFi.
Conclusion
When Pendle launches on Solana, it will enter as a decisive force with credibility, brand, and a proven track record. It won’t need to bootstrap and build a reputation from scratch in the same way that RateX, Exponent, and Sandglass have had to do. These three competitors all provide functional yield tokenization on Solana, but they also all lack expansive DeFi integrations, along with native tokens and governance.
On the back of their proven playbook, Pendle PTs are likely to see instant integrations with Kamino, Jupiter Lend, and Save. These expansive DeFi integrations and lending opportunities are what triggered the rapid liquidity growth across EVM chains. Unless Pendle fails to localize UX for Solana, their brand and integrations will likely outpace the Solana-native competitors from day one.
At first glance, I thought that Solana’s speed and cost advantage would’ve created the perfect environment for yield tokenization to boom. Rather, we’re seeing a story unfold with no native market leader, and now Pendle is coming soon to eat everybody’s lunch.
References
https://medium.com/pendle/pendle-2025-zenith-cf1a91e6e23f
https://defillama.com
https://sandglass.so/
https://medium.com/@lifinity.io/introducing-sandglass-a-yield-trading-protocol-on-solana-9b5ee5b33aff
https://rate-x.io/
https://www.exponent.finance/