Pendle (PENDLE)
Unlock Schedule
Pendle (PENDLE) Token Unlock & Vesting Schedule
The unlock chart above provides a clear visual overview of the Pendle (PENDLE) token release schedule, showing when and how tokens enter circulation across investor, team, treasury, and community allocations. Understanding these tokenomics dynamics is critical for evaluating potential supply pressure, inflation impact, and market liquidity over time — key factors that can influence PENDLE price performance.
Each color segment in the chart corresponds to a specific allocation group described in the Allocations section below. Underlying assumptions and data models used to reconstruct this schedule are explained in detail under Assumptions, while broader utility insights and token use cases are covered in Tokenomics & Utility.
Tokenomics & Utility
Supply schedule and emissions
Pendle tokenomics center on measured emissions and long‑term alignment. As documented by Pendle, weekly PENDLE emissions (as of September 2024) decrease by 1.1% per week until April 2026, after which the protocol targets a terminal inflation rate of 2% per year to maintain incentives. The project also states that all team and investor tokens have fully vested, so new supply growth comes primarily from incentives and ecosystem building after 2024. (docs.pendle.finance)
Public supply trackers show a current total supply figure of 281,527,448 PENDLE, which is the basis many dashboards use to model long‑term dilution together with the terminal inflation plan above. This provides a simple frame to understand Pendle tokenomics without tying anything to day‑to‑day PENDLE price moves. (coingecko.com)
What the PENDLE token does
The PENDLE token has three main roles:
- Governance: lock PENDLE into vePENDLE to vote on market incentives and parameters.
- Incentives: liquidity providers and ecosystem programs can receive PENDLE emissions directed by vePENDLE voting.
- Value alignment: vePENDLE holders share fees tied to YT yield and swap activity per the protocol’s current policy. (docs.pendle.finance)
vePENDLE boosts and market flywheel
Locking PENDLE increases a user’s voting power and can boost LP rewards across their positions. This creates a “flywheel”: deeper liquidity leads to better trading, which drives more fees, which attract vePENDLE voting, which channels more incentives to the most active markets. Third‑party vote markets and dashboards have emerged around this mechanism, reflecting how governance steers emissions across pools. (docs.pendle.finance)
Assumptions
- Supply is uncapped; we modeled emissions through 2035-04-30.
Pendle’s tokenomics specify terminal inflation of 2% per annum starting Apr/May 2026; thus total supply increases indefinitely. We include a nine-year horizon for charting and note longer-term emissions continue beyond this window.
- Liquidity Incentives schedule linearized by month.
Official policy is weekly (initial 1.2M/week for 26 weeks; thereafter weekly decay; then 2%/year). For a monthly chart, we convert each policy phase to linear monthly unlocks totaling the phase’s computed emissions.
- Post–Year 2 emissions (2023-06-29 to 2024-08-31) approximated as +7,384,904 PENDLE.
Calculated as the increase from 251,061,124 (Binance Launchpool listing total supply) to 258,446,028 (mid‑Aug 2024 reporting). Used due to absence of an official week-by-week series; marked lower confidence.
- Investors and Advisors vesting modeled as four quarterly cliffs from 2021-07-28 to 2022-04-28.
Multiple sources describe 1‑year vest with quarterly tranches starting 3 months after LDB. The original Pendle vesting table is image-only; we represent it as quarterly cliffs and mark medium confidence.
- Binance Launchpool (5,021,222 PENDLE over 25 days in Jul 2023) treated as distribution from the Ecosystem Fund, not a separate new issuance.
Binance states Launchpool rewards equal 2% of total supply; on-chain monitors show Ecosystem Fund multisig transfers to Binance around related periods. We avoid double counting by keeping Ecosystem Fund as the unlocking allocation.
- 1. https://docs.pendle.finance/pendle-v2/ProtocolMechanics/Mechanisms/Tokenomics
- 2. https://docs.pendle.finance/img/ProtocolMechanics/pendle_distribution.png
- 3. https://medium.com/pendle/pendle-tokenomics-3a33d9caa0e4
- 4. https://medium.com/pendle/bootstrapping-pendle-liquidity-515a5161ea2d
- 5. https://www.binance.com/en/support/announcement/introducing-pendle-pendle-on-binance-launchpool-farm-pendle-by-staking-bnb-and-tusd-8baee8ca20d64074ba503aa3963e952e
- 6. https://governance.aave.com/t/arfc-onboard-pendle-pt-tokens-to-aave-v3-core-instance/20541/2
- 7. https://flipster.io/en/blog/what-is-pendle