A sleeper in the perps category

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The headline in crypto today is Lighter’s LIT token finally going live, marking a key moment in the ongoing battle for perps market share. In today’s coverage, we break down one of the most overlooked beneficiaries of perps growth (Pendle via Boros), and take a closer look at the evolving dynamics within the Solana liquid-staking landscape.

Indices

Markets kicked off the final week of the year on a softer note. Bitcoin (-0.81%) underperformed its US equity benchmarks, with the Nasdaq (-0.59%) and S&P 500 (-0.39%) posting modest pullbacks after tech stocks drove the S&P 500 to all-time highs last week. Meanwhile, Gold (-4.04%) and other precious metals saw a sharp selloff amid profit-taking, after having been standout performers in the past few weeks.

Back on the crypto front, Perps (+1.3%) was the only index to finish the day in the green, with HYPE leading gains ahead of Lighter’s TGE today. Competition for perps market share has heated up in recent months. Lighter has shown that verifiable execution and zero retail fees can drive market-leading volume, leading perps trading with just over $200 billion in volume over the past 30 days, followed by Aster ($172 billion) and Hyperliquid ($161 billion). That said, Hyperliquid remains the only one of the three operating without active incentives and is the clear revenue leader, generating ~$47 million over the same period.

The real test will be whether Lighter can hold its volume lead after TGE, especially with many attributing its recent surge to points farming. In an announcement thread last night, the team outlined the token structure and airdrop details, noting 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. Token distribution is split between ecosystem (50% of total supply) and team/investors (remaining 50%), with 25% of total supply airdropped to points holders from Seasons 1 and 2.

As of writing, LIT is trading at a circulating market cap of $695 million and an FDV of $2.8 billion. Per DeFiLlama, the protocol has generated $8.76 million in revenue over the past 30 days ($105 million annualized), implying LIT trades at a P/S of ~7x and an FDV/Sales of ~27x. 

Market update

While everyone is busy debating who will win the perps race (mostly Hyperliquid vs. Lighter chatter after Lighter’s TGE), the most interesting beneficiary might be hiding in plain sight: Pendle, via Boros. In my view, Pendle stands to gain from the structural growth and adoption of perpetual futures, regardless of who ultimately dominates, on either CEX or DEX rails.

Pendle launched Boros in early August 2025, bringing to DeFi a new onchain financial primitive: interest rate swaps. One can think of Boros as a perps exchange itself, but with two key twists. First, instead of betting on the price movements of assets, one is betting on the movements of yield. Second, while perpetuals (as the name suggests) have no expiry, Boros markets have a maturity date. 

Although Boros has rolled out gradually, early traction has been strong. As shown in the chart below, daily open interest (OI) by maturity peaked at $245 million on Dec. 26, 2025, when eight markets with a combined $177 million in OI expired. The growth pattern in OI is highly cyclical, much like Pendle v2, reflecting the natural peaks and troughs around the maturities and redemptions inherent to yield markets.

Regarding its underlying mechanics, Boros enables trading of funding rates by creating something called a Yield Unit (YU). For those familiar with Pendle v2 markets, YU is similar to the Yield Token (YT), and represents the future yield of an underlying asset until its maturity. Traders can either go long or short the YU.

• Long position: If a trader is long 2 YU-BTCUSDC-Hyperliquid at 10% implied APR, they are committed to paying a 10% fixed rate, while receiving the underlying APR (funding rate payments) equivalent to a 2 BTC position in Hyperliquid BTCUSDC.
• Short position: In a short position, the trader would commit to paying the floating underlying APR in return for a fixed APR, determined by the average implied APR at the time they entered the position (10% in this example).

On Boros, rates are settled periodically at the same time as the underlying exchange’s funding rate settlement. For example, funding rates on Binance are settled every eight hours, so rates on Boros for the Binance pools are also settled every eight hours. Similarly, Hyperliquid funding rates are settled hourly, and Boros rates for these pools follow the same hourly settlement schedule. At maturity (or when the position is closed), if the average Underlying APR > average implied APR upon entry, a long position will profit and vice versa. 

Beyond OI, which currently sits at ~$88 million, another key metric for Boros is notional trading volume. As shown in the chart below, Boros has processed roughly $6.8 billion in cumulative volume since launch, with a median monthly volume of around $1.5 billion over the past four months.

Boros has two main fee sources: (1) a flat fee on top of the implied APR for every swap, which varies by market, and (2) a flat fee of 0.2% of the fixed APR side of every YU during settlement. The chart below shows that Boros has generated ~$300,000 in cumulative revenue since inception, averaging ~$67,000 in monthly revenue over the past four months. Of note, liquidation fees remain insignificant, amounting to ~$1,300 since inception.

Swap fees correlate with notional trading volume. In a market with a swap fee tier of 0.05%, traders will profit if implied APR changes by more than 0.1% in their favor (assuming no yield settlement), as traders will have to open and close the position, thus incurring 2x the swap fee. On the other hand, OI fees (0.2% of the fixed APR during settlement) follow the cyclical growth patterns of Boros’ OI.

While the bull case for Boros is that it becomes DeFi’s default interest rate derivatives venue (extending beyond funding rates to stablecoin yields, money market rates, LST yields and more), its largest opportunity over the next six to twelve months is squarely in the perpetuals vertical. Boros launched with only BTCUSDT and ETHUSDT perps markets on Binance in August, but has since expanded to additional venues (Hyperliquid and OKX) and assets (HYPE). The chart below shows that OI was dominated by Binance early on, but is now almost evenly distributed across venues as of Dec. 29: Binance (37%), Hyperliquid (35%), and OKX (29%). 

Regarding asset dominance, the ETH-USD market remains the largest on Boros by OI, followed by BTC-USD and HYPE-USD. 

A key advantage of Boros is that it benefits from the maturation of perpetuals without being tied to any single venue, since it can support multiple exchanges and assets. As more sophisticated participants enter the perps space, they’re likely to demand strategies that Boros uniquely enables: hedging funding payments on a long position, hedging funding receivables on a short position, or implementing cash-and-carry trades. Looking ahead, as perps gain regulatory acceptance and more traditional firms trade RWA perps like equities and commodities, these players will want to trade YUs of TSLA, gold and hundreds of other assets on Boros.

Today, Boros represents less than 5% of Pendle v2 revenue, but it is well-positioned to be the most important growth vector for the protocol and may eventually rival or exceed v2 over time.

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