Pendle becomes the largest DeFi venue for tokenized stocks with about 18.5% market share

Pendle official brand guide (pendle.finance)

The yield-trading protocol overtook rivals after launching equity yield markets and a one-click leverage product

Mon 9 Nov 2026 · 22:02 EST · 3 min read

In Stocks

Pendle is now DeFi’s largest single venue for tokenized stocks, holding about 18.5% of the market.

That is a notable turn for a protocol best known for slicing up interest rates. It took the top spot by November 9, 2026, roughly a week after it climbed into second place.

How Pendle climbed the leaderboard

The rise happened in two quick steps. On November 2, 2026, Pendle held approximately 17% of DeFi’s tokenized-stock market, good enough for second place.

Seven days later, its share reached 18.5%, putting it ahead of every other single venue.

The underlying deposits explain the jump. Pendle’s tokenized-stock total value locked (TVL), meaning the dollar value of assets users have parked in the protocol, reached $33.8 million by October 31, 2026.

That figure included $16 million added in a single month. Put another way, close to half of Pendle’s stock-token deposits showed up within roughly 30 days.

The data comes from Token Terminal, which also flagged Pendle as a standout for month-over-month TVL growth in the category.

The products behind the growth

Two launches lined up neatly with the surge. The first was a set of dedicated yield markets for tokenized equities on Base, including NVDAc, a Nvidia stock token, and GOOGLc, an Alphabet stock token.

Each of those markets was initially incentivized with $20K in USDC.

The second was PendleLoop, which went live on October 22, 2026. It lets users open leveraged long positions on select Coinbase-issued stock tokens with a single click.

PendleLoop covers seven Coinbase stock tokens, with leverage ranging from 2.6x to 4.2x.

To understand why Pendle fits this niche, it helps to know how the protocol works. Pendle takes yield-bearing assets and splits them into two tradable pieces: Principal Tokens (PT) and Yield Tokens (YT).

The PT represents the underlying asset itself. The YT represents the income stream that asset is expected to generate.

A market that grew roughly 25-fold

Pendle’s climb is happening inside a category that has expanded quickly. TVL in tokenized stocks across DeFi surged to approximately $300 million by late October 2026.

A year earlier, that figure sat somewhere between $11.8 million and $13 million. That works out to roughly 25-fold growth year over year.

Pendle isn’t alone in chasing that flow. It competes with Uniswap (v3 and v4), Kamino, and Aave V4 for tokenized-equity activity.

That roster matters. Uniswap is a trading venue, Aave and Kamino are lending markets, and Pendle is a yield-trading protocol. Each offers a different reason to bring a stock token onchain.

Still, perspective is useful. DeFi’s tokenized-stock activity sits within a broader market estimated at around $4.6 billion, which still predominantly consists of traditional equities.

What this means for DeFi and tokenized equities

The most interesting takeaway is that demand for tokenized stocks in DeFi appears to be about more than simply holding them. Pendle’s growth came from yield markets and leverage, not from being the cheapest place to swap.

It also highlights how much of this activity rides on specific issuers and chains. Pendle’s stock markets lean on Coinbase-issued tokens and the Base network, so the protocol’s momentum is tied to those tokens staying available and liquid.

The incentive question is worth watching. Pendle’s NVDAc and GOOGLc markets started with $20K USDC each in rewards, and DeFi has a long history of deposits that leave once incentives fade.

For the broader sector, the trend line is the headline. Going from roughly $12 million to approximately $300 million in a year shows that tokenized equities have found real traction in DeFi, even if the totals remain small next to traditional markets.

Disclosure: This article was edited by Vivian Nguyen. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.