Minting & redeeming
Minting splits one token into two: you deposit SY (or the underlying asset) into a market and receive a matched pair of PT and YT. Redeeming does the reverse: you hand back a PT + YT pair and get SY (or the underlying) out. The two are exact inverses, both settle 1:1, and both are available on any market at any time before maturity.
This is the plumbing beneath every other Pendle action. A swap into PT is really "mint the pair, then sell the YT" bundled into one route; a swap into YT is the mirror of that. Doing the split yourself with mint/redeem is the low-level primitive — useful in a handful of specific situations, and worth understanding even when you never reach for it directly.
This page assumes you already know what PT, YT, and SY are. If not, read How Pendle works first. Here we cover what mint and redeem do on-chain, when they beat a swap, the approvals and simulation OpenPendle runs before you sign, and the special case of redeeming PT for the underlying once a market has matured.
Community pools are unreviewed
Minting and redeeming touch the same market contract as every other action, so the same caution applies. OpenPendle validates a market's provenance — that a Pendle factory it recognizes created it — but it does not and cannot vouch for the asset or the SY contract underneath. Community pools are permissionless and unreviewed — anyone can create one, and interacting with them can lose you funds. Read Risks & disclosures before you sign. Not affiliated with Pendle Finance.
The identity: PT + YT = SY
Everything on this page follows from one equation. Before maturity, Pendle treats one unit of SY as being made of exactly one PT plus one YT:
$$1\ \text{SY} ;=; 1\ \text{PT} ;+; 1\ \text{YT}$$
PT carries the principal you get back at maturity; YT carries the yield the underlying accrues along the way. Neither half alone is worth a whole SY — but together they always are. That is why the split is fully reversible with no price impact: you are not trading anything against a curve, you are just packing and unpacking a fixed relationship.
- Mint = take SY apart into its two halves. One SY in, one PT and one YT out.
- Redeem = put the two halves back together. One PT and one YT in, one SY out.
Because the ratio is fixed, minting and redeeming are not priced by the AMM and carry no slippage — the only variables are gas and Pendle's own protocol fees where they apply. Contrast this with a swap, which moves PT against SY along the AMM curve and therefore has price impact.
What "or the underlying" means
You can mint from SY directly, or from the underlying asset the SY wraps. Minting from the underlying is a convenience: Pendle's Router V4 (0x888888888889758F76e7103c6CbF23ABbF58F946) wraps your underlying into SY and splits it into PT + YT in a single transaction, so you never have to hold the intermediate SY yourself. Redeeming works the same way in reverse — you can take the output as SY, or have the router unwrap it back to the underlying for you.
Which input a market accepts is a property of its SY. Most SYs accept the underlying yield-bearing asset (and sometimes several related tokens); the OpenPendle mint panel quotes against whatever inputs the SY exposes. Note there is no native-ETH SY template in Pendle's common factory, so on the ETH-native chains an SY wraps a wrapped or vault form of ETH rather than raw ETH — check what the pool anatomy shows the SY actually takes.
SY is a wrapper, not a separate risk-free layer
Wrapping the underlying into SY does not add or remove risk — SY is a standardized interface over the same yield source. Minting from the underlying vs. from SY reaches the identical PT + YT position; the choice is purely about which token you happen to be holding.
When to mint/redeem instead of swap
For most positions, you should not mint or redeem manually — you should swap. Swapping into PT or YT gives you a clean single-sided position in one transaction, priced through the AMM. Minting hands you both legs at once, which is rarely what you want if you only came for one.
Reach for mint/redeem in these cases:
| Situation | Why mint/redeem fits |
|---|---|
| You want both PT and YT in equal amounts | Minting gives you the matched pair directly, with no AMM price impact — cheaper and cleaner than buying each leg separately. |
You already hold a matched PT + YT pair and want back to SY / the underlying | Redeeming the pair settles 1:1 with no slippage, rather than selling each leg into the curve. |
| The AMM is thin or the swap's price impact is large | Minting to get PT, then holding, avoids the swap's slippage entirely for the PT leg — though you are then left holding the YT to deal with. |
| You are seeding or unwinding a full position and want the raw legs | Mint/redeem is the primitive that liquidity provision and swaps are built on; sometimes you want the primitive itself. |
| After maturity | The pair no longer trades. Redeeming is how you settle — and PT alone redeems for the underlying once matured (covered below). |
The mental model: a swap changes your net exposure (you end up longer PT or longer YT); a mint/redeem changes your token form (you hold the same combined value, packaged differently). If you want to be long fixed yield, buy PT. If you want to be long variable yield, buy YT. If you genuinely want the balanced pair, mint it.
Minting then selling one leg = a swap
Buying PT through OpenPendle already does this for you under the hood: the router mints the pair and sells the YT into the pool in one atomic transaction, leaving you with PT. You almost never need to replicate that by hand — it is simpler and usually cheaper to let the swap route do it. Mint manually when you actually want to keep both halves.
Minting, step by step
The flow in OpenPendle mirrors every other action on a market: pick the network, open the pool, connect, then quote and sign.
- Open the market and pass the provenance gate. Paste the
PendleMarketaddress, let OpenPendle confirm a recognized Pendle factory created it, and read the trust panel. See Opening a pool. - Connect an injected wallet on the market's chain. Reads work wallet-less, but minting is a transaction, so you need a connected wallet on the right network — see Connecting a wallet and clear any wrong-network banner.
- Choose the Mint action and your input token. Select SY or, more commonly, the underlying the SY accepts. The quote updates live as you type — enter an input amount and OpenPendle shows the PT and YT you will receive.
- Approve the exact amount. If the input token needs an allowance for the router, OpenPendle requests an exact-amount approval — never an unlimited allowance. Confirm it in your wallet. (If the input is native ETH on a chain where the SY accepts it, there is no approval — the amount is sent as
msg.value.) - Review the simulation and sign. Before the transaction is offered for signing, OpenPendle simulates it against the live chain at the current block, so the PT + YT you see is what the mint will actually produce. Sign, and the pair lands in your wallet.
Because the split is 1:1 and un-priced by the AMM, the amounts you receive move only with the SY's own exchange rate to the underlying, not with pool liquidity. There is nothing to set a slippage tolerance against on the split itself.
Redeeming, step by step
Redeeming before maturity requires you to hold both legs — one PT and one YT for each unit of SY you want back. OpenPendle will quote the pair you can redeem from your balances.
- Open the market and connect, exactly as for minting.
- Choose the Redeem action. OpenPendle reads your PT and YT balances and lets you redeem up to the matched amount you hold. Redeeming needs equal parts PT and YT; any unmatched excess of one leg stays in your wallet (unmatched PT can instead be sold, and unmatched YT sold, through the AMM).
- Pick the output — SY, or have the router unwrap to the underlying.
- Approve the exact amounts. Redeeming spends your PT and YT, so the router may need exact-amount approvals for each; OpenPendle requests only what the transaction consumes.
- Simulate and sign. As always, the transaction is simulated at the live block before you sign, and the output settles 1:1 (net of any Pendle protocol fee on the redemption path and gas).
Redeem needs the pair; a single leg is a swap, not a redeem
If you hold only PT, or only YT, you cannot "redeem" back to SY before maturity — there is nothing to recombine. Exiting a single leg early means selling it into the AMM at the prevailing price: sell PT or sell YT. Redemption is specifically for a balanced PT + YT pair. (The one exception is PT on its own at maturity — see below.)
Approvals and simulation
Two OpenPendle guarantees apply to every mint and redeem, and they are worth stating explicitly because they shape what your wallet will ask you to confirm.
- Exact-amount approvals. When an input token (or a leg you are redeeming) needs an ERC-20 allowance for Router V4
0x888888888889758F76e7103c6CbF23ABbF58F946, OpenPendle requests an allowance for exactly the amount the transaction spends — not an unlimited approval. You may therefore see an approval prompt each time the amount increases; that is the deliberate trade-off for not leaving a standing allowance behind. Native ETH inputs (where the SY accepts them) skip approval entirely and are passed asmsg.value. - Simulate before sign. Every transaction is simulated against the live chain at the current block before OpenPendle offers it for signing. If the split or the redemption would revert — a stale allowance, an SY that rejects the input, a fee-on-transfer or rebasing token the SY cannot handle — the simulation surfaces it before you spend gas on a failed transaction, rather than after.
Neither of these is a Pendle feature; they are how OpenPendle constructs and dispatches the call. OpenPendle ships no contracts of its own — it calls Pendle's deployed Router V4 with hand-written ABIs and takes no fee of its own. Pendle's own protocol fees (for example the YT interest fee taken on yield) still apply and are charged by Pendle's contracts.
Redeeming PT at maturity
Before maturity, PT and YT are two halves of a whole and you need both to reconstitute SY. At or after maturity, that changes.
At the maturity timestamp, three things become true at once: PT becomes redeemable 1:1 for the underlying, YT is worth 0 (all its yield has been paid out), and the market stops trading. Because YT is now worthless and there is nothing left to recombine, PT no longer needs a matching YT to settle — a matured PT redeems for the underlying on its own.
| Before maturity | At / after maturity | |
|---|---|---|
| Redeem SY / underlying | Requires a matched PT + YT pair, 1:1 | — |
| Redeem PT alone | Not possible (must sell into the AMM) | Yes — PT redeems 1:1 for the underlying |
| YT | Holds the right to remaining yield | Worth 0; nothing left to claim |
| The AMM | Trades PT ↔ SY | Stopped; no swaps |
So the post-maturity exit is simple: open the matured market in OpenPendle, choose the redeem action for your PT, and settle it 1:1 for the underlying — no YT required, no swap, no rush. There is no deadline; matured PT can be redeemed whenever you get to it. If you happen to still hold matching YT, it simply contributes nothing.
Example — illustrative numbers only
These figures are invented to show the mechanics; they are not a live quote, not a specific asset, and not a guaranteed rate.
Suppose you minted a position and hold 10,000 PT in a market that has just passed maturity.
- Each PT now redeems for 1.0000 unit of the underlying.
- Redeeming settles 10,000 PT → ≈ 10,000 underlying, in a single transaction, with no YT needed and no AMM price impact.
- Any YT you also hold is worth 0 and can be ignored.
Whatever the underlying's variable yield did over the term does not change this settlement — that variability belonged to the YT holder along the way. What you get back is your principal at par, in the underlying asset.
"Par" is only as good as the underlying
PT redeems 1:1 for the underlying, whatever that turns out to be worth. If the underlying asset or its SY is compromised, de-pegs, or is exotic/broken, par itself can be impaired — you can receive your principal in an asset that has lost value, or fail to redeem at all. Maturity settles the Pendle mechanics cleanly; it does not make a bad underlying good. This risk is highest on unreviewed community pools.
For the full account of what maturity does to each token and how "rolling" into a later maturity works, see Maturity & redemption.
Fee-on-transfer and rebasing tokens
Two categories of token do not work as SY inputs, by Pendle's design and OpenPendle's factory rules: fee-on-transfer tokens (which skim a cut on each transfer and break SY accounting) and rebasing tokens (whose balances change out from under the SY and break redemption). Pendle's common SY factory blocks both when a market is created, so you generally will not encounter them on a well-formed community pool. If a malformed SY still misbehaves, the simulate-before-sign step is your backstop — a mint or redeem that would break will typically revert in simulation before you spend gas. See Creating an SY for the constraints on what can be wrapped in the first place.
Summary
PT + YT = SY. Mint splits SY (or the underlying) into the pair; redeem recombines the pair back to SY (or the underlying). Both are 1:1 and available any time before maturity.- Mint/redeem is un-priced by the AMM — no slippage, only gas and any Pendle protocol fee. A swap is priced by the AMM and has price impact.
- Swap to change your net exposure (long PT or long YT); mint/redeem to change token form while holding the same combined value. Want just one leg? Buy PT or buy YT instead of minting both.
- OpenPendle uses exact-amount approvals and simulates every transaction before you sign, through Pendle's Router V4
0x888888888889758F76e7103c6CbF23ABbF58F946— with no contracts and no fee of its own. - At maturity, PT redeems 1:1 for the underlying on its own (YT is worth 0, the market stops trading). No pair, no swap, no deadline.
See also
- How Pendle works — the full PT / YT / SY split this page operates on.
- Principal Tokens (PT) — the fixed-yield leg you mint.
- Yield Tokens (YT) — the variable-yield leg you mint alongside it.
- Maturity & redemption — what maturity does, and redeeming PT for the underlying afterward.
- Buying PT (fixed yield) — take just the PT leg via a swap.
- Buying YT (yield exposure) — take just the YT leg via a swap.
- Risks & disclosures — please read before you sign anything.