Trades in a thinly traded Pendle yield market triggered $36.1 million of liquidations on Morpho early Tuesday, closing out leveraged positions in about 14 minutes while leaving lenders whole. Pendle and vault curator Steakhouse Financial both said the price feed did what it was built to do.
The setup is the recurring failure mode in looped yield strategies: a lending market sized far larger than the pool that prices its collateral. The Pendle reUSD pool maturing Dec. 10 holds $8.97 million of liquidity, according to Pendle's API. The Morpho market that accepts its principal tokens as collateral held $67.5 million of collateral against $52.2 million of borrows at a 91.5% liquidation threshold. Borrowers who had looped up to health factors of 1.03 were carrying less than a 3% buffer against any price move.
PENDLE fell 4.3% over 24 hours to $1.74 and MORPHO fell 5% to $2.52 as of 16:01 UTC, per CoinGecko, against a 3.2% decline in total crypto market cap. Both remain up over the week, PENDLE by about 29%. Pendle's fees ran to $91,863 on Tuesday, DefiLlama data shows, after $54,640 on Monday and $15,306 on Sunday. Its total value locked is $1.18 billion, down 88.5% from $10.3 billion a year ago.
