Borrowing

A lending market lets you deposit one token as collateral and borrow a different one against it. Leverage is what happens when you take that borrowed token, buy more collateral with it, and repeat, which only pays while the collateral earns more than the debt costs. Where it does not, the loop loses money on every turn.

That does not make the market useless. It makes it a place to borrow: you want the loan token, you have something to pledge, and the only question that matters is what the debt costs. That is the majority of the book, and DeVOLT files those markets under Borrow instead of pretending they are worse versions of the ones that loop.

The question each page answers

Leverage

Does the collateral out-earn the debt? If yes, borrowing against it to buy more of it pays, and that page sorts by what the loop returns.

Borrow

What does the debt cost? The loop is beside the point here, so that page sorts by the borrow rate, cheapest first, because a cost is better when it is smaller.

All

Every market DeVOLT reads, in one list, including the ones that fit neither description.

Fixed-yield collateral is never a place to borrow

A Pendle principal token is bought for its fixed yield, and the only reason it sits in a lending market is to be levered. Nobody holds one in order to borrow against it, so it never appears under Borrow, whatever its numbers say. When its fixed rate is under the cost of the debt the loop loses on every turn as well, and the market is for nothing right now: it is listed under All alone, and its row says so with a chip that states the fixed rate against the debt cost, rather than disappearing.

What the borrow rate already accounts for

Some venues pay a reward to people who borrow, which offsets part of the interest. Where DeVOLT can read that reward it subtracts it, so the rate shown is what borrowing actually costs you rather than the headline interest rate.

Where it cannot read the reward, it subtracts nothing. That makes the debt look more expensive than it is, which pushes markets out of borrowing rather than into it, which is the safe direction to be wrong in. The page says so when a chain’s rewards could not be read, rather than quietly showing you a worse number.

Starting from what you want to borrow

The markets table is organised by what you post. A borrower starts from the other end: you already know the token you need, and the question is where it is cheapest and what you have to pledge to get it. The Borrow page asks it that way round. It opens with one chip per loan asset, each carrying how many markets lend that token and the cheapest rate any of them is offering, and picking one narrows the table underneath to that token alone.

Choosing an asset also states the spread: the cheapest rate on offer, the dearest, how far apart they are, how many chains and venues lend it, the deepest single market, and everything the book will accept as collateral for it. The spread is the part worth reading. One number tells you what a good rate looks like today; the range tells you whether the row you were about to take is one.

Markets that fit neither

A market where the collateral’s yield cannot be resolved has no computable spread, so nothing can honestly claim the loop pays there. Those markets appear under Borrow and in All, and never under Leverage: the Leverage heading is a claim about the collateral out-earning the debt, and an unmeasured yield cannot support it.

Markets that cannot be borrowed against at all

A few markets publish a borrowing limit of zero against their collateral. That is a measured fact, not a gap: the collateral cannot secure a loan there, so the market is neither a place to lever nor a place to borrow. Those sit in All only, which is the reason All still exists.