Napier
Introduction
Napier is a decentralized yield protocol to which many organizations and individuals contribute across development and adoption. Because of that, this documentation covers several areas of “Napier,” and it’s useful to clearly separate each one.
Napier Protocol: A non-custodial yield protocol deployed on Ethereum (and L2s), enabling yield creation, tokenization, and trading.
Napier Interface (web app): One of several ways to interact with the protocol.
Napier Governance: On-chain/off-chain governance for the protocol, powered by the NPR token.
Napier Labs (company): Core developer of the protocol and interface.
Napier Foundation (Panama association): Coordinates major contributors (incl. Napier Labs) to promote development and decentralization.
Vision & Mission
Our vision is to be the best way to access open financial networks with one effortless click.
Guided by this vision, our work is driven by three missions: the Product Mission, which seeks to establish open and resilient financial systems that empower individuals worldwide; the Economic Mission, which manages our ecosystem for sustainable financial growth; and the Social Mission, which compels us to leverage distributed technologies to make the world a better place.
Market Shift: Why Curators Are Reshaping Onchain Finance
Financial systems are moving onchain.
But the onchain world is fragmented, modular, and evolving in silos — institutions payment rails, liquidity, vaults and market infrastractures all operate independently.
To connect these components into coherent experiences, a new role has emerged:
Curators.
Curators coordinate capital, intent, and execution. They design markets, enforce policies, govern flows, and package onchain modules into products that institutions and users can understand and trust. This coordination is now one of the strongest drivers of the next phase of DeFi growth.
The Expanding Market Opportunity
Today’s visible market is relatively small — around $10B in tokenized yield rails (e.g., Pendle).
But surrounding that core are concentric markets that are rapidly growing and increasingly curator-led:
$72.5B DeFi-held stablecoins
$2.75T+ global retail banking
By 2030, tokenized yield rails alone are projected to reach $49B–$115B, with DeFi-held stablecoins growing to $355B–$823B. Curator-led adoption is accelerating this expansion.
*Assuming DeFi TVL is $145B and 50% is stablecoins (≈$72.5B, i.e., ≈22% of today’s $326B supply), and with Citi projecting total supply to $1.6–$3.7T by 2030, applying the same 22% share implies $355–$823B locked in DeFi by 2030. If tokenized yield rails are $10B today, keeping the same ratio implies $49–$115B by 2030.
Why Curation Is the Only Path for Institutional DeFi
Institutions cannot adopt DeFi through generic, protocol-run markets. To serve clients, meet regulatory expectations, and align with internal mandates, they need:
1. Ownership of Markets
They must design and operate markets under their own mandates — not simply consume whatever a protocol lists.
2. Control of Policies
KYC, whitelists, business model constraints, risk rules, and governance conditions must be enforced at the market level, not the protocol level.
3. Alignment with Mandates
Every product must be explainable and defensible to clients and boards. Institutions need a trusted layer — provided by themselves or partners — through curation.
Curation is the only structure that removes TAM constraints and opens the institutional opportunity.
The Limitation of Pendle’s Model
Pendle is built for full control by the core team. This centralization:
prevents curators from owning or differentiating markets
provides no path for supply-side participation
caps ecosystem growth by the bandwidth of the core team
This design cannot scale into the institutional market.
Napier: A Platform for Curators
Napier enables curators to create, own, and scale yield products onchain.
Own Markets
End-to-end creation, operation, and monetization of yield markets.
Control Policies
Market-level enforcement of KYC, whitelists, risk rules, and business model constraints.
Align Mandates
Curators operate with explicit, verifiable mandates — the accountability layer institutions require.
Napier Product Suite
1. Core Protocol
Napier Markets
PT & YT (Tokenized Yield)
AMM (Liquidity)
Napier AMM (Uniswap v4 Hooks)
iNapier (Institutional Access)
External connectors（Vaults, Payments, Cross-chain UX）
2. Flagship Applications
Curator App — factory for creating real-world connected yield products
User App — unified portal for exploring Napier markets
3. Connectivity Layer
Subgraph / API / SDK / MCP
Onboarding documents
Webhooks & widgets for fintech/consumer integrations
Positioning: Built for the Other Side of the Trade-off
In DeFi, efficiency and flexibility cannot coexist.
Pendle optimizes for operational efficiency. Napier optimizes for freedom, customization, and ecosystem-led growth.
Napier is built to do what Pendle will not: provide governance, ownership, and scale driven by builders instead of centralized control.
The Napier Thesis: Natural Oligopoly
Technology markets tend to converge to a few dominant players:
Aave → Morpho/Euler
Amazon → Shopify
iOS → Android
Adobe → Figma
A new value axis emerges, and the market splits along it.
Napier and Pendle will share the yield market — Pendle as the centralized, operationally efficient platform Napier as the decentralized, builder-led, flexible layer,
Napier competes along a different value vector than Pendle; the market will be shared
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