Supply, borrow, and earn yield on crypto assets through a fully decentralized, on-chain protocol audited by the world's top security firms.
Open App Learn MoreMost lending products hide their logic behind closed doors. The Venus Protocol platform puts every rate, every collateral ratio, and every treasury decision on-chain — readable by anyone, governed by everyone.
Your assets never leave the smart contract layer. Over 40 independent audits — including reviews by Certik, Quantstamp, and OpenZeppelin — back the security of the codebase. The protocol, not a company, holds your funds.
Interest rates on the Venus Protocol platform move algorithmically based on real-time supply and demand. When utilization is low, borrow rates drop. When liquidity tightens, suppliers earn more. No manual intervention needed.
More than 600 Venus Improvement Proposals have passed since launch. XVS token holders vote on everything — new market listings, risk parameters, fee distribution. Anyone with XVS can submit a proposal.
Venus Protocol's protocol runs on multiple EVM chains. BNB Chain is the primary home, with transaction finality in under three seconds and fees measured in cents rather than dollars. Polygon and other networks are in active development.
Using Venus Protocol takes five steps. The process is the same whether you want to earn passive yield or access liquidity without selling your holdings.
MetaMask, Trust Wallet, Rabby, OKX Wallet, and over a dozen others work out of the box. Switch your network to BNB Chain (chain ID 56) and you're ready. No account registration. No KYC.
Browse the Markets page to compare supply APY, borrow APY, and available liquidity for each asset. The Core Pool lists the most established tokens. Isolated pools offer newer or more volatile assets under separate risk limits.
To earn interest: enter an amount, approve the ERC-20 spend, confirm the supply transaction. Your wallet starts receiving interest immediately, accruing block by block. To borrow: first supply collateral, then draw a loan up to your collateral factor.
The Dashboard shows your current borrow limit and health factor in real time. Keep health above 1 to avoid liquidation. Add collateral or repay debt whenever the ratio approaches the minimum. Simple rule, big impact on safety.
There is no lock-up period on supplied assets (unless pool liquidity is temporarily exhausted). Repay outstanding debt first, then withdraw collateral in full or in part. Gas costs a few cents on BNB Chain.
Riskier assets live in their own pools with separate borrow caps. A problem in one pool cannot drain liquidity from another. This architecture, similar in spirit to Uniswap v3's concentrated positions, limits contagion across markets.
Power users who stake at least the minimum XVS threshold and meet activity requirements earn a Prime token. Prime tokens boost supply and borrow APY on select Core Pool markets — additional yield on top of the base rate.
Every parameter change goes through an on-chain vote. Timelocks enforce a mandatory delay between proposal passage and execution, giving the community time to react to any malicious proposal before it takes effect.
All collateral tokens on Venus Protocol's protocol conform to either the BEP-20 standard on BNB Chain or ERC-20 on Ethereum-compatible chains. This makes integration with other DeFi protocols — DEXes, aggregators, yield optimizers — straightforward.
Chainlink and Pyth oracle feeds power the price data used for collateral valuation and liquidation triggers. Multiple oracle sources reduce single-point-of-failure risk that has plagued earlier DeFi protocols.
The team behind Venus Protocol does not treat security as a one-time checkbox. Bug bounties run continuously. New code ships only after audit completion. The Certik security score placed Venus Protocol among the top three protocols on BNB Chain as of 2021.
Protocol revenue flows into a treasury that funds operations, grants, and a dedicated risk reserve. The reserve covers shortfalls in the event of extreme market moves — a backstop mechanism that protects suppliers from bad debt.
Want to dig deeper into the protocol design? The Venus Protocol GitHub contains full source code, audits, and technical documentation. The Ethereum Foundation's DeFi primer explains the broader primitives Venus Protocol builds on.
These figures reflect the scale of the Venus Protocol platform as of early 2025. Numbers shift daily; the on-chain data is always the authoritative source.
To understand how decentralized lending protocols are classified in the broader ecosystem, see the Wikipedia article on decentralized finance. For the Venus Protocol-specific history and mission, visit our About Us page.
Still have questions? Check the full list on our Questions page or browse the answers below.
Venus Protocol is a decentralized algorithmic money market protocol built on EVM-compatible networks including BNB Chain. It lets users supply crypto assets to earn interest and borrow against their holdings without a centralized intermediary. The protocol launched in 2020 and has processed billions of dollars in transactions since then.
Connect a compatible wallet such as MetaMask or Trust Wallet to the Venus Protocol platform. Navigate to the Markets section, pick the asset you want to supply, enter an amount, and confirm the transaction on-chain. You begin earning interest immediately — no waiting period, no minimum lock-up.
Venus Protocol has received more than 40 independent security audits from firms including Certik, Quantstamp, OpenZeppelin, Code4rena, and Cantina. The protocol also runs a continuous bug bounty program to surface and fix vulnerabilities quickly. That said, no smart contract system is entirely risk-free — always supply only what you can afford to keep locked in DeFi.
The Venus Protocol Core Pool on BNB Chain supports major assets such as BNB, BTCB, USDT, USDC, ETH, and XVS. Isolated lending pools extend support to additional tokens including newer DeFi assets, each with independent risk parameters. The exact list changes as governance votes approve new markets.
Yes. Supply your BNB as collateral, and the protocol lets you borrow other supported assets up to your collateral factor limit — typically between 50% and 80% of collateral value, depending on the asset. BNB has one of the highest collateral factors in the Core Pool because of its liquidity depth.
Venus Protocol is non-custodial. Your assets sit in audited smart contracts, not on a company's balance sheet. Rates are set by on-chain supply-and-demand curves, and every action is publicly verifiable on BNB Chain. Centralized platforms can freeze withdrawals; the Venus Protocol protocol cannot — the code executes as written.
XVS is the native governance token of the Venus Protocol protocol. Holders stake XVS to vote on Venus Improvement Proposals (VIPs) that control risk parameters, new market listings, fee structures, and treasury allocations. Stakers also earn a share of protocol revenue, making XVS both a governance instrument and a yield-bearing asset.
Venus Prime is a loyalty reward program that grants boosted interest rates on select Core Pool markets. Users qualify by staking a minimum amount of XVS for a defined period and reaching required supply or borrow thresholds in eligible markets. Once you mint a Prime token it sits in your wallet and automatically applies the rate boost.
Open the Borrow dashboard on the Venus Protocol platform, select the market where you have an outstanding loan, click Repay, and confirm the transaction. Partial repayments are allowed at any time; there is no fixed repayment schedule. Interest accrues by the block, so repaying sooner reduces total cost.
When your account health factor falls below 1, third-party liquidators can repay part of your debt in exchange for a portion of your collateral at a liquidation incentive discount — usually 5% to 10%. To avoid reaching that point, monitor your borrow limit and repay debt or add collateral before the health factor drops too low. The Dashboard displays your current ratio in real time.