Deposit Robinhood Stock Tokens — NVDA, TSLA, SPY and more — as collateral, and borrow stablecoin against them. No selling, no capital-gains event, no permission needed.
Pons, Long.xyz and PAIR all solve liquidity for new tokens by pairing them with stocks. None of them let someone who already holds a stock position do anything useful with it. Lending is a proven DeFi primitive that plays directly to what makes Robinhood Chain unique — tokenized equities — instead of competing in an already-crowded lane. And Robinhood itself has offered margin lending in its brokerage for years: Pledge is the on-chain version of a habit its own audience already has.
Pick a collateral tier and drag the sliders — the receipt on the right updates live, including how far the price can drop before you'd get liquidated.
Deposit a Stock Token (e.g. NVDA-RH) into a Pledge vault.
The protocol prices the collateral via oracle and sets a borrow limit based on that asset's LTV.
Borrow stablecoin (USDC or similar) up to that limit.
Interest accrues every block at a variable rate (see the rate model below).
Repay at any time to release your collateral, partially or in full.
Must stay above 1. If it drops below — from a falling stock price or accrued interest — the position becomes eligible for liquidation.
Why: see the collateral-specific risks section below — trading-hours gaps and single-name concentration.
| Collateral tier | Examples | LTV | Liq. threshold | Liquidation penalty |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Broad Index | SPY, QQQ | 75% |
80% | 5% |
| Blue Chip (single-name) | AAPL, MSFT | 65% |
70% | 7% |
| High Volatility | TSLA, NVDA | 50% |
60% | 10% |
Below optimal utilization the rate climbs slowly. Above it, the rate spikes hard — to pull in repayments and new deposits when liquidity runs thin.
Anyone can call liquidate() on an undercollateralized position — not just the protocol.
A liquidator can repay up to 50% of the debt in one call — partial liquidation avoids over-correcting.
Remaining shortfall is covered by staked $PLEDGE — stakers earn yield for taking on that risk.
If the oracle reports a stale price (market closed), new borrows and liquidations on that asset pause.
We use the same Stock Token price feed infrastructure PAIR already runs on Robinhood Chain — less integration time, less oracle risk.
Lending carries higher stakes than a simple swap — a second, independent feed for cross-checking is non-negotiable.
Crypto trades 24/7, US exchanges don't. Weekend news can move the real stock price before the market reopens.
Splits, dividends, delistings all have to correctly re-price collateral — without triggering false liquidations.
One stock is far more volatile and more sensitive to idiosyncratic news than a broad index.
Collateral value ultimately depends on Robinhood actually custodying real shares behind every token — outside Pledge's control.
Stakers of $PLEDGE (or $PLEDGE/stable LP) take on bad-debt risk from failed liquidations, and earn a share of protocol revenue in return — the Aave Safety Module model.
The reserve factor on interest paid flows to a treasury that periodically buys back $PLEDGE (burn or redistribute to stakers) — value backed by usage, not speculation.
Pledge is non-custodial and permissionless: no credit check, composable with the rest of DeFi, works from any wallet — not just inside the Robinhood app.
All three are mechanisms for launching new tokens by pairing them with stocks. Pledge doesn't launch anything new — it's a money market for stocks people already hold. Someone who got NVDA exposure through PAIR can then pledge that same asset here for extra yield or leverage.
No spam — one message, when the protocol is ready for testnet.
Follow the build in public
No hype schedule — just the design decisions, the risk model and the calculator, posted as they're built.