Pendulum

Pendulum is a Polkadot parachain built with Substrate for fiat-denominated assets, sharing relay-chain security. Its users are holders of fiat stablecoins without swap or yield venues and fintechs handling cross-border settlement; it targets fiat tokens scattered across chains, fragmented FX liquidity and separate on- and off-ramp channels.

The chain runs an automated market maker tuned for currency pairs, placing different fiat stablecoins in shared pools priced along an FX curve with liquidity incentives. Cross-chain movement is handled by Spacewalk, which uses a collateralised vault-operator model where operators lock relay-chain assets to back issuance and redemption of bridged assets and bring Stellar-network stablecoins into Polkadot. PEN pays fees, secures staking and governs, with quadratic voting to limit large-holder weight. Sister network Amplitude on Kusama serves as a canary that validates parameters first. In 2025 block finality was cut to six seconds and Brazilian real and Argentine peso ramps went live.