In April, we wrote about what we learned from three years of building fixed-rate lending markets.
Demand for fixed rates was not the problem. The structure of fixed-term markets was.
Every maturity forces a market to reset. Liquidity fragments across rates, collateral and terms. Borrowers and lenders must coordinate at the same moment, while capital waits without certainty of a fill.
We concluded that participation should not require capital to be committed upfront. Liquidity does not need to be pooled in one place. It needs to be reachable when a trade is ready to execute.
Today, we are launching Term V2—the first complete expression of that architecture.
Term V2 combines two pieces.
The first is a set of targeted changes to Term’s core contracts that make its fixed-rate markets compatible with intent-based participation.
The second is Terminal 1, our integration and execution layer. Its router connects Term to supported external sources of capital, collateral and liquidity.
Together, they allow borrowers and lenders to discover available terms, express the outcomes they want and execute against capital wherever it is already deployed.
An order book can show that a borrower and lender are interested in the same market. It does not make the transaction executable on its own.
The capital may be deployed in another lending market or vault. Existing debt may need to be repaid. Collateral may need to move. Assets may need to be exchanged before the fixed-rate position can be created.
Terminal 1 coordinates these steps across supported integrations. Where supported, the complete route executes atomically: the intended position completes as a whole, or the transaction reverts.
Terminal 1 makes external liquidity reachable. Term V2 makes that liquidity usable in fixed-rate markets.
Borrowers and lenders can take an available order or define the rate, amount, collateral and maturity they are prepared to accept.
Creating an order does not necessarily require moving supported capital into an idle pool. Capital can remain productive at its existing source until a counterparty fills the order.
Terminal 1 then routes it into the resulting fixed-rate position.
This is the participation model we described in April: capital can express a willingness to transact without first paying the full opportunity cost of waiting.
Finding acceptable terms is only the beginning.
Term V2 connects order discovery with the workflows required to complete the position. Supported users can refinance variable-rate debt into fixed-rate financing, construct positions and evaluate the resulting economics before signing.
The financing rate, available liquidity, leverage, maturity, position size and execution costs all affect the outcome.
The objective is not to hide that complexity. It is to make the variables that matter visible before capital is committed.
In April, I wrote that a market is only as good as its fills.
That remains the standard.
Term V2 should not be judged by the number of markets displayed or integrations announced. It should be judged by whether borrowers and lenders can find acceptable terms, execute against real liquidity and return when another financing need emerges.
Term V2 is not the end state.
Over time, borrowers and lenders should be able to specify the financing outcome they want while the system determines how available capital and collateral can be routed to achieve it.
Term began by building true fixed-rate lending markets. Terminal 1 made capital across DeFi reachable through a common routing and execution layer. Term V2 combines that layer with intent-compatible fixed-rate markets.
In April, we described the architecture we believed fixed-rate markets needed.
Today, that architecture is live.
Explore Term V2 at app.term.finance/order-markets.
Our goal is for fixed-rate financing to become a standard onchain primitive: available when needed, composable across platforms and precise enough for both DeFi-native users and institutions to plan around.
