Understanding the HTT Yield Curve

The HTT yield curve is the row of prices the market puts on HEX Time Tokens of different maturities. It looks like a bond curve, and the words carry over — but the thing itself is simpler and stricter than a bond, and reading it like a bond is the most common mistake on this site’s own pages. This guide teaches the HTT version.

What an HTT Is, in One Sentence

An HTT is a PulseChain token: a claim on exactly 1 HEX (PulseChain’s HEX, not Ethereum’s eHEX) on a fixed HEX day, backed by HEX stakes already locked in the contract. There is no issuer, no coupon, no promise to pay and no default in the credit sense — the redemption right never expires (how redemption works). Everything about the curve follows from that one sentence.

The Curve Is a Row of Discounts

Because every HTT ends at 1 HEX, its return comes from paying less than 1 HEX, so the price is normally 1 HEX minus a discount. Prices above 1 HEX do print (13 of 47 series on 2026-09-23, 12 of them in thin pools), and an HTT bought above 1 HEX redeems for less HEX than it cost. A near-dated HTT trades close to 1 HEX; a far-dated one trades well below it, because the buyer waits longer for the same coin. Line the maturities up and you have the curve: on the whole, the discount grows with distance.

That discount sets the return. Buy HTT-3000 at 0.818 HEX and you receive 1 HEX on day 3000 — a 22.2% gain in HEX on what you paid, fixed the moment you buy, with nothing to reinvest and no coupon to collect in between.

Bigger Discount Is Not Higher Yield

This is the point the bond vocabulary hides. The discount sets a total return; yield is a return per year. A far-dated HTT spreads its bigger discount over many more years, so its yield per year can be lower than a near HTT series’, as the dated example below shows.

A dated example, from this site’s own curve file on 2026-09-08:

The discount rises down the table. The yield per year falls. A bond desk calls that an inverted curve, and the curve had held that shape for months by that date. “Longer pays more” is a textbook line about bonds with issuers and coupons; on this market, as of that date, it is false. The live curve prints every HTT series that has a live HEX pool, with today’s figures; the yield-per-year column (YTM on the Due Diligence page, Fixed APR on the discounts table), not the discount, is the one that compares HTT series fairly.

Why annualize at all? Because it is the only fair way to compare a 1.45-year wait with a 12.4-year one. The discounts table explains the arithmetic (compounded, not divided, because simple division flatters long maturities).

Who Sets the Curve

No issuer and no central bank. Each HTT series’ price is set mostly in its deepest HTT/HEX pool, which is on PulseX for all but a few series, so the curve is stitched together from many separate markets (47 series had a live pool on 2026-09-23). Two things move it:

• Minting. A staker who mints HTTs against a stake and sells them adds supply to that HTT series and pushes its price down (its discount up). Minting is the only way new HTTs exist.
• Buying and redeeming. Buyers push an HTT series toward 1 HEX; as its day approaches, the pull to 1 HEX takes over (convergence), and at maturity the HTT series leaves the curve.

Pool depth matters as much as price. On 2026-09-08 the deep pools were the five farmed series, HTT-3000 through HTT-7000, deepest at the far end of that set (HTT-7000 held about ^$226,000 against HTT-3000’s ^$87,000). Unfarmed far series held much less: HTT-7777 about ^$5,600 and HTT-8000 about ^$27,000. At 00:00 UTC on October 9, 2026 (8:00 PM EDT, October 8) the farm weights rotate: HTT-3000’s farming rewards end and HTT-8000 starts farming at the top weight (The October 9 Farm Switch). A four-figure trade moves most of these pools.

Curve Trades That Actually Exist for HTTs

A bond desk has futures, margin and borrowing. HTTs have none of those: you cannot short an HTT, because there is nothing to borrow. The only positions are to buy, hold, sell, provide liquidity (pair an HTT with HEX in its pool, and deposit the LP tokens in an ACTR farm where that series has one; see How to Farm ACTR), or mint against a stake you own. So the classic curve trades translate like this:

• Discount capture — an HTT series bought below 1 HEX and held to its day redeems for 1 HEX; the return is fixed in HEX at the purchase price. Watch out: the return is in HEX, not dollars; HEX’s price does what it does.
• Maturity rotation — a holder sells an HTT series priced rich against this site’s fitted curve and buys one priced cheap (Glossary: Curve Trade). The position gains HEX only if the gap closes by more than the fees and price impact of both swaps; a gap can also widen.
• Steepener and flattener — the two-legged desk trades exist here only with a twist. A steepener is long the short HTT series and short the long HTT series; on HTTs the short leg can only be made by minting the long HTT series against the minter’s own stake (or selling long HTT series already held) and buying the short HTT series. A flattener is the reverse. Watch out: minting carries a 1% fee whenever the maturity’s vault holds ACTR. Minting works only from a HEX Stake Instance (HSI) delegated to Actuator, with one minted maturity per stake at a time, and the minted HTTs stay owed against the stake until they are retired or redeemed. When the minted HTT series matures before the stake ends (the usual case for a flattener’s short leg), any HTTs not retired by that series’ day leave the stake open to an early end by anyone, with HEX’s early-end penalty. Manual Ch.9 names both; the chapter’s core trade is maturity rotation.
• Convergence harvesting — an HTT series bought in its last stretch and held to its day returns the remaining gap to 1 HEX. Watch out: thin near-dated pools; the discounts table’s Pool and SafeSwap columns show how much each pool can absorb before a trade moves the price.

There is no carry trade in the bond sense. HTTs pay no coupon; the whole return comes from the discount, and “buy and hold” already describes it.

Reading the Curve

• The live curve is on the Due Diligence page — price, discount, yield per year, pool depth and 24-hour volume for every HTT series that has a live HEX pool, with its date.
• The discounts table at /htt-bond-discounts adds the benchmark comparison and the SafeSwap size for each pool.
• The fitted curve is on the Price Curve and Yield Curve Simulator, which marks an HTT series rich (red dot) or cheap (green dot) when its price sits outside its channel.
• Prices are free to read there and in the official app’s Dashboard. Nothing has to be minted or bought to see them. The app’s “Fixed APR” is the simple rate (total return divided by years), which reads higher than this site’s compounded yield on long series: at the 2026-09-23 price, the app’s formula gives HTT-7000 about 10.9% against 7.15% compounded. The discounts table uses the same label, “Fixed APR”, for the compounded rate.

Important Notes & Risks

• Prices are pool prices. A thin pool means your own trade moves the price against you; the pool’s depth shows how far a trade of a given size will move it.
• Returns are in HEX. Every return on this page is HEX-denominated; the dollar outcome depends on the price of PulseChain’s HEX on the day you redeem or sell.
• The curve moves. The 2026-09-08 figures above are a dated example, not a promise. The live table is the source.
• Smart-contract risk is real and unpriced by any curve; the Risks page covers it.
• Settlement timing. Redemption HEX is paid from the backing stakes once they are ended. After maturity anyone may end the backing stakes, and from the fourth day after maturity whoever ends a stake earns a bounty; the unlocked HEX pays the ender first, HTT holders second and the stake’s creator last. 1 HTT = 1 HEX at redemption, guaranteed 1:1 forever: the bounty is full by the 13th day, so the stakes are ended long before HEX’s 14-day late-penalty grace runs out, and for a stake whose own end day comes before the redemption day, the mint cap already sets aside HEX’s late penalty through 14 days after the redemption day (how redemption works; Glossary: Default).
• Public Data, Not Financial Advice. The live data and the official documentation are the sources every figure here can be checked against.

Next Steps

• The live curve’s YTM column gives the yield per year for each HTT series in that table.
• For the minting side, How to Mint HTTs has the fee and the retire step.
• If you are buying, How to Buy Your First HTT covers sizing to the pool and verifying the token address.

Useful Links

• Live curve: Due Diligence
• HTT Bond Discounts: /htt-bond-discounts
• Actuator App: app.actuator.finance
• Official Documentation: docs.actuator.finance