What Is Yield Farming? What You Need To Know

move over grow is the serve of using decentralized finance ( DeFi ) to maximize returns. Users lend or borrow crypto on a DeFi platform and earn cryptocurrency in tax return for their services .
render farmers who want to increase their yield output signal can employ more complex tactics. For example, concede farmers can constantly shift their cryptos between multiple lend platforms to optimize their gains .

Quick facts:

• Yield farming is the process of token holders maximizing rewards across various DeFi platforms.
• Yield farmers provide liquidity to various token pairs and earn rewards in cryptocurrencies.
• Top yield farming protocols include Aave, Curve Finance, Uniswap and many others.
• Yield farming can be a risky practice due to price volatility, rug pulls, smart contract hacks and more.

How does yield farming work?

yield farming allows investors to earn output by putting coins or tokens in a decentralize application, or dApp. Examples of dApps include crypto wallets, DEXs, decentralized social media and more .
give way farmers by and large use decentralized exchanges ( DEXs ) to lend, borrow or bet on coins to earn concern and speculate on price swings. yield farming across DeFi is facilitated by ache contracts — pieces of code that automatize fiscal agreements between two or more parties.

Types of yield farming:

• Liquidity provider: Users deposit two coins to a DEX to provide trading liquidity. Exchanges charge a small fee to swap the two tokens which is paid to liquidity providers. This fee can sometimes be paid in new liquidity pool (LP) tokens.
• Lending: Coin or token holders can lend crypto to borrowers through a smart contract and earn yield from interest paid on the loan.
• Borrowing: Farmers can use one token as collateral and receive a loan of another. Users can then farm yield with the borrowed coins. This way, the farmer keeps their initial holding, which may increase in value over time, while also earning yield on their borrowed coins.
• Staking: There are two forms of staking in the world of DeFi. The main form is on proof-of-stake blockchains, where a user is paid interest to pledge their tokens to the network to provide security. The second is to stake LP tokens earned from supplying a DEX with liquidity. This allows users to earn yield twice, as they are paid for supplying liquidity in LP tokens which they can then stake to earn more yield.

Calculating yield farming returns

Expected succumb returns are normally annualized. The prospective returns are calculated over the course of a class .
Two often-used measurements are annual percentage rate ( APR ) and annual percentage yield ( APY ). APR does not account for compounding — reinvesting gains to generate larger returns — but APY does .
Keep in take care that the two measurements are merely projections and estimations. even short-run advantages are difficult to forecast with accuracy. Why ? concede agrarian is a highly competitive, fast-paced diligence with quickly changing incentives .
If a give farming strategy succeeds for a while, other farmers will flock to take advantage of it, and it will ultimately stop yielding meaning returns .
Because APR and APY are outmode grocery store metrics, DeFi will have to construct its own profit calculations. Weekly or even daily expected returns may make more sense due to DeFi ’ s rapid pace .

Popular yield farming protocols 

Curve Finance

Curve is the largest DeFi chopine in terms of total value locked, with closely $ 19 billion on the platform. With its own market-making algorithm, the Curve Finance chopine makes greater habit of lock funds than any other DeFi platform — a beneficial strategy for both swappers and fluidity suppliers .
Curve provides a large list of stablecoin pools with dear APRs that are tied to fiat cash. Curve keeps its APRs high, ranging from 1.9 % ( for liquid tokens ) to 32 %. arsenic long as the tokens don ’ t lose their peg, stablecoin pools are quite dependable. impermanent loss may be wholly avoided because their costs will not alter drastically in comparison to each other. Curve, like all DEXs, carries the danger of irregular loss and smart contract failure .
Curve besides has its own keepsake, CRV, that is used for government for the Curve DAO .

Aave

Aave is one of the most widely used stablecoin yield farm platforms, with over $ 14 billion in prize locked up and a grocery store worth of over $ 3.4 billion .
Aave besides has its own native keepsake, AAVE. This nominal incentivizes users to use the network by providing benefits such as tip savings and government vote power .
It is coarse to find fluidity pools working together when it comes to yield farming. The Gemini dollar, which has a deposit APY of 6.98 % and a adopt APY of 9.69 %, is the highest-earning stablecoin accessible on Aave .

Uniswap

Uniswap is a DEX arrangement that enables keepsake exchanges with no hope. Liquidity providers invest the equivalent of two tokens to create a commercialize. Traders can then trade against the fluidity pool. In retort for providing fluidity, liquid providers get fees from trades that take place in their consortium .
due to its frictionless nature, Uniswap has become one of the most democratic platforms for trustless nominal swaps. This is useful for high-yield agrarian systems. Uniswap besides has its own DAO government token, UNI .

PancakeSwap

PancakeSwap works similarly to Uniswap, however, PancakeSwap runs on the Binance Smart Chain ( BSC ) network quite than on Ethereum. It besides includes a few extra gamification-focused features. BSC token exchanges, interest-earning impale pools, non-fungible tokens ( NFTs ) and even a gamble game in which players guess the future price of Binance Coin ( BNB ) are all available on PancakeSwap .
PancakeSwap is subject to the same risks as Uniswap, such as irregular loss due to large monetary value fluctuations and smart contract failure. Many of the tokens in PancakeSwap pools have minor market capitalizations, putting them in danger of impermanent loss .
PancakeSwap has its own nominal called CAKE that can be used on the chopine and besides used to vote on proposals for the platform .

Risks of yield farming

yield farm is a complicate process that exposes both borrowers and lenders to fiscal risk. When markets are churning, user face an increased risk of impermanent loss and price slippage. Some risks associated with give farming are as follows :

Rug pulls 

Rug Pulls are a form of an exit scam in which a cryptocurrency developer collects investor cash for a project and then abandons it without repaying the funds to the investors. Rug pulls and other passing scams, which yield farmers are peculiarly vulnerable to, accounted for about 99 % of big imposter during the second half of 2020, according to a CipherTrace research composition .

Regulatory risk 

Cryptocurrency rule is hush shrouded in doubt. The Securities and Exchange Commission has declared that some digital assets are securities, putting them within its jurisdiction and allowing it to regulate them. express regulators have already issued end and abstain orders against centralized crypto lend sites like BlockFi, Celsius and others. DeFi lend and borrow ecosystems could take a hit if the SEC declares them to be securities .
While this is true, DeFi is designed to be immune to any central assurance, including government regulations .

Volatility

excitability is the degree to which the price of an investing moves in either management. A volatile investment is one that has a boastfully price dangle over a short period of time. While tokens are locked up, their value may drop or rise, and this is a huge hazard to yield farmers specially when the crypto markets experience a have a bun in the oven run .

What is impermanent loss?

During periods of high volatility, liquidity providers can experience impermanent loss. This occurs when the price of a keepsake in a liquid pool changes, subsequently changing the proportion of tokens in the pool to stabilize its full value .
Example :
Alice deposits 1 ETH and 2,620 DAI ( US dollar stablecoins : 1 DAI = $ 1 ) into a fluidity pool because the rate of one ether is $ 2,620 ( at the time of writing ). Say the pool only has three other liquidity providers who have each deposited the lapp sum to the consortium, bringing the sum value of the pool to 4 ETH and 10,480 DAI, or $ 20,960 .
Each of these liquid providers is entitled to 25 % of the pool ’ s funds. If they wanted to withdraw at current prices, they would each receive 1 ETH and 2,620 DAI. But what happens when the price of ETH falls ?
If the price of ETH starts to drop, that means traders are selling ETH for DAI. This causes the proportion of the pool to shift so that it is more ETH clayey. Alice ’ s share of the pool would hush be 25 %, but she would now have a higher proportion of ETH to DAI. The measure of her 25 % share of the consortium would now be worth less than when she initially deposited her funds because traders were selling their ETH at a lower value than when Alice added fluidity to the pool .
This is called an impermanent loss because the passing is only realized if the liquid is withdrawn from the pool. If a fluidity supplier decides to keep their funds in the pool, the liquidity prize may or may not break even over time. In some cases, the fees earned from providing fluidity can offset impermanent losses .

Smart contract hacks

Most of the hazards associated with give way farming are related to the smart contracts that underpin them. The security of these contracts is being improved via better code vet and third-party audit, however, hacks in DeFi are still common .
DeFi users should conduct research and use due diligence anterior to using any platform .

Frequently asked questions

Is yield farming profitable?

Yes. however, it depends on how much money and campaign you ’ rhenium willing to put into output farming. Although certain bad strategies promise hearty returns, they generally require a thorough grasp of DeFi platforms, protocols and complicated investment chains to be most effective .
If you ’ re searching for a way to make some passive income without investing a lot of money, try placing some of your cryptocurrencies into a tested and trustworthy platform or fluidity pool and seeing how much it earns. After you ’ ve formed this foundation garment and developed confidence, you may move on to other investments or even buy tokens directly .

Is yield farming risky?

risk farming carries a act of risks that investors should understand before starting. Scams, hacks and losses due to volatility are not rare in the DeFi succumb farming space. The first step for anyone wish to use DeFi is to inquiry the most trust and test platforms .
Get educated. Check out Proof-of-Work vs. Proof-of-Stake, The Investor ’ s Guide to NFTs, The Investor ’ s Guide to DeFi, The Investor ’ s Guide to the Metaverse or the guide to Solana .
This is not an second of any project, and should not be interpreted as investing advice. This Guide is for educational purposes entirely.

• 
  Luke Conway

  editor, Evergreen Content
  As Editor of Evergreen Content at Blockworks, Luke Conway oversees the creation of comprehensive educational guides on all things crypto to help users navigate the space. Before Blockworks he worked as an associate editor for Investopedia, managing broker reviews and a cryptocurrency news desk .

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