YIELDFARMING

Ethereum-based credit market Compound started distributing its governance token, COMP, to the protocol’s users this past June 15. Demand for the token (heightened by the way its automatic distribution was structured) kicked off the present craze and moved Compound into the leading position in DeFi.

The hot new term in crypto is “yield farming,” a shorthand for clever strategies where putting crypto temporarily at the disposal of some startup’s application earns its owner more cryptocurrency.

Another term floating about is “liquidity mining.”

The buzz around these concepts has evolved into a low rumble as more and more people get interested.

The casual crypto observer who only pops into the market when activity heats up might be starting to get faint vibes that something is happening right now. Take our word for it: Yield farming is the source of those vibes.

But if all these terms (“DeFi,” “liquidity mining,” “yield farming”) are so much Greek to you, fear not. We’re here to catch you up. We’ll get into all of them.

We’re going to go from very basic to more advanced, so feel free to skip ahead.

Yield farming is a way to make more crypto with your crypto. It involves you lending your funds to others through the magic of computer programs called smart contracts. In return for your service, you earn fees in the form of crypto. Simple enough, huh? Well, not so fast.

Yield farmers will use very complicated strategies. They move their cryptos around all the time between different lending marketplaces to maximize their returns. They’ll also be very secretive about the best yield farming strategies. Why? The more people know about a strategy, the less effective it may become. Yield farming is the wild west of Decentralized Finance (DeFi), where farmers compete to get a chance to farm the best crops.

ield farming, also referred to as liquidity mining, is a way to generate rewards with cryptocurrency holdings. In simple terms, it means locking up cryptocurrencies and getting rewards.

In some sense, yield farming can be paralleled with staking. However, there’s a lot of complexity going on in the background. In many cases, it works with users called liquidity providers (LP) that add funds to liquidity pools.

What is a liquidity pool? It’s basically a smart contract that contains funds. In return for providing liquidity to the pool, LPs get a reward. That reward may come from fees generated by the underlying DeFi platform, or some other source.

Some liquidity pools pay their rewards in multiple tokens. Those reward tokens then may be deposited to other liquidity pools to earn rewards there, and so on. You can already see how incredibly complex strategies can emerge quite quickly. But the basic idea is that a liquidity provider deposits funds into a liquidity pool and earns rewards in return.

Yield farming is typically done using ERC-20 tokens on Ethereum, and the rewards are usually also a type of ERC-20 token. This, however, may change in the future. Why? For now, much of this activity is happening in the Ethereum ecosystem.

However, cross-chain bridges and other similar advancements may allow DeFi applications to become blockchain-agnostic in the future. This means that they could run on other blockchains that also support smart contract capabilities.

Yield farmers will typically move their funds around quite a lot between different protocols in search of high yields. As a result, DeFi platforms may also provide other economic incentives to attract more capital to their platform. Just like on centralized exchanges, liquidity tends to attract more liquidity.

What started the yield farming boom?

A sudden strong interest in yield farming may be attributed to the launch of the COMP token — the governance token of the Compound Finance ecosystem. Governance tokens grant governance rights to token holders. But how do you distribute these tokens if you want to make the network as decentralized as possible?

A common way to kickstart a decentralized blockchain is distributing these governance tokens algorithmically, with liquidity incentives. This attracts liquidity providers to “farm” the new token by providing liquidity to the protocol.

While it didn’t invent yield farming, the COMP launch gave this type of token distribution model a boost in popularity. Since then, other DeFi projects have come up with innovative schemes to attract liquidity to their ecosystems.

What is Total Value Locked (TVL)?

So, what’s a good way to measure the overall health of the DeFi yield farming scene? Total Value Locked (TVL). It measures how much crypto is locked in DeFi lending and other types of money marketplaces.

In some sense, TVL is the aggregate liquidity in liquidity pools. It’s a useful index to measure the health of the DeFi and yield farming market as a whole. It’s also an effective metric to compare the “market share” of different DeFi protocols.

A good place to track TVL is Defi Pulse. You can check which platforms have the highest amount of ETH or other cryptoassets locked in DeFi. This can give you a general idea about the current state of yield farming.

Naturally, the more value is locked, the more yield farming may be going on. It’s worth noting that you can measure TVL in ETH, USD, or even BTC. Each will give you a different outlook for the state of the DeFi money markets.

How does yield farming work?

Yield farming is closely related to a model called automated market maker (AMM). It typically involves liquidity providers (LPs) and liquidity pools. Let’s see how it works.

Liquidity providers deposit funds into a liquidity pool. This pool powers a marketplace where users can lend, borrow, or exchange tokens. The usage of these platforms incurs fees, which are then paid out to liquidity providers according to their share of the liquidity pool. This is the foundation of how an AMM works.

However, the implementations can be vastly different — not to mention that this is a new technology. It’s beyond doubt that we’re going to see new approaches that improve upon the current implementations.

On top of fees, another incentive to add funds to a liquidity pool could be the distribution of a new token. For example, there may not be a way to buy a token on the open market, only in small amounts. On the other hand, it may be accumulated by providing liquidity to a specific pool.

The rules of distribution will all depend on the unique implementation of the protocol. The bottom line is that liquidity providers get a return based on the amount of liquidity they are providing to the pool.

The funds deposited are commonly stablecoins pegged to the USD — though this isn’t a general requirement. Some of the most common stablecoins used in DeFi are DAI, USDT, USDC, BUSD, and others. Some protocols will mint tokens that represent your deposited coins in the system. For example, if you deposit DAI into Compound, you’ll get cDAI, or Compound DAI. If you deposit ETH to Compound, you’ll get cETH.

As you can imagine, there can be many layers of complexity to this. You could deposit your cDAI to another protocol that mints a third token to represent your cDAI that represents your DAI. And so on, and so on. These chains can become really complex and hard to follow.

How are yield farming returns calculated?

Typically, the estimated yield farming returns are calculated annualized. This estimates the returns that you could expect over the course of a year.

Some commonly used metrics are Annual Percentage Rate (APR) and Annual Percentage Yield (APY). The difference between them is that APR doesn’t take into account the effect of compounding, while APY does. Compounding, in this case, means directly reinvesting profits to generate more returns. However, be aware that APR and APY may be used interchangeably.

It’s also worth keeping in mind that these are only estimations and projections. Even short-terms rewards are quite difficult to estimate accurately. Why? Yield farming is a highly competitive and fast-paced market, and the rewards can fluctuate rapidly. If a yield farming strategy works for a while, many farmers will jump on the opportunity, and it may stop yielding high returns.

As APR and APY come from the legacy markets, DeFi may need to find its own metrics for calculating returns. Due to the fast pace of DeFi, weekly or even daily estimated returns may make more sense.

What is collateralization in DeFi?

Typically, if you’re borrowing assets, you need to put up collateral to cover your loan. This essentially acts as insurance for your loan. How is this relevant? This depends on what protocol you’re supplying your funds to, but you may need to keep a close eye on your collateralization ratio.

If your collateral’s value falls below the threshold required by the protocol, your collateral may be liquidated on the open market. What can you do to avoid liquidation? You can add more collateral.

To reiterate, each platform will have its own set of rules for this, i.e., their own required collateralization ratio. In addition, they commonly work with a concept called overcollateralization. This means that borrowers have to deposit more value than they want to borrow. Why? To reduce the risk of violent market crashes liquidating a large amount of collateral in the system.

So, let’s say that the lending protocol you’re using requires a collateralization ratio of 200%. This means that for every 100 USD of value you put in, you can borrow 50 USD. However, it’s usually safer to add more collateral than required to reduce liquidation risk even more. With that said, many systems will use very high collateralization ratios (such as 750%) to keep the entire platform relatively safe from liquidation risk.