yearn.finance(YFI)

Overview

yearn.finance (YFI) is a suite of decentralized finance (DeFi) products on the Ethereum blockchain that provides lending aggregation, automated yield generation, and related services. It began in 2020 as a project by Andre Cronje to automatically move capital between lending platforms such as dYdX, Aave, and Compound as their floating interest rates changed. The protocol is maintained by various independent developers and governed by holders of the YFI token.

Early products let users deposit major dollar stablecoins including DAI, USDT, USDC, and TUSD in exchange for yield-bearing tokens such as yDAI, and a later collaboration with Curve Finance produced the yUSD pool combining four of these y-tokens. After the token launch, Yearn introduced Vaults, which claim and reinvest farming rewards, rebalance capital, and socialize gas costs among depositors. Vaults are widely described as helping establish the yield aggregator category within DeFi.