Welcome to DeFi Pulse Farmer – your guide to staying up on the latest and best trends in yield farming and beyond!
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📉 DeFi TVL acutely dips — On Feb. 25th, 2022, the total value locked (TVL) in Ethereum DeFi projects was $64.3B according to DeFi Pulse. That sum is nearly $10B lower than the $73.4B TVL we saw at this point one week ago.
😳 Driving crypto news this week — DAO hacker discovered, Russia invades Ukraine
The DAO hack in 2016 was Ethereum’s first great existential crisis. Yet the identity of the hacker has long been a mystery. No longer, though, as crypto journalist Laura Shin published an exposé on Feb. 22nd, 2022, that revealed the culprit as being the Austrian programmer Toby Hoenisch. The revelation marks a surprise ending to the dramatic tale.
Much more importantly, the international stage and global markets have been thrown into uncertainty upon Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24th. For now, no one knows what comes next. Yet in the meantime we all must do our parts to keep working on a more peaceful world.
💸 This week’s best-performing assets — Since Saturday, Feb. 19th, we’ve seen notable week-over-week price rises from these DeFi tokens:
👛 The $DPI pulse — The DeFi Pulse Index ($DPI) is presently trading at $159.58, down by 6.35% since Saturday, Feb. 19th.
Related resources:
🌾 Farm up to ~900% APY with Starstream!
Starstream is one of the first yield aggregator protocols on Metis Andromeda, an Ethereum layer-two scaling solution that was originally forked from the Optimism L2.
Accordingly, Starstream offers users automatic compounded yield farming services on Metis, so the protocol works via yield-generating vaults like how Yearn works on Ethereum.
Starstream’s native token is STARS. Holders of STARS have a claim on the revenues generated by the protocol’s vaults, plus the project is distributing the token through a liquidity mining campaign to incentivize vault deposits.
How to join Starstream’s STAR-METIS LP Vault
Right now, Starstream is incentivizing the STARS-METIS liquidity pool on Tethys Finance, an L2 decentralized exchange.
This yield farming opportunity is yielding +900% APY / +230% APR at the moment. However, where there are high rewards come high risks, like the prospects of facing impermanent loss (IL) or smart contract exploits. The high-yield rates can be extremely volatile in choppy market conditions, too, so consider these figures far from guaranteed.
Also, keep in mind that METIS is the native token of the Metis L2 and is required to pay for transaction fees on the network. So if a DeFi trader was hypothetically interested in pursuing the STARS-METIS LP yield farm, they might employ a strategy like this:
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Acquire METIS on Uniswap V3 (Ethereum deployment).
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Use Chainlist to add the Metis L2 to your wallet.
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Bridge METIS over to the Metis L2 via the official Metis Bridge.
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Swap for your desired amount of STARS on Tethys.
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Add liquidity to the STARS-METIS pool on Tethys.
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Click on the STAR-METIS LP option on the Starstream Vaults page.
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Deposit your desired amount of STARS-METIS LP tokens and complete the staking transaction with your wallet.
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At this point the vault will automatically start accruing yield denominated in more STARS-METIS LP tokens.
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You can track rewards and withdrawal through the same Vaults page.
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Later if you’re interested in moving funds around, keep in mind there are “fast bridges” like the Celer cBridge that are designed to make withdrawals from Metis to Ethereum quick.
Starstream is audited and Tethys is audited. However, the yield farm described above has market risks, impermanent loss (IL) risks, smart contract risks, and more. The offered yields are not guaranteed but rather derived from estimations. Never deposit money into any project that you can’t afford to lose.
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Yearn has launched on Arbitrum
TLDR: Yearn, DeFi’s leading yield aggregator, goes beyond Ethereum and Fantom by adding support for its first L2, Arbitrum. -
Yearn <> Notional integration
TLDR: Yearn announces allocations of 15M USDC and 15M DAI to fixed-rated lending strategies facilitated by Notional Finance.
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zkSync 2.0: Public testnet is live
TLDR: The zkSync team unveils zkEVM, the first Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) compatible zkRollup to be activated on an Ethereum testnet. -
StarkNet completes launch
TLDR: StarkNet, the fully permissionless version of the StarkEx L2 scalability engine, is now fully deployed. -
Introducing Alpha Passive
TLDR: Charm Finance reveals Alpha Passive, a new passive investment system for long-term DeFi investors.
🚜 Earn 11% in WBTC with DAI on Vesper Earn
Want to stack sats in style? Then consider checking out Vesper Earn, the programmable yield app of Vesper Finance.
Simply put, Vesper Earn lets you deposit in a DeFi token — e.g. DAI — and earn yield on that deposit denominated in another token — e.g. WBTC.
That’s not just a theoretical DAI-to-WBTC example, either! Right now DAI depositors on Vesper Earn can earn +11% APY denominated in WBTC, so if you’re looking for somewhere to park some stables and earn some bitcoin, this yield farm is one to consider.
Interested in trying this opportunity? You could:
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Go to app.vesper.finance and connect your wallet.
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Scroll down to the DAI-to-WBTC option, click “Deposit,” and input how much DAI you want to supply.
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Press “Deposit” again and complete an approval transaction.
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Then follow-up by completing the deposit transaction, and you’ll be in. You can track your WBTC rewards and withdraw through the same UI whenever you want.
Vesper has been audited multiple times and is run by a public team. However, there are no ultimate guarantees in DeFi. Always do your own research, and never invest more money into any project than you can afford to lose.
Token vesting unlocks can lead to major token sell-offs, which in turn can acutely wreck your yield farming plans. VestLab is a new analytics service that tracks information about token listing and vesting schedules so you can shrewdly farm around big unlocks.
Signing off, friends… ❤️
Hey everyone, William Peaster here.
It’s with a heavy heart that I announce my time at DeFi Pulse is coming to a close early next week, so this edition of the DeFi Pulse Farmer was my last.
I’m moving on to focus on NFT work, and I’m excited for that. But I’ve also so thoroughly enjoyed writing these newsletters that it’s hard to say goodbye. I started working on the Farmer in early Sept. 2020, and since then I’ve written:
That’s a lot of alpha! Joking aside, I just want you all to know it’s been a privilege and a pleasure to have researched and reported on so many cool DeFi projects for you. I hope that I’ve helped guide you true on your DeFi journey and helped you learn a thing or two along the way.
Looking ahead, DeFi Pulse’s media division is blossoming fast and has some really amazing things on the way that I’ve helped brainstorm. There’s a new DeFi media giant rising, I’ll just say that, so prepare to see some really great content across all things Web3 from the team.
In the meantime, I personally want to thank you for your readership over the past year-and-a-half and to wish you the best of luck with your yield farms. Keep up the honest work, my friends.
-WMP
All info in this newsletter is purely educational and should only be used as research. DeFi Pulse is not offering investment advice, endorsement of any project or approach, or promising any outcome. This post is prepared using public information (which does not account for specific goals or financial situations) and links provided to third-party sites are for informational purposes. Such sites are not under the control of DeFi Pulse, so DeFi Pulse or the author are not responsible for the accuracy of the content on such third-party sites. Be careful and keep up the honest work!