Welcome to DeFi Pulse Farmer – your guide to staying up on the latest and best trends in yield farming and beyond.
In this newsletter, we break down top stories, developments, and trends from the past week in tandem with two key farming opportunities to keep an eye on.
If you want to access the full DeFi Pulse Farmer experience to receive emerging Yield Farming opportunities sent to you throughout the week as part of our Alpha Tractor Series, or the DeFi Pulse Farmer Protocol Express, which consists of a weekly recap of APYs and new pools on major protocols and a highlight of an emerging opportunity, subscribe today.
DeFi’s back on the mend, at least acutely, as the decentralized finance ecosystem saw its total value locked (TVL) climb from $48B to $52.94B since this time last week.
Is the latest crypto shakeout over, then, and is $100B in our near-term targets again?
That remains to be seen, but one does get the sense that right now DeFi’s like a soda can be left in the freezer — it’s about to pop. It’s powerful, it’s meaningful, the macro stage has been set, and people are starting to catch on. The big question is when not if. And if you survey DeFi power users, you’ll find a lot of optimists. There’s a lesson in that!
As for big DeFi news, there was no shortage of it this week per usual. One major throughline from recent headlines is that building in crypto is hard:
-
Synthetix founder Kain Warwick announced he’s running for the Spartan Council, Synthetix’s decentralized governing body. This comes after Warwick stepped back from having any direct influence on Synthetix months ago. The move results from Synthetix Core Contributors facing difficulties since Warwick’s departure. Controversial or not? You decide.
-
NFT index project NFTX unveiled its V2 protocol, and then quickly thereafter faced an attack against its PUNK vault system. The vault was paused, a solution was implemented, and NFTX released a post-mortem. “We hope this [report] informs others to make sure native CryptoPunks and other non-standard NFTs are implemented very carefully,” the team said.
Zooming out, let’s take a look at the best-performing DeFi assets from the past week. The biggest risers on the week include PERP (+70%), COMP (+60.5%), RGT (+56.2%), FXS (+48.5%), and BAL (+31.5%). In that same span, the DeFi Pulse Index (DPI) rose 15.66% to reach $264.84.
Thank you to our sponsor DEXTF, an asset management protocol that makes managing and investing assets easier!
Accumulate and bundle yield generating assets with your favorite longs on DEXTF today!
Farm 3-Digit APYs on Polygon with Balancer V2
To make a metaphor, the DeFi ecosystem’s like a sci-fi fantasy where every project is its own faction bearing unique advantages and unique ways of operating.
I say this not to suggest DeFi’s tribal or disconnected, but rather to suggest every DeFi project brings something important, even magical, to the table. And if we’re diving into the details here, one project that really stands out as magical right now is Balancer.
That’s because Balancer allows liquidity pools composed of up to 8 tokens, a capability unrivaled in DeFi to date. Additionally, the new Balancer V2 system maintains a single central vault of assets which makes it easy to facilitate AMM pools with customized logic.
But that’s not all. Balancer’s newest level up? Deploying its flexible AMM protocol to the Polygon sidechain scaling solution!
Farming BAL on Polygon
“We have noticed the amount of traction that Polygon has been getting and the great user experience that it provides and our community really wants that,” Balancer Labs CEO and co-founder Fernando Martinelli said on the integration news.
So Balancer’s got new incentivized pools live on Polygon, and these pools are ripe for your pickings if your capital tractors are ready to rip from across Ethereum via the Polygon Bridge.
Here’s what you need to know, then. On June 28th the Balancer and Polygon communities approved 25k BAL and 375k MATIC in weekly rewards for Balancer liquidity providers (LPs) on Polygon for the near future.
If these rewards are of interest, you can follow these steps to join in:
-
Peruse Balancer’s Polygon AMM and pick out the incentivized pool you want to join. Remember Balancer allows single-sided supplying, so you only need one of the tokens in any given pool to deposit liquidity (you can deposit multiple ones, too, of course).
-
Bridge the required tokens over to Polygon.
-
Connect your wallet to the AMM, click on your pool of choice, input the token/tokens you want to deposit and confirm the supply transaction.
-
Once this is done you’ll start earning BAL and MATIC rewards, which you can claim through Balancer’s Polygon interface!
Balancer is a reputable and proven project, so your main risk with these farms is impermanent loss. Accordingly, approach these new farms with a measure of caution and only after you’ve done your own research. Also never farm with more money than you can afford to lose!
Farm up to 15% lending stables via Rari’s Fuse protocol
One of Rari Capital’s most interesting releases is Fuse, an open interest rate protocol.
In other words, Fuse is a project for putting all your crypto assets to work for you. And as uncertainty has abounded in crypto lately, many people have sought refuge in stablecoins, which is why we want to turn your attention to Fuse’s Pool 18 this week!
Pool 18 is composed of sOHM, USDC, DAI, ETH, and FRAX. Each of these assets provides different rates of return, e.g. USDC providers are currently earning +15%.
If you’re interested in farming any of these pastures, go over to the Collateral column and click the slider. You’ll be asked to approve Fuse to spend your funds, so approve that and then make input and confirm your deposits. Boom! You’ll start earning some decent rewards on your deposits.
Fuse is essentially a fork of Compound Finance, so there’s that. If you trust Compound, then Fuse’s in the same ballpark so keep that in mind. With that said, you shouldn’t ever throw caution to the wind in DeFi. Make sure you fully understand Fuse before using it and never deposit more money than you can afford to lose.
Reviewing and revoking token approvals from a simple interface is highly practical to any farmer out there. That’s why today’s Plow of the week goes to polygonscan; check it out!
You smell that? It’s the smell of freshly harvested DeFi yield pastures, and it’s all around us. Realize that as time goes on and as more people arrive in DeFi, these yields are going to trend downward in kind. So the best time to farm was yesterday, and the second-best time is now. Because there’s still plenty of yields to capitalize on before DeFi gets boring … plenty!
All info in this newsletter is purely educational and should only be used to inform your own research. We’re not offering investment advice, endorsement of any project or approach, or promise of any outcome. This is prepared using public information and couldn’t possibly account for anyone’s specific goals or financial situation. Be careful and keep up the honest work!