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.
The decentralized ecosystem hasn’t been this sideways in some time! DeFi’s total value locked (TVL) is currently $55.24B, just barely down from the $55.73 TVL we saw at this point last week. Crab market, anyone? 🦀
So where’s the next breakout, up or down? That remains to be seen, but something’s gotta give soon you’d think. If the markets do rip back up in the near future, the recent surge in layer-two (L2) scaling developments will surely play a non-trivial role in making that happen.
The stage for that possibility is being set as we speak, for example:
-
Uniswap officially opened its alpha version of Uniswap V3 on OΞ — Ethereum’s most iconic DEX is now open for alpha use on one of Ethereum’s most promising scaling solutions, Optimism. There are still various limitations in place to prevent excessive “aping” too early on, but rest assured a new era of DeFi has decisively begun … an era where anyone can affordably access the best DeFi infrastructure.
-
zkSync’s zkRollup suite now supports ERC20 swaps and limit orders — zkSync’s another one of Ethereum’s most promising scaling solutions, and the project’s new 1.x upgrade introduced ERC20 swapping capabilities and permissionless token listings. Expect to see more DEX activity here in short order accordingly.
-
Hop Protocol unveils Hop Bridge — Hop Protocol is an interoperability solution designed to make cross-chain interactions easy. This week the Hop team rolled out the initial version of the Hop Bridge, which supports USDC transfers across Ethereum, Polygon, and xDai out of the gate. Turns out cross-chain divides won’t stay divided after all!
Zooming out, let’s close up the column per usual by recapping the week’s best-performing DeFi tokens. In this span, we saw solid runs from REP (+37%), OHM (+54%), and CREAM (+4%). On the flip side, the DeFi Pulse Index (DPI) declined 11.78% to reach $256.82 since our previous Farmer.
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 ~55% APY in Ribbon Finance’s newest vault
Ribbon Finance is a protocol centered around the creation of novel crypto-structured products.
In layman’s terms, this means Ribbon bundles “money legos” across DeFi protocols to create new kinds of crypto-native instruments, all designed according to their own unique strategies and risk-return targets.
The categories of strategies that Ribbon focuses on currently are volatility, yield enhancement, principal protection, and accumulation.
The protocol’s first two products, the T-ETH-C and T-WBTC-C Vaults were volatility-centric. Ribbon’s newest offering, the yvUSDC ETH Put Selling Vault, makes use of the project’s first yield-enhancement strategy.
The result? An innovative crypto-structured product that lets investors readily “stack Yearn and Ribbon yields,” as the Ribbon team recently explained. As such, let’s briefly walk through how this farm works and how you can consider joining in!
Inside the T-YVUSDC-P-ETH Vault
Ribbon’s new T-YVUSDC-P-ETH Vault runs ‘round per an automated and weekly ETH put-selling strategy.
This means that investors deposit in USDC and then the vault takes these deposits and supplies them to Yearn on a weekly basis to receive an associated amount of yvUSDC. Next up the vault takes this yvUSDC and uses it to collateralize ETH put options on Opyn. Over time the ensuing yields are reinvested back into the vault, compounding yields.
Interested in earning yield on your USDC in this way? Then you can follow these steps so long as the vault isn’t at max capacity at the time:
-
Navigate to app.ribbon.finance and connect your Ethereum wallet.
-
On the left side of the screen, you’ll see the T-YVUSDC-P-ETH Vault. Select it.
-
This will take you to the vault’s interface for deposits and withdrawals. Review the provided intro data to double-check that you understand everything, and then click on the “Approve USDC” button. Fire off an approval transaction.
-
With that transaction completed, input how much USDC you want to deposit and then click on the “Deposit” button. Complete this final transaction and then you’ll be stacking yields via Ribbon, Yearn, and Opyn!
The T-YVUSDC-P-ETH Vault has hit its initial 10M USDC max cap, so you’ll have to sit tight for the time being. However, it’s safe to assume this ceiling will be raised in short order, thus the wait shouldn’t be too bad. Whenever the vault does open back up to deposits, just make sure to never invest more money than you can afford to lose.
Farm up to 91% via Kyber DMM on Polygon
This summer Kyber Network introduced Kyber DMM, a novel dynamic market maker (DMM) protocol designed to offer traders superior guarantees when it comes to capital efficiency and impermanent loss.
Superior trading guarantees + Kyber’s proven infrastructure = reliable UX, right. And now this UX can be even better, too, courtesy of the fast and cheap trades now made possible by Kyber DMM’s recent deployment to the Polygon sidechain!
As part of Kyber’s rollout on Polygon, the project kicked off a $30M “Rainmaker” liquidity mining program. So over the next 40 days and counting, Kyber DMM liquidity providers on Polygon will have the opportunity to yield farm KNC or KNC + MATIC rewards.
Sound like the DeFi pastures for you? Head over to the Kyber DMM, connect your wallet, and then in your wallet switch over to the Polygon network. You’ll be ready to start LPing and earning yields from there!
Kyber DMM’s code has been extensively audited, so it’s certainly without glaring risks beyond the possibilities of impermanent loss. Do your own homework, be shrewd, and never farm with more money than you can afford to lose.
*Disclosure note: Kyber Network is a member of the DeFi Pulse Partner Program. However, the weekly curation of the DeFi Pulse Farmer is conducted with editorial independence. Accordingly, the Partner Program has no bearing on these curations — only the merits of yield farms themselves do.
A well-known tool for most farmers out there, Zapper is today’s Plow of the week for the first time! Go ahead to Zapper and start tracking your Uniswap V3 positions on Optimism!
We may be in a crypto “Crab Market” right now, but that doesn’t mean our yield farming has to go sideways too! There are plenty of fruitful DeFi pastures out there that can be shrewdly worked. Others can sit on the sidelines in cash if they want, but for many of us farmers, our tractors are only just getting started.
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!