Origins of Yield?Farming Yield farming emerged as an effect to the issuance of DeFi protocol governance tokens, which began earlier this year. Yield farming consists of locking digital assets in a DeFI protocol to generate rewards (yield) in the form of governance tokens. Users can then lend and borrow against the token, lend and borrow again, etc. Similar to using leverage to arbitrage, there is a risk of losses insofar as the Annual Percentage Yield (APY) rate fluctuates wildly. At the same time, it is possible to generate obscene returns, in some cases essentially doubling or more the initial capital. The Weakness of Current?DeFI The extremely high APY percentages available on some DeFi protocols have overshadowed a core underlying issue. Right now, earning through yield farming is overly dependent on DeFi protocol governance tokens remaining highly valued, which is not at all guaranteed. This is because the value of these tokens is based on exchange value, rather than value linked to the actual volume of loans being created or token swaps being facilitated by the protocol. Yield-farming operations that are profitable one day can quickly become money losers as governance tokens fluctuate in price. Making money using yield farming is highly dependent on governance tokens remaining at high valuations but most of the popular DeFi Protocols will explicitly state their token has no value. “….we have released YFI, a completely valueless 0 supply token. We reiterate, it has 0 financial value. ” — Andre Cronje, Founder, Yearn.Finance “Yield farming is nothing but giving users of a protocol a little bit…