Yearn Finance Tumbles: Rug Pull Rumors Swirl As Token Takes A 45% Hit

Recent data analysis reveals a significant decline in the performance of YFI, the native token of the Yearn Finance platform. In a dramatic overnight development, the native token of the Yearn Finance ecosystem witnessed a staggering 40% plunge.

This downturn in YFI’s performance prompts a closer examination of the intricate dynamics within the decentralized financial landscape. The abrupt and substantial drop has ignited a wave of speculation within the community, with some expressing concerns about the possibility of an exit scam.

Much of its recent profits was wiped by the slump. Investors quickly sold off their holdings in YFI in response to the wider selloff that had shook the cryptocurrency market as a whole, which caused a sudden shift in value.

Yearn Finance Suffers An Apparent Exit Scam

As users seek to navigate and capitalize on the potential returns of the crypto market, the fluctuations in YFI’s value underscore the inherent volatility and complexity of DeFi environments.

Specifically, YFI plummeted from $15,450 to $8,950 within a mere 24-hour period. This sharp and rapid descent represents a substantial loss of $6,510 in the value of YFI.

The price of YFI has seen a noteworthy rising trend during the last seven days. The asset was trading at almost $9,000 just a week ago. But it quickly gained momentum and by Friday, it had reached its highest price point in more than a year—above the $15,000 level.

In a matter of hours, the market capitalization experienced a significant decline, with almost $250 million disappearing. The market cap plummeted from $525 million to $275 million. It is once again seeing an upward trend; however, investor sentiment has been negatively impacted by the abrupt decline.

The recent sell-off has incited a weekend characterized by fear, uncertaintly and doubt (FUD) among members of the cryptocurrency community.

According to certain users on X (formerly known as Twitter), there are assertions made regarding the distribution of the token supply, suggesting that 50% of the tokens were held within 10 wallets under the supervision of engineers.

Nevertheless, according to data from Etherscan, it is indicated that a portion of these holders could potentially be wallets associated with cryptocurrency exchanges.

The rollercoaster ride in YFI’s market hasn’t just been a wild descent; it’s been a game-changer for crypto traders riding the waves of this digital asset’s fortune.

Crypto Holders Lose Nearly $5 Million

According to insights from derivative market tracker, CoinGlass, the recent nosedive in YFI has left crypto enthusiasts nursing a whopping $4.99 million in losses through liquidations.

Those traders who wagered on YFI’s upward trajectory found themselves taking the most substantial hit in the aftermath of the digital asset’s dramatic crash. It’s not just numbers on a chart; it’s a tale of high-stakes bets and unforeseen twists in the ever-unpredictable world of crypto trading.

Zooming in on the details, according to CoinGlass data, the brunt of the blow in the near $5 million total liquidations is borne by long positions, tallying up to a substantial $3.5 million in losses.

The majority of these traders find themselves navigating the aftermath on platforms such as the giant Binance, alongside participants from Bybit and OKX.

It’s a vivid snapshot into the crypto battleground, where the casualties of this market turbulence are felt by those who took bullish positions, and the ripples extend across some of the most prominent exchanges in the digital arena.

(This site’s content should not be construed as investment advice. Investing involves risk. When you invest, your capital is subject to risk).

Featured image from Markus Spiske/Unsplash

Yearn Finance: What The Final Quarter Of 2022 Has In Store For YFI Price

Yearn Finance (YFI) has performed relatively well over the last 30 days, painting its charts in green despite the lingering uncertainty in the crypto market.

According to information from Coingecko, at press time, the ERC20 governance token built on the Ethereum blockchain is changing hands at $7,087, going up by 5.7% during the past week and tallying an impressive 15.7% jump on its bi-weekly gauge.

Here’s a quick glance of YFI performance:

  • YFI is experiencing a significant decline in its daily trading volume
  • Yearn Finance could fall all the way down to $6K within the next few days
  • The altcoin could start 2023 with a bullish run to reclaim the $8K territory

However, the altcoin’s technical indicators, specifically its Relative Strength Index (RSI) and Chaikin Money Flow (CMF), on its 4-hour chart doesn’t give much for traders to desire as they indicate a potential bearish run for the asset.

The RSI settled below the 50-neutral zone at 48.97, suggesting that selling pressure increased and a lot of buyers veered away from the asset. Meanwhile, Yearn Finance’s CMF fell into a negative value of -0.07 – an indication of a weakened buying activity.

Daily Active Addresses Count And Trading Volume Decline

Along with the above-mentioned technical indicators, some developments concerning the cryptocurrency and its network pointed towards a bearish momentum.

During the previous week, the number of unique addresses that traded Yearn Finance decreased sharply, going down by 41%. In fact, at the time of this writing, there were only 248 wallets monitored to have participated in YFI transactions.

While the cryptocurrency’s spot trading price went up by 3% over the last 24 hours, its trading volume took a hit as it became lower by 25% during the same period.

With these, there is a need for a significant uptick in demand for the crypto asset for another increase in value to be triggered as buyers in YFI market appear to be exhausted.

However, it would seem that the digital currency could not catch a break as even in that particular department, it is showing signs of struggle.

According to latest data, at the moment, only 59 new addresses were present at the network – 48% lower than what was observed within the last eight days.

Coincodex Forecasts YFI At Over $8K By 2023

Although Yearn Finance’s short-term trajectory looks bleak, it is expected to have a strong start for the year 2023.

According to the predictions of online crypto data information aggregator Coincodex, the digital asset is expected to decline significantly within the next five days and will eventually change hands at $$6,094 by December 15.

However, the altcoin is expected to bounce back and reclaim its losses just few days after the expected price dump. By January 9, 2023, YFI is seen to trade at $8,891.

Yearn Finance (YFI) Down 13% Following Andre Conje’s Exit

Yearn Finance (YFI) has plunged rapidly following the surprise exit of its key players. The cryptocurrency which had been following the market trend had broken off the step with the rest of the space as the news sent ripples through the community. The plunge which occurred on Sunday came as a direct result of uncertainty spread across the community after Anton Nell announced that he, alongside Andre Conje, would be exiting the space.

Nell had taken to Twitter to post the shocking exit. According to him, he and Conje had been planning their exit for a while and would officially stop contributing to the crypto and decentralized finance (DeFi) space.

Related Reading | Bitcoin Activity Soars Post SWIFT Ban On Russia, BTC At Do Or Die Spot?

Conje had played an important role throughout the existence of the Fantom blockchain. The developer had pioneered various important projects like Yearn Finance (YFI), Keep3r Network, Multichain, Chainlist, among others, all of which have been highly successful and very popular with crypto investors. With the move, Nell announced that they would eventually terminate around 25 apps and services that they currently offer on Fantom.

Nell provided further explanation for the move, explaining that “Unlike previous “building in defi sucks” rage quits, this is not a knee-jerk reaction to the hate received from releasing a project, but a decision that has been coming for a while now.”

Yearn Finance Takes The Hit

The impact of this decision was quickly felt across the space. Most notably was its impact on the prices of the protocols that these devs worked on. Yearn Finance which is arguably the most successful project of the lot quickly tumbled as news of the exit circulated.

In the early hours of Sunday, YFI dropped 13% from its spot above $20,000 to the low $17K. The drop in price was quick and sharp, responding to the news. A small recovery had followed that saw YFI crawl back up into the $18K price level but there has not been much uptick in the way of momentum, suggesting that the current downtrend might continue as the day unfolds.

Yearn Finance will continue to operate as always, just without the contributions of Conje or Nell going forward.

YFI plunges 13% following news of Conje’s exit | Source: YFIUSD on TradingView.com
Fantom Foundation Responds

Andre Conje’s exit from the crypto and decentralized finance space no doubt has some implications for a network like Fantom. Thus, the response from the Fantom Foundation was swift.

Related Reading | Bitcoin Falls Back To $38,000 As Russia Steps Up Bombardment Of Ukraine

The foundation acknowledged the role that Conje had played in the space and the influence he had but explained that it does not impact the development in any way. Fantom Foundation noted that Conje was not a core dev, so development will continue in his absence.

The team effort is what allowed Fantom to become one of the most utilized and loved decentralized networks in world.

Hundreds of developers build on Fantom daily and 100k+ unique address use Fantom every day.

Contrary to some popular belief, Andre wasn't a core dev at Fantom.

— Fantom Foundation (@FantomFDN) March 6, 2022

The network’s native token FTM had also taken a hit in its price following the news. FTM had seen its value crash from above $1.5 coming into the last lap of the weekend to $1.4 in a matter of hours. However, the token has held up nicely through the aftermath and continues to trend upwards.

Featured image from FX Empire, chart from TradingView.com

Yearn Finance Creator To Launch New AMM, What It’s All About?

Famous for his motto “I test in prod”, Andre Cronje, inventor of Yearn Finance and other DeFi protocols, will launch a new platform. Called ve(3,3) it has been designed as an Automated Market Maker (AMM) to operate with a “protocol for protocols” architecture.

Related Reading | Solana DeFi Goes Stratospheric as Hubble Protocol Announces $3.6M Raise

In other words, this new AMM will be easy to integrate with other platforms to incentivize their own liquidity and without tradeoffs. The protocols that decide to add ve(3,3) won’t lose fees, volumes, or liquidity, as the creator of Yearn Finance explained in an official post.

Cronje believes AMMs utility has undergone a change, from primarily serving as a tool for liquidity providers to serving as an addition to projects. Thus, ve(3,3) seeks to meet the demand of AMM’s new users; other protocols.

His new project, ve(3,3), will remove friction from the process of adding token incentives to a protocol’s liquidity, will make it simpler for projects to accrue fees from incentives, and will operate as a permissionless platform. The Yearn Finance developer said:

With the above in place, any protocol or project can easily incentivize their own liquidity, be it for their token, their stable coin, or even other derivatives, and while doing so, they fully accrue fees.

Cronje’s new protocol will have multiple features, including the capacity to natively support swaps between closely correlated assets, and uncorrelated assets, Uniswap v2 compatibility which will let projects deploy its interface, the possibility to permissionless create pools, gauges, and bribes.

In addition, the protocol will operate with a 0.01% fee to be paid in base assets. Cronje’s protocol for protocols will let other platforms support delegation, increase “holdings proportional to emission”, and conduct locks with capital efficiency, amongst many other features.

Yearn Finance Inventor To Take AMM Utility To Its Next Phase?

As an additional incentive for projects to implement Cronje’s protocol, the platform will reward them with ve(3,3) tokens. Those projects that occupy the top 20 by total value locked (TVL) will receive these rewards two weeks after the protocol launches.

The launch could take place next week, as Cronje announced via Twitter. By the end of next week, the platform will take a snapshot to determine the projects that will receive a percentage of the 2,000,000 ve(3,3) available for rewards. Cronje added:

It is up to them (the selected projects) to decide what they will incentivize, be it their own token, stable coin, or other liquidity. The timeline for this will thus be 2 weeks post protocol launch until distribution starts.

Final commit sent off for peer reviews, audits, and third party reviews.

Target of TVL snapshot end of next week.

One week for voting (and bribes), and then emission starts.

Website will be up next week.

Launching on 👻

— Andre Cronje 👻🐸 (@AndreCronjeTech) January 11, 2022

As of press time, Yearn Finance native token YFI trades at $32,139 with a 2.7% profit in 24-hours.

Related Reading | Yearn Finance Launches New Vault, While YFI Retakes Bullish Momemtum

YFI moving sideways in the 4-hour chart. Source: YFIUSDT Tradingview

Yearn Finance Launches New Vault, While YFI Retakes Bullish Momemtum

Popular DeFi protocol Yearn Finance has launched a new product, a yield generator called yvBOOST. Part of its suite of vaults, this product will complement the “Backscratcher” vault and will allow users to earn and boost rewards in the Curve-based token 3CRV.

“Backscratcher” offers rewards in Curve’s, an Ethereum exchange liquidity pool, native token CRV. The vault simplifies the process of obtaining Curve’s additional rewards by locking a portion of the CRV for the users.

That way, all vault participants can benefit from the option of boosting their APY if they lock additional CRV. In addition, they receive Curve DAO management fees. Their newest product, yvBOOST, offers compound long exposure with Curve’s native token:

With yvBOOST the 3Crv earned from the yveCRV vault is sold to CRV and deposited back into the vault, increasing yvBOOST’s balance of yveCRV (…). while simultaneously increasing the boost of all Yearn vaults with Curve Finance strategies over time.

Yearn Finance has launched a yvBOOST-ETH pool on decentralized exchange SushiSwap to create liquidity for their new vault, as the team behind the protocol reveals. This pool offers a higher return on SUSHI-based rewards.

As a bonus, the protocol has launched two additional vaults, the crvFRAX, and crvLUSD. These products have a 2% management fee and 20% performance fee, but users can claim their tokens without additional cost.

Yearn Finance The Second Highest Earning In DeFi

According to Yearn Finance’s Q1 earnings report, the protocol’s key primary driver for their earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA), a metric used to measure financial performance, is their yVault. The report indicates:

Our YFI vault saw a large increase in revenue for March as we encouraged depositors to migrate to the v2 vault resulting in a higher TVL generating more revenue.

However, treasury assets-based products are becoming an important source of revenue. Yearn Finance’s team expects this trend to continue in the coming quarters. Ryan Watkins, a researcher at Messari, stated the following on Yearn Finance’s Q1 report:

Last month’s revenues annualized puts Yearn at $50mm+ in revenue. $60mm+ if you add treasury farming activities and assume they’re constant from March. All organic. No token incentives. Will also note that this puts Yearn at the second highest earning protocol in DeFi behind MakerDAO adjusted for token incentives.

Yearn Finance YFI YFIUSDT
Source: Yearn Finance

At the same time, Yearn Finance’s governance token YFI has seen significant gains in the lower and higher timeframes. The 30-day chart records the highest gains with 37.2%, at the time of writing, and the 7-day chart closely following with 35.7%. At the time of writing, YFI trades at $53.983 with a 10.7% in the daily chart.

Yearn Finance YFI USDT
YFI’s rally in the daily chart. Source: YFIUSDT Tradingview

How DeFi Season Could Send YFI To $270,000 Per Token

When Andre Cronje released Yearn Finance (YFI), the DeFi fever was brewing. Two events converge and launched the sector into full madness: Uniswap’s UNI airdrop and governance token YFI breaking every foreseeable resistance to reach $30,000.

At that moment, Bitcoin was trading at approximately $10,000. Now, after a downtrend, YFI seems ready to reach new highs. YFI is trading at $51.386 with 15.4% profits in the 24-hour chart. Over the week, YFI is up 15.9%.

Yearn Finance YFI
YFI with bullish momentum in the 24-hour chart. Source: YFIUSDT Tradingview

Data from DeFi Pulse point to a highly bullish outlook for DeFi. Picking up the upward momentum from February 2021, the DeFi ecosystem has an all-time high Total Value Locked of $57.9B. Top 3 protocols Compound, Maker, and Aave hold over $20B alone.

Yearn Finance YFI
Source: DeFi Pulse

Amidst this DeFi Season, trader Sean Nance said YFI could go as high as $270,000 per Token “soon”. According to the trader, YFI’s market at that price would keep it away from the top 10 cryptocurrencies hinting at a further upside movement. Nance said:

I’ve got 270k as a pretty reasonable target on YFI soon. I’m not sure if y’all are prepared for what’s coming to the market.

Yearn Finance aims for improvement

Setting support at $34.170 and $20.335, Nance indicated YFI recommended investors to buy more YFI and YFII. In support of this thesis, investor Daniel Cheung said Yearn Finance’s Total Value Locked reached a new ATH today with YFI price and it stands at $3B.

Cheung revealed to be “massive in YFI” and added Yearn Finance is “undervalued” with a story that is demanding recognition from the sector. At present, Yearn Finance growth could be amongst the highest in DeFi. Therefore, Cheng expects YFI to appreciate further. He added:

The $1.5 billion TVL in V2 alone produces $30 million in management fees. I would not be surprised if with the addition of performance fees across all vaults and yield from Yearn’s treasury farming, run-rate revenue is > $100 million. Markets are starting to appreciate undervalued protocols with outstanding fundamentals (…)

Yearn Finance YFI
Source: Daniel Cheung

Yearn Finance community seems very active via its governance model. Lawyer Gabriel Shapiro has been working on a new operational governance model with user “Tracheopteryx”.

Via his Twitter handle Shapiro explained this proposal attempts to “craft a governance philosophy” rooted on  real-world situations, based on what the lawyer described as “realpolitik”. Shapiro added:

(…) as applied to yearn, we call this philosophy “constrained delegation”: a system in which the primary role of YFI holders is to help decentralize and fine-tune the parameters of legitimate exercises of power within the community.

With an important number of partnerships in place, an active community that could gain more power, and strong fundamentals, YFI could be holding a moon ticket set to depart in the coming months.