yearn.finance, established in February 2020 by Andre Cronje, running on Ethereum blockchain, acts as an aggregator service of decentralized finance (DeFi) services. The yearn.finance platform consists of several independent products such as “Earn” – which identifies the highest interest rates users can earn lending an asset or “Vaults” – a collection of investment strategies designed to generate the highest returns from other DeFi projects.
For example, with “Earn” a user can deposit DAI (a stablecoin) and yearn.finance will programmatically deposit DAI into one of three lending protocols (AAVE, Curve, Compound). yearn.finance will switch between protocols as interest rates change between protocols to optimize yield.
In July 2020, the yearn.finance platform launched its native token YFI. YFI holders can vote on proposals and participate in the revenue collected by yearn.finance in the form of fees.
yearn.finance popularized robo investment strategies across decentralized finance (DeFi) platforms with the aim of generating the highest returns.