To use the Yearn aggregator, you'll typically fund your account through a centralized exchange first. You can complete account setup and KYC through the Binance Official Site or the Official Binance App, and if you're on an Apple device that can't install directly, check the iOS installation guide. Yearn is the oldest yield aggregator in DeFi, bundling yield strategies from multiple underlying protocols (Aave, Compound, Curve, Convex) into automated vaults — deposit your assets and they compound automatically. It's worth using if: you're managing under $50,000, don't want to actively manage positions, and are aiming for a stable 5-15% APY. It's not worth using if: you have a large amount of capital and are willing to manage it actively, you're chasing the absolute highest APR, or you demand maximum transparency. Yearn's core value proposition is saving time, but after the 20% performance fee, net returns often land close to what you'd get managing things manually.
Yearn was created in July 2020 by Andre Cronje (originally called iearn.finance), and it's one of the pioneers of DeFi's "yield farming" concept. Its YFI token was distributed through a "fair launch" — no allocation for the team, VCs, or private investors. All 30,000 tokens were fully distributed through LP mining within one week, earning it a reputation as one of the fairest launches in crypto, on par with Bitcoin's own launch.
According to DefiLlama data from April 2026, Yearn's TVL sits at roughly $800 million, concentrated mostly on the Ethereum mainnet. That's down about 87% from its 2021 peak of $6 billion, reflecting both the broader DeFi bear market and intensifying competition in the aggregator space. Yearn's main current competitors include Beefy Finance (a multi-chain aggregator with roughly $400 million TVL), Convex (focused on Curve, with roughly $1.2 billion TVL), and Pendle (yield tokenization, with roughly $2.8 billion TVL).
Yearn has evolved through several major versions:
Yearn V3 officially launched in June 2024, with several major improvements over V2:
Allocator-based: a vault is no longer tied to a single strategy. Instead, an allocator dynamically distributes funds across multiple strategies. A single USDC vault might deploy simultaneously into Aave, Compound, Curve+Convex, and Maker's DSR, with the allocator shifting weightings based on real-time yields.
The ERC-4626 standard: V3 vaults fully comply with the ERC-4626 tokenized vault standard, making them easier for other protocols to integrate (Pendle splits yvUSDC into PT/YT tokens, Curve accepts yvDAI as collateral, and so on).
Modular roles: admin, strategist, security, and emergency roles are now separated, so no single role holds all the permissions — improving overall security.
Unified across chains: vaults on the Ethereum mainnet, Polygon, Arbitrum, Optimism, and Base all share the same V3 codebase.
According to Yearn's official dashboard as of April 2026:
| Vault | Asset | TVL | Net APY | Main Strategy | Performance Fee |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| yvUSDC | USDC | $180M | 8.2% | Aave + Compound + Convex | 20% |
| yvDAI | DAI | $120M | 8.5% | Maker DSR + Curve | 20% |
| yvUSDT | USDT | $80M | 7.6% | Aave + Convex | 20% |
| yvWETH | WETH | $90M | 4.5% | Lido + Aave + Maker | 20% |
| yvWBTC | WBTC | $50M | 1.8% | Aave + Compound | 20% |
| yvCurve-stETH | stETH/ETH LP | $120M | 6.8% | Convex stETH/ETH | 20% |
| yvCurve-3CRV | 3pool LP | $60M | 8.2% | Convex 3pool | 20% |
| yvCurve-FRAXUSDC | FRAX/USDC LP | $40M | 7.5% | Convex FRAX/USDC | 20% |
Note: net APY already has the performance fee deducted. If you manually operated a Curve pool through Convex yourself, gross APY would be roughly 9-10%, and after deducting Yearn's 20% cut, the net APY would come out to roughly 7-8% — essentially on par with using Yearn directly. Yearn's "extra return" mostly comes from optimizing strategy switching and compounding frequency.
Take yvDAI as an example. Yearn allocates funds across several strategies:
Weighted average APY = 8.5%×40% + 4.5%×30% + 4.8%×20% + 7.7%×10% = 6.5%
But Yearn also does a few things to boost that return further:
These optimizations typically add another 1-2% on top of the gross APY, and after the 20% performance fee, users end up with a net APY of around 8.5%.
Yearn V3's fee model is more flexible than V2's:
| Fee Type | Rate | Purpose |
|---|---|---|
| Performance fee | Typically 10-20% | A cut of the actual yield the strategy generates |
| Management fee | Typically 0% (V3 default) | An annualized cut of total TVL |
| Withdraw fee | Typically 0% | Some more aggressive strategies may charge one |
In the V2 era there was a 2% management fee (charged against TVL). V3 removes it by default, relying entirely on the performance fee instead. That means the vault doesn't take a cut of users' principal when it isn't generating returns — a more user-friendly design.
Where the fees go:
Across all of 2025, Yearn's protocol fee revenue totaled roughly $18 million.
Assume a user has $50,000 in USDC, and compare three approaches:
Option A: deposit directly into Aave (the most hands-off)
Option B: manually switch between multiple protocols (high-effort management)
Option C: Yearn's yvUSDC vault (automated)
As you can see, Yearn does have a real edge at small-to-mid capital sizes (under $100,000) — automated reinvestment makes manual management's marginal benefit shrink, and even after the performance fee, Yearn still comes out ahead of manual management. But once you're managing over $300,000, building your own strategy combination and using Convex directly can potentially net you more than Yearn does.
Single-asset vaults: yvUSDC, yvUSDT, yvDAI, yvWETH, yvWBTC — deposit a single asset, which gets automatically distributed across multiple protocols.
LP vaults: yvCurve-stETH, yvCurve-3CRV — deposit Curve LP tokens, which get automatically staked on Convex to earn boosted rewards.
Auto-compounding vaults: automatically redeposit claimed rewards, eliminating the need to manually reinvest. This was Yearn's earliest signature feature.
The new "Allocator V3": dynamically adjusts weightings across multiple strategies, essentially acting as an "automated quant hedge" layer inside the vault.
Juiced vaults (a new V3 feature): layer an additional incentive tier on top of a normal vault (partner token rewards), currently rolled out mainly on Optimism and Polygon.
YFI is Yearn's governance token, with an initial supply of 30,000 tokens. In 2021, a governance proposal minted an additional 6,666 tokens for the team and treasury, bringing total supply to 36,666.
What YFI holders earn:
Locking into veYFI: locking YFI gets you veYFI, which entitles you to a share of vault revenue plus governance rights. The maximum lock period is 4 years, with voting weight scaling linearly with lock duration.
A share of protocol revenue: 50% of protocol fees are distributed to holders in proportion to their veYFI holdings. Cumulative distributions in 2025 totaled roughly $9 million.
Buybacks and burns: the protocol treasury periodically uses a portion of its revenue to buy back and burn YFI, with roughly 800 YFI burned cumulatively between 2024 and 2025.
According to CoinGecko data from April 2026, YFI trades around $7,600, with a market cap of roughly $280 million. That's down roughly 91% from its 2021 peak of $90,000, reflecting both the broader DeFi bear market and Yearn's market share being eaten into by competitors.
Over its 6-year history, Yearn has experienced 2 major security incidents:
The yDAI attack in February 2021: an attacker used a flash loan to manipulate a Curve pool's price and drained roughly $11 million from the yDAI vault. Yearn's team fully reimbursed every affected user within a week, using the protocol treasury.
A smaller vault vulnerability in 2023: affected a USDT vault, resulting in a loss of roughly $1.3 million, which was likewise absorbed by the protocol.
Overall, Yearn's security track record sits in the upper-middle tier within DeFi. The role separation and modular design introduced in V3 reduce single-point-of-failure risk, but the strategy layer — the code that interacts with external protocols like Aave and Convex — still depends on the security of those outside protocols.
Q: Is Yearn V3 really better than V2?
V3 outperforms V2 on flexibility, security, and gas efficiency, but the day-to-day user experience isn't dramatically different (the front end is basically the same). The Yearn team is encouraging users to migrate from V2 to V3, and some V2 vaults are no longer being actively updated.
Q: Is Yearn's 20% performance fee reasonable?
It's the industry standard. Beefy Finance's standard cut is roughly 9.5%, Convex takes 17% (on direct LP positions), and Frax Finance takes 25%. Yearn's 20% sits right in the middle, in line with a reasonable price for "professional strategy management." That said, for users with large amounts of capital, building your own strategy mix may save money.
Q: Which chains is Yearn deployed on?
V3 is deployed across 5 chains: Ethereum mainnet, Polygon, Arbitrum, Optimism, and Base. The mainnet has the most vault options (roughly 60+), while Layer 2s have fewer options (10-20 vaults per chain).
Q: What's the relationship between Yearn and Convex?
Most of Yearn's Curve-related vaults are actually wrapped Convex strategies — meaning LP tokens are deposited into Convex to earn boosted rewards, and the resulting cvxCRV, CRV, and CVX rewards get converted back into the underlying asset and reinvested. Yearn builds an "automation plus reinvestment plus multi-strategy" layer on top of Convex.
Q: Is YFI worth buying right now?
YFI has real cash flow behind it (a share of protocol fees plus buybacks and burns), but its price performance has been weak for a long stretch. It fell from $12,000 to $7,600 between 2024 and 2025, mainly because Yearn's market share has been squeezed by newer protocols like Pendle. Whether it's worth investing in comes down to your own view on Yearn's long-term prospects for a comeback.
Q: Can funds on Yearn get frozen?
V3 vaults don't have a "pause and lock withdrawals" mechanism — users can withdraw at any time, even in an emergency (though slippage may increase in extreme situations). That said, V3 vaults do have an "emergencyShutdown" function, which halts the strategy but still allows withdrawals when triggered.
Q: Do you have to pay taxes on Yearn earnings?
It varies by country. The US IRS treats both depositing into and withdrawing from a vault as taxable events (taxed on the gain portion); most of the EU taxes it as capital gains; mainland China bans crypto trading entirely, so there's no clear tax treatment there.
Q: What's the ideal amount of capital to put into Yearn?
The $50,000-$500,000 range is the sweet spot. Below $50,000, gas costs eat up too large a share of returns; above $500,000, building your own strategy combination tends to be more cost-effective. Mid-sized users get the full benefit of both of Yearn's value propositions — saving time through automation and boosting returns through compounding.
Q: Which offers higher returns, Yearn or Pendle?
They operate on different dimensions. Yearn offers "passive vaults" where returns accrue automatically every day; Pendle offers "yield trading," letting you buy either fixed income (PT) or speculative yield (YT). Pendle's fixed-income side typically yields about 1-3% less than Yearn vaults' net APY (because of the liquidity-lock premium it demands), but it carries less risk.
Q: Is Yearn's code open source?
Fully open source — every vault and strategy contract is verifiable on Etherscan. The yearn/vault-v3 repository on GitHub is publicly maintained, and it's been audited by multiple firms, including Trail of Bits, ChainSecurity, and Spearbit.
Yearn Finance's official dashboard, DefiLlama, CoinGecko, Etherscan, Yearn's official GitHub, and Dune Analytics (for vault performance comparisons).