Yield farming is like putting your crypto assets to work so they can generate more crypto. It’s part of the DeFi world where you lend or stake your cryptocurrency in exchange for rewards. Users deposit their crypto into a liquidity pool, which powers trading and lending on decentralized platforms. As an incentive for providing liquidity, users earn rewards, often in the form of additional cryptocurrency tokens and/or trading fees earned by that particular pool.
It’s a high-risk, high-reward game though. The returns can be enticing, but there are risks like price volatility, smart contract vulnerabilities, and impermanent loss, where the value of your staked assets can fluctuate. Most yield farming happens on Ethereum-based platforms, but alternatives are popping up too.
Yield farming shows how creatively people are using technology to rethink money. Just make sure you know what you’re getting into before jumping in, because things can get complicated fast.