Spotlight Series - YieldNest: What You Need to Know
Yield Optimization 2.0, DeFi's Capital Efficiency Engine, & More
Markets are down bad right now, and market participants need to be extra selective when it comes to how they are deploying their capital. One of the best ways to make the most of the current price action is to take advantage of the opportunities in DeFi, which look especially attractive right now. DeFi is the 2nd leading narrative by mindshare, clearly in an uptrend, while AI trends lower.
There are various opportunities to earn yield on Sonic, Berachain, and other chains across various protocols. We’ll spend more of our coverage in the interim covering these opportunities as demand for them increases.
In today’s edition, we’ll discuss YieldNest, a restaking aggregator looking to bridge the gap between restaking's promise and DeFi's present reality. Restaking was all the hype in 2023 and 2024; however, there are still significant gaps in the restaking market and it is far from optimized. While there is still lots of opportunity in this sector, capitalizing on it is more complicated than it needs to be for users…
Stay informed in the markets ⬇
Background on YieldNest
The Restaking sector first came about in 2023 when EigenLayer first opened its limited deposits. Restaking would go on to become a dominant narrative throughout 2023 and 2024, providing one of the primary narratives for $ETH before ultimately spreading to various other chains. This provides optionality, but also fragments opportunity and complicates user-choice.
Considering this backdrop, restaking aggregators and protocols that can simplify various restaking strategies into a single interface can be particularly useful for users. By sourcing restaking opportunities for various assets from different LRTs, YieldNest is able to provide a capital efficiency engine for DeFi. A primary selling point of YieldNest is its MAX LRTs, which focus on delivering risk-adjusted yields through battle-tested mechanisms. Effectively, YieldNest streams yield from multiple LRTs into one single token, providing optimized and diversified yield.
MAX LRTs are supported by a modular design consisting of several key components responsible for the protocol’s success. Notably, the optimization of yield is managed via AI-driven risk management and automatic rebalancing. The end result is a single token that users can ‘set and forget’, more or less, important for drawing in and retaining TVLs in the restaking space.
Behind the scenes, users’ capital is put to good use, allocated to the best opportunities possible. This may involve non-restaking strategies, with YieldNest incorporating yield from DEXs and lending markets into MAX LRTs. This is an extremely important point, as the majority of yield that users can earn in the restaking space doesn’t actually come from restaking at all.
The majority of restaking rewards from outside incentives, DeFi, and staking. This goes to show why the need for aggregators that can streamline all of these opportunities for users exists and may be even more important in the rstaking space than in other sectors of crypto.
$YND Airdrop
Wallets are hurting right now; everyone could use some kind of incentive in this current market regime. YieldNest has recently published details regarding their upcoming airdrop. Airdrops are all about community building, using incentives to introduce users to a product they may find useful, and rewarding early adopters. YieldNest’s $YND airdrop goes about this in a couple of key ways. Most importantly, the eligibility period is still live, meaning even new users can qualify.
As mentioned previously, additional incentives are one the ways in which LRTs can pay off beyond the actual restaking yield, which is actually miniscule. YieldNest has its own incentives; YieldNest seeds. Users can earn seeds from just about every activity on the platform, though some definitely yield more than others…
As of now, 206M seeds have been issued, though there is still time to participate as season 2 of the seeds initiative is still ongoing; the exact snapshot date has not been announced yet. Additionally, users don’t even necessarily need to have used the YieldNest platform to qualify, as the team has cooperated with many partner protocols to diversify distribution across a variety of communities. Native token and NFT holders of 13 partner protocols are also eligible for $YND. Check the list below to see if you qualify:
For the past couple of weeks, the market has been choppy or extremely volatile, swinging from one extreme to the next while remaining far from the highs. It’s important to protect capital in these kinds of environments and not take unnecessary risks. This is why the prospect of sitting back and collecting yield in the meantime seems so attractive to so many market participants right now…
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