September 3, 2024: Yearn X 💙💊
Yearn Finance launches protocol specific hubs
If you’re new to crypto, it’s entirely possible you’ve heard of Yearn thanks to their delightful memework, but maybe don’t know exactly what it is and are at the point where you’re too afraid to ask.
No judgement! DeFi is complicated!
Forced to answer in two letters, we’d say OG, as the Yearn team are true DeFi OGs. Yearn continues innovating, building and shipping. They’ve survived the excessive bipolar swings of vicious crypto market moods for years. They’ve launched key products that form the cornerstone of DeFi, all while championing the fundamental values that make cryptocurrency a successful movement.
But don’t just take my word for it. Yearn created a based and bespoke document outlining their vision statement called The Blue Pill which articulates the Yearn story better than we could:
If you’re still reading, we’ll presume you’re caught up and convinced on Yearn.
Let’s get to the recent launch of Yearn X.
Yearn has launched a ton of innovative products. This is great for DeFi, but creates a challenge for UI/UX purists. How do you keep the UI clean and simple while supporting so many products built atop so many protocols.
Yearn X can be thought of as a series of user-friendly portals specific to the each of the various protocols Yearn supports. When you land on Yearn X, you see a directory of the who’s who of DeFi protocols supported by Yearn.
Each specific protocol has its own dedicated UI that’s so simple you could feel safe giving it to a DeFi novice. Below you can see a screenshot of the Curve space.
These are all vaults that exist elsewhere in the Yearn ecosystem. For instance, the $crvUSD vault exists within the Yearn v3 section of their site, while the Staked Yearn Curve Vault sits under Yearn v2 and utilized the yCRV wrapper found under a different section of their site.
If you showed up on Yearn with the vague idea that you wanted to do something related to Curve, you might not have been sure where to look for the specific product on their homepage, so the existence of a protocol-specific landing pages simplifies the process.
Throughout all the screenshots you perhaps noticed the elegance and straightforward simplicity of Yearn’s design. The Yearn team are appropriately snobbish about creating outstanding UI/UX accessible to everybody, as evidenced by this recent conversation snapshotted here:
Draper0x shared more background on the motivation behind Yearn X:
Yearn has always been the easiest way to earn yield from a range of protocols from OGs like Curve to newer players like Pendle. But as Yearn's offerings have grown, there's been UI bloat which has meant that navigating Yearn has gotten increasingly hard.
Yearn X is a return to a simpler era where users can go directly to the protocol page that they want to farm, and find that specific protocol's Yearn Vaults.
Yearn X has been built in a way that any protocol with Yearn Vaults can create their own Yearn X page with some customization options.
It's not just better for users, but also now protocols like Curve can share their Yearn X page directly with their audience without having to share the v3 UI that has dozens of Yearn Vaults that have nothing to do with Curve.
It’s an intuitive way for Yearn to prepare itself for DeFi summer by working with several emerging and promising protocols in DeFi.
Even if the protocols occasionally find themselves skirmishing amongst themselves, the individual protocols can still feel safe advertising Yearn to their respective audiences:
So take a look at the inaugural batch of Yearn spaces, and prepare yourself for much more from the inveterate builders!
Other recent coverage of Yearn from this summer’s Llama Party:
