Harvest Finance is a decentralized protocol helping yield farmers find the most fertile platforms to sow and harvest.
The decentralized finance (DeFi) space is known for its yield farming and liquidity mining schemes. As such, new platforms are being built, each promising better and more attractive yield to farmers than the last. From SushiSwap to Curve to Compound, liquidity providers are spoilt for choice.
Unfortunately, with an increasing number of DeFi protocols, yield farming enthusiasts are torn between platforms that are considered legitimate by many or those that produce highly optimized yields. Enter Harvest Finance. Harvest, as the name suggests, is a protocol meant to enable yield harvesting from leading and upcoming DeFi platforms.
Below, we take a closer look at Harvest and its unique value proposition.
Table of Contents
Background
According to its Github page, the project does not have known public members. However, in its FAQs section, Harvest Finance recognizes the contribution of Andre Cronje, a leading Yearn Finance developer and a prominent name in the DeFi corridors.
Although it does not mention Cronje’s specific contribution, it states that the top shot developer “provided inspiration” and opened possibilities in the development of DeFi-focused platforms.
What is Harvest Finance?
Harvest Finance is a decentralized protocol helping yield farmers find the most fertile lands to sow and harvest. Also, after locating the best place to farm, the system employs the newest farming methods to enhance the yields.
The yield harvesting protocol is inspired by the problems faced by young farmers, such as rising transaction fees, especially when moving funds between DeFi systems, as well as the complexity of auditing smart contracts.
Harvest Finance is audited by Haechi Audit and PeckShield. Although Haechi found some major and minor issues with governance and other aspects, the Harvest team has since fixed them. This has prompted the two audit firms to issue the protocol with a clean bill of health.
Additionally, the platform addresses key barriers to farming by small farmers by providing a one-stop platform that can effectively handle APY tracking, transaction costs and develop a fund deployment strategy while ensuring farmers’ funds’ safety.
Benefits of Using Harvest Finance for Serious Yield Farmers
- The platform is audited by reputable smart contract auditors. With safety guaranteed, farmers can have the peace of mind needed in the volatile cryptocurrency space.
- Within 24 hours, farmers save a cumulative $500K in transaction fees. Consequently, the profit margin on the yields is greatly improved.
- It’s all about maximizing yields. Harvest is dedicated to choosing the platform that offers the highest profits. This includes conducting a thorough background check on any platform that the protocol wishes to deploy funds.
- With phony DeFi protocols being launched to defraud farmers, conclusive due diligence protects Harvest Finance users from such platforms.
- Harvest has a supercharged community on leading social media platforms such as Discord, Twitter, Reddit, and Telegram.
The Harvest Finance Token (FARM)
The network has a native currency called FARM. It monitors and facilitates the flow of funds across the Harvest ecosystem. FARM didn’t undergo a pre-mine phase, and neither did it receive support from venture capital firms.
Therefore, at launch, the token started at a supply of 0. Its total supply for four years is projected to be at 690,420 tokens. To control inflation, FARM is regularly burnt. For example, in weeks 3 and 4 of its existence, 14,850 and 5,846 FARM tokens were burnt, respectively.
Notably, the token is listed on both decentralized and centralized exchanges. Some decentralized exchanges (DEXs) where it’s listed include Uniswap, 1inch.exchange, Paraswap, and DeBank. Also, FARM is available for trading on Probit, Gate.io, Hotbit, and LBank.
Harvest Finance Pools
Harvest supports a wide range of DeFi-based tokens and cryptocurrencies. For instance, it supports tokens from the Curve and the Uniswap liquidity pool. Other coins allowed include, but are not limited to, USDT, WBTC, RENBTC, USDC, DAI, WETH, and TUSD.
Additionally, the protocol supports yield-bearing cryptocurrencies from different platforms. Yield-bearing currencies are denoted by ‘f’. For example, fDAI, fUSDC, fWBTC. Basically, Harvest Finance automatically harvests these tokens.
Currently, the platform is undergoing key upgrades that introduce additional features. Consequently, this leads to the migration of pools from the old version to the new version. When the TUSD pool was introduced, for example, proxy contracts, time lock, and strategy splitter functionalities were introduced.
Incentives to liquidity providers vary depending on pools and are calculated weekly. Observe that assets in the older version on the platform cannot earn rewards until they’re migrated.
Interestingly, the migration approach employed by Harvest exempts users from the hassle of initiating multiple transactions. This makes the platform ideal even for new yield farmers since the process is frictionless.
How to Stake on Harvest Finance
Let’s start with how to get the platform’s native currency, FARM. To do this, we’ll use USDC. Assuming that you already have some USDC coins stashed in your wallet;
- Transfer USDC to Ethereum’s MetaMask wallet.
- Head over to Harvest.Finance on your desktop.
- Select ‘Connect Wallet’ and approve that you need to connect to Harvest.
- Locate the USDC option > Specify the amount you want to deposit > Approve the transactions.
- After this step, you’ll be awarded an equivalent amount of yield-bearing tokens named fUSDC.
- Next, stake fUSDC by visiting ‘Earn’ on the upper part of the page and select ‘Deposit: fUSDC Earn: FARM.’
- Choose stake > Specify the amount > Hit ‘Stake.’
- Approve the transaction.
- You are through—time to bring home the bread.
Harvest Finance and Perpetual Protocol
Harvest, through its Council of 69, invested in Perpetual Protocol after a majority of Harvest investors agreed to the deal. The deal between the two companies attracted an investment of 50,000 USDC coins for PERP token with the Perpetual network giving a discount of 50 percent on its token price.
Note that Harvest, through its treasury fund, is committed to investing in unique projects. The team notes that early investments help build a mutually-beneficial relationship that can later turn into an opportunity for the entire Harvest community.
The Harvest-Perpetual investment, for example, will see Harvest benefit from the platform’s fee rebate feature. The Council of 69 is entrusted with exploring new investment opportunities such as partnerships and strategic integrations that have the potential of growing into a formidable force in the future despite the current low rate,.
Harvest Finance Governance
The protocol operates a global autonomous hedge fund. This involves all Harvest farmers who participate in governance-related issues. Some decisions that require community involvement include deciding on whether to upgrade the user interface.
Also, improvements touching on the core Harvest protocol require farmer participation. Furthermore, raising and voting for recommendations require holding the network’s native token.
The Harvest Dashboard
Harvest Finance provides a central place where farmers can visually access their activities on the platform. Information found on the dashboard include joined liquidity pool, amount staked, and the USD value of all your assets on the protocol.
Conclusion
By acquiring a clean bill of health from two smart contracts audit firms, Harvest Finance provides the required security as surety that the platform is safe. Apart from safety, the platform’s approach to only seek the best fertile lands for yield farmers helps it eliminate a lot of the friction associated with moving funds between DeFi networks.
Among its unique features is the establishment of a treasury and the Council 69 that study and propose investments and partnerships with new projects that are likely to provide benefits to Harvest farmers in the future. This approach reduces the investment amount since the projects are relatively new.
