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What is Yam? The YFI-AMPL clone with lures of 10,000% returns What is Yam? The YFI-AMPL clone with lures of 10,000% returns
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What is Yam? The YFI-AMPL clone with lures of 10,000% returns

What is Yam? The YFI-AMPL clone with lures of 10,000% returns

Photo by Louis Hansel @shotsoflouis

Yam, a new DeFi project put together in ten days with no audit, guaranteed risks, and never-seen-before returns locked upwards of $180 million hours after launch on August 11.

It was created by five individuals at the start of August and the tokens are fundamentally worth zero. But that hasn’t stopped yield farmers from chasing the YFI-esque promises of 10,000% annual percentage yield (APY) on locking up the tokens on liquidity pools.

It is the latest in line of a bunch of “governance” protocols making big returns in the crypto market. It’s essentially a game of musical chairs with the early “adopters” getting big returns and a bunch of people left with bags of hopium in the end.

A post on the topic yesterday said the project brings “mashes up” some of the most exciting innovations in programmable money and governance — referring to it taking the best (or worst) of Compound, Yearn.Finance, and Ampleforth.

So here’s a primer on Yam: For starters, the token has no inherent value and takes Ampleforth’s (AMPL) rebase features to promise a better token economy.

Other buzzwords include, “fully on-chain governance to enable decentralized control and evolution from Day 1.”

YAM is an elastic supply cryptocurrency, which expands and contracts supply in response to market conditions, initially targeting 1 USD per YAM, said the blog. 

“This stability mechanism is supplemented by one key addition to existing elastic supply models such as Ampleforth,” it added, adds a portion of each supply expansion is used to buy yCRV (a high-yield USD-denominated stablecoin) and add it to the Yam treasury, which is controlled via Yam community governance.

The blog, interestingly, noted:

“We have built Yam to be a minimally viable monetary experiment, and at launch, there will be zero value in the YAM token.”

YAM future in the hands of holders

The future of Yam is wholly in the hands of YAM holders, who help determine and update the functionality of the Yam protocol, including oracle usage, rebase functionality, inflation, incentive design, the Yam treasury, it added.

YAM tokens surged to trade over $120 at the time of writing, as per data on Coingecko. One commentator on Twitter explained why/how did it surge as much:

But concerns remain. The project is valueless and a great experiment in decentralized platform governance, with users holding the power to make or break the protocol’s immediate and long-term future.

It’s also not for newcomers:

With new projects seemingly trying to capitalize on the DeFi frenzy daily, expect a lot of new scams and innovations alike in the coming months.

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Posted In: , DeFi