April Asset Pick: Yeti Finance
Yeti Finance is a borrowing & lending protocol on Avalanche that enables its users to borrow against their entire portfolio on Avalanche. Unlike other lending protocols, users can use their entire portfolio instead of a single asset to have better protection against liquidations.
Vision
Yeti Finance team claims that they bring a unique functionality into the lending & borrowing space by allowing users to borrow against their entire portfolio. Avalanche Foundation also made a strategic investment in them which shows that the project has potential. Their vision is to unlock billions in the DeFi ecosystem which was not possible before due to uncollateralizable assets.
Team
The team remains anonymous but they say that their identities are known to Avalanche Foundation and Trader Joe. They bring a wealth of experience both from the crypto and non-crypto world. On the crypto side, the team worked at leading Ethereum DeFi protocols, engaged with MEV operations, and also had experiences in smart contract auditing. On the non-crypto side, some of the team members brought skillsets from Google and Silicon Valley tech startups.
Backers
Avalanche Foundation
Trader Joe
GBV Capital
Product
Yeti Finance just launched their mainnet and the app can be used smoothly. They have had multiple audits to check the safety of their smart contracts. It is also fair to mention that the team had to postpone its launch 2 times due to unexpected errors. Always use the app with caution.
Metrics
They managed to get ~$800M TVL in less than a week.
Tokenomics & Valuation
The main token of Yeti Finance is $YETI. There is also $YUSD which is a stablecoin that can be minted on Yeti Finance’s app. Users can stake YETI to earn more YETI while also accruing veYETI over time. veYETI will boost rewards in the pools for users. The mechanism is similar to what Platypus (vePTP) or Trader Joe (veJOE) has. If users unstake their YETI, they will lose all their accumulated veYETI.
The total supply of YETI is 500M tokens. First five months, emissions will be high to bootstrap the protocol. Then emissions will be constant for the next four years.
According to CoinGecko, the total circulating supply is almost 10M tokens and the price of YETI is $0.91 as of April 26, 2022. Market Cap is $8.8M. Considering that there are roughly 10–15M tokens coming into circulation every month, there could be negative pressure on the price. However, this negative pressure might be well offset by the total demand for the token if Yeti Finance manages to secure further TVL onto its platform.
Competition
The main competitors of Yeti Finance would be the blue-chip borrowing protocols such as Aave, Compound, and Avalanche-native BENQI.
Competitive advantage
Yeti Finance claims that they managed to include assets that were uncollateralizable before to their vaults so that they can unlock more potential in the DeFi borrowing world.
Community
Twitter: 20K followers: https://twitter.com/YetiFinance
Discord: 12K members: https://t.co/eckwEGXSKZ
Telegram: 11K members: https://t.co/7VpTj4SnDc
Medium: 1K followers: https://blog.yetifinance.co
Conclusion
Yeti Finance seems to be an innovative protocol that brings new features into the borrowing ecosystem instead of forking existing protocols. The fact that they managed to secure investments from Avalanche Foundation also gives them extra credibility. It is a project that is worth keeping an eye on.
Sources
https://twitter.com/YetiFinance
Disclaimer
Please do your own research before making investments.
