In 2020, I followed Yearn as YFI’s fair launch and early vaults turned yield farming into a community-driven experiment. These three posts revisit the original recipe, the merger spree, and the forks that tried to make that recipe their own. Read them as a historical sequence from 2020, not as instructions for using today’s vaults or picking a farm.
Reading Path
- YearnFinance: DeFi on autopilot? explains the early vault strategies, DeFi composability, and the community around YFI’s fair launch.
- Yearn’s Merger Spree: Who Joined and Why examines the 2020 partnerships with Pickle, Cream, Cover, Akropolis, and SushiSwap, and the proposed synergies behind them.
- Yearn’s Forks: What Made the Best Waifus Stick looks at the fair-launch template, community governance, and what the early forks tried to do differently.
