Don't Be Fooled By Insanely High APYs?

Have you noticed that a significant number of DeFi projects are offering insanely high annual percentage yields (APY)? This looks very attractive to investors, especially retail investors, who are at the most risk.

There are DeFi protocols that have been built using the proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus protocol offering eye-watering returns to their investors in return for them staking their native tokens. But, as most of us know, sometimes by getting burnt ourselves, if something sounds too good to be true, then it probably is.

The issue is that some projects are nothing more than cash grab schemes. Shiraz Jagati at Cointelegraph gives the example of YieldZard, a project positioning itself as a DeFi innovation-focused company with an auto-staking protocol, which claims to offer a fixed APY of 918,757% to its clients. Who finds that believable? All you would need to invest is $1000 to gain a return of $9,187,570! And YieldZard isn’t the only project offering fast and high payouts.

How can you as an investor assess the sustainability of projects like this? Here is some advice from Kia Mosayeri, product manager at Balancer Labs — a DeFi automated market-making protocol. “Sophisticated investors will want to look for the source of the yield, its sustainability and capacity. A yield that is driven from sound economical value, such as interest paid for borrowing capital or percentage fees paid for trading, would be rather more sustainable and scalable than yield that comes from arbitrary token emissions.”

Ran Hammer, vice president of business development for public blockchain infrastructure at Orbs, pointed to the fact that DeFi offers another major innovation to the crypto ecosystem: the ability to earn yields on what is more or less passive holding. But as he says, not all yields are equal by design because some yields are rooted in “real” revenue, while others are the result of high emissions based on Ponzi-like tokenomics.

Ultimately, it is very important for investors to understand where the yield is coming from. For example, transaction fees in exchange for computing power, trading fees on liquidity, a premium for options or insurance and interest on loans are all “real yields.” Whereas those that are based on token inflation may turn out to be less sustainable, as there is no real economic value funding these rewards.

So, if you see a dazzling APY offered, you should consider all of the above, as well as the fact that most returns are paid in cryptocurrencies, and since most cryptocurrencies are volatile, (just look at the market this week!) the assets lent to earn such unrealistic APYs can decrease in value over time, leading to major losses.