Yearn Finance has been on an acquisition spree. The list of YFI acquisitions continues to grow as more and more DeFi projects get acquired or run deep collaborations with the YFI ecosystem.
Before we dive into the list, note the meaning of the word “acquisition” is very differently used than a traditional corporate acquisition. Andre Cronje, the founder of Yearn, explains it as such. Acquisition here could mean any of merger, acquisition, partnership, or collaboration (albeit somewhat deeper collaboration than “crypto-collaborations” which are notoriously unreliable).
Let’s look at the list of YFI collaborations
- Pickle: Pickle has been working on similar projects to yVault via pJars or pickle jars. Therefore, a merger of sorts here was not unsurprising. Pickle moved faster than Yearn but unfortunately already experienced a $20 million hack. The time was right for YFI to swoop in. Pickle developers will now focus on strategies within the Yearn ecosystem – basically, an acquisition of the dev team.
- Cream: Even since the early days, Yearn has been focused on money markets, lending, and yield generating products via the y-tokens. Cream was a natural extension of that. Cream is more of a deep partnership or collaboration and Cream can become the go to protocol for lending for Yearn strategies. We’ll see how this plays with Aave, Compound, and Maker.
- Cover: Similar to Cream, this is more of a deep partnership or collaboration. Insurance has been something the Yearn team has worked on in the past with yInsure. Cover just makes it more robust, scalable, and usable. Read the post here.
- Akro: Akro, the “Greek DeFi” is similar to Pickle in that it is combining developer effort to building out the yield ecosystem. Akro contributes the frontend and users already using their system and contributes investment strategies to Yearn tailored to their userbase. You can read their announcement here.
- Sushi: Announcement here
These are the list of YFI acquisitions, mergers, partnerships, and collaborations to date. Yearn has emerged from the DeFi bear market with guns blazing – time will tell if this translates into higher AUM, higher revenue, and higher YFI value, especially with the v2 vaults launching to the public in a few months.