Quick note, Yields of the week is now DeFi Frontier as this name better reflects the content that we've started to share in this weekly report.

Welcome to DeFi Frontier.

Every week, I highlight the DeFi opportunities, protocols, and market themes I think are worth paying attention to.

Sometimes that means sustainable yield opportunities. Sometimes it means new protocols, best practices, risk frameworks, or broader trends shaping where capital is moving onchain.

The goal is simple: help you find what’s interesting in DeFi, understand the tradeoffs, and avoid blindly chasing the biggest APY on the screen.

Let’s get into this week’s report.

7 day benchmark stablecoin rates from Portals: 2.40%:

Here’s the top yielding stablecoin vaults (real yields) for the past 30 days:

Checking in on Stablewatch to see the 7-day TVL changes.

This week the top movers were: OpenTrade (XEVT) +299.9%, Maple (syrupUSDT) + 15.6%, Yuzu (syzUSD) +12.5%:

7 day benchmark ETH staking rates from Portals: 2.81%

Here’s the top yielding ETH vaults (real yields) for the past 30 days:

A few weeks ago, I was writing about how as we get deeper into a bear market, it can start to feel a little suboptimal to keep parking spare stables in yield.

Obviously it depends on your goals. If your less volatile income, yield still makes sense. But if you’re trying to compound over a full cycle, there is probably a point where the better opportunity is finding liquid tokens with upside the market is missing.

That is basically how I ended up looking at EtherFi, and more specifically the upside I think could exist in the ETHFI token.

I still only hold a very small position personally, but part of the reason I wanted to write about it was to force myself to understand it better. What am I missing? What do I not know yet? And is the market overlooking something real here?

DCF GOD shared an excerpt from the report where I walk through what ETHFI’s FDV could look like if you comp it to Revolut and assume growth stays on track through Q4 of this year.

If you want to read the full piece, you can find the link below:

Up to 57.7% APY on USD3 automated looping

Odyssey is a really interesting DeFi “everything app”. Under their Loopr tab, they offer a very user friendly automated looping interface. If you want to learn a bit more about Odyssey before we go further I wrote it up in our looping section last year right here.

The ones that stand out to me here are the two 3Jane opportunities for USD3 and PT - USD3 (the Pendle version)

What is USD3?

On the 3Jane website it is self described as “a credit-backed yieldcoin powering the next generation of fintech lenders”

However, USD3 is the senior to the sUSD3 junior:

I mention all this, because its prudent to look at what you’re looping. You definitely want to weigh the risks of how trustworthy you think USD3 is. The helpful part is in this case it has some protection from sUSD3. But if this looks interesting, I recommend diving deeper into the weeds with their docs.

Lastly, 3Jane has some great incentives going on right now. Their liquidity mining program is one of the better designed ones I’ve seen recently. And the great thing is you’re getting real non-transferable JANE tokens. Not points.

10-12% on ETH Carry

This is funny because when I first wrote about this, it was essentially me creating my own carry trade using Liquity v2. It was before I even knew about this vault. Then the big 🧠’s at Ipor essentially put a similar version of the carry trade I was thinking of into a vault and removed many of the manual steps.

This has maintained a very nice APY over a few months now, but IMO still seems to be a bit under the radar.

There is risk to outsourcing the management and there also is some amount of leverage involved here. However, nothing about this is a black box. All of it is fully transparent and utilizing blue chip DeFi IMO:

18.52% real yield on Katana App

When I first saw this on Katana I assumed this was being heavily incentivized by KAT Rewards, but that is not the case. There’s still relatively low TVL here, but the Native APY at 18.52% is very nice. But I’m sure will drop as more people notice this.

Taking a look at the front page of Stablecoin yields and RWA yields this week on Pendle:

Stablecoins

RWA

The total TVL between STRCx (by xStocks) Saturn and APYX this week is $718.43M ($749.65 last week)

Movement since June 16:

Saylor has somewhat quietly raised his dividend coverage back up to 10 months now.

I say quietly because although the market is still paying attention, it feels like the conversation has cooled off a bit from last week, when this was basically all I saw on my feed. I actually think that is probably a good thing.

I’ve personally never put money into STRC or any of the derivative DeFi products built around it, but I still find the whole experiment fascinating. I’m keeping a close eye on where this goes.

Bitmine also launched its own preferred equity product in a similar style to STRC, called BMNP. BMNP has a $100 stated value and pays a fixed 9.5% dividend on that amount. But because it was sold at $80, buyers were really getting closer to a 12% yield at launch. Bitmine then uses that capital for the ETH treasury strategy, and the hope is that ETH staking yield, options income, future raises, and treasury gains can help cover the dividend over time.

The big difference versus Strategy’s STRC is that STRC has a moving dividend rate. Strategy can raise or lower the dividend to try to keep STRC trading around $100. BMNP does not really have that same tool. So if the market decides Bitmine is riskier, BMNP can just trade lower until the yield is high enough for buyers. BMNP is definitely inspired by the Strategy playbook, but it is not exactly the same thing. STRC is more of a preferred stock that Strategy is actively trying to keep near par, while BMNP is more like a fixed yield bet on Bitmine, ETH, and their ability to keep paying the dividend.

That’s all for this week, thanks for reading!

DISCLAIMER: Nothing written in The Edge Newsletter or said on The Edge Podcast is a recommendation to buy or sell tokens or securities. This content is for educational and entertainment purposes only. Nothing shared here is financial advice. Any views expressed in our content are solely the opinion of that writer, host, or guest. Always do your own research. DeFi Dad, Nomatic, and guests may have positions in the assets or other matters discussed in this content.