Welcome to Yields of the Week! Every week, we spotlight the top DeFi yields across the crypto landscape, focusing on opportunities that are not just the highest APYs but also sustainable risk-adjusted opportunities. Whether you're new to DeFi or a seasoned degen, our goal is to help you navigate the yield farming space with confidence. Let’s dive into this week’s picks!

Earn high-quality DeFi yield on assets like ETH, USDC and USDT automatically - with Summer.fi

Now, stake $SUMR ahead of the January 21 TGE to access protocol fee yield before the market prices it in. Check out more at Summer.fi

Learn more about Toros Finance and their novel leverage tokens

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 YieldFi +56.8%, dTRINITY +23.6% (on very thin TVL) and Neutrl +22.8%.

The other thing standing out is a notable increase in Aave’s sGHO TVL +10.2%.

Nothing conclusive here, just things I’m watching:

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

This vault just went live last week and TVL is still low, but it’s worth flagging. BTC yields have been pretty weak lately, and this is one I expect to see pick up as more capital looks for alternatives.

This is not without risk, there’s a bit going on here under the hood on the curator side:

“The curator will use a conservative LTV to borrow USDC against tBTC, and deploy into (1) Noon's sUSN, and (2) leverage looping strategies on Vesu using Noon's sUSN.”

We’ve written about this in the past and have used it ourselves at times, but caps were full for a while. Recently, the caps have been raised for this fully automated Aavethena loop, which has been earning over ~20% APY over the past month.

You can also track how the yield has looked over longer time periods if you like. This goes back to September 2025 when this officially went live. Yields are starting to trend up a little bit again after bottoming in November of last year:

Summer’s Lazy Summer Protocol has some solid yields if you’re looking for low-risk with some upside. The SUMR token is already baked into the yield and shown transparently, so you can clearly see what’s real USDC yield versus SUMR incentives. If you want to stress-test assumptions, you can adjust the SUMR FDV in the top-right settings to lower or raise it as you see fit.

The one that stands out to me the most is this “Lower Risk” USDC vault on Ethereum Mainnet - 4.53% + 33.34% SUMR:

As mentioned above, the SUMR token is launching soon and will be a core part of the protocol going forward. You can already stake SUMR today, with trading going live on Jan 21.

Digging a bit deeper, what stood out to me was how much SUMR is already locked:

• 18.57% of the already released supply is locked for more than 2 years
• Average lock duration is 495 days

I’m mainly looking at this to gauge sell pressure at launch, especially since part of the yield is tied to SUMR incentives. Hard to know how it plays out, but this level of early lock activity is a pretty encouraging signal.

I think this is one of the hardest things to swallow in our industry. I write about vaults and yields every week, and you can do all the right things, but something like this can still happen. It’s a reminder of just how fragile all of this really is.

I saw some commentary on X that’s worth sharing. The full thread and the original quoted post are a harsh reality. Click on the post below to read the whole thing:

Taking a look at the front page of DeFi yields on Pendle:

Stablecoins

BTC

ETH

HYPE

Gladiator is an avid airdrop hunter I follow on X. I asked if he’d write the odd post on airdrops that are high priority for him.

Quick note from Nomatic - I actually want to go back to a previous Airdrop that Gladiator wrote up for us December 17th. He was bullish back then about TreadFi and I’ve seen it become an important part of HIP-3 and Perp Dex meta.

Here’s Gladiator’s December 17th writeup:

This is another reason it’s been on my radar this week. I’m seeing more people using TreadFi to tap into extra points, especially for things like Kinetiq’s Markets that just went live.

That’s all for now, thanks for checking it out!

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.