Orca Crypto
DeFi term

Yield farming

Moving capital between protocols to chase the highest available return.

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Updated 2026-08-303 min readDefinition
Definition

Moving capital between protocols to chase the highest available return.

Yield farming means depositing assets wherever the incentives are richest, often collecting a protocol's own token as a reward on top of trading fees.

High advertised yields usually come from token emissions rather than real revenue. When emissions stop or the reward token falls, the yield evaporates and often the principal has shrunk too.

In practice

A 400 percent APY paid in a new token is a marketing number. Ask what it is worth after everyone else sells the same reward.

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