What are FARM, iFARM, and bFARM?
Both FARM and iFARM are ERC-20 tokens on Ethereum.
FARM is a cashflow token for Harvest. It is available on Uniswap.
iFARM is a yield-bearing token for Harvest. It can be acquired by depositing into FARM on the front page with Use iFARM checkbox.
The gas fee of the iFarm vault is about half that of the existing auto-staking FARM pool, providing the opportunity for everyday users or new investors to participate without paying exorbitant gas fees.
The value of iFarm will grow over time in accordance with the value of the fees accrued to the vault. The more fees generated by the platform (currently $12.2M per month), the more the vault and the value of iFARM grows.
The iFarm vault brings utility into the Harvest ecosystem, providing users with lower gas fees, continuous cash flow, and the ability to collateralize on FARM that would otherwise stay locked in a single vault.
Once iFARM is successfully listed on a lending/borrowing platform and has been enabled to be used as collateral, iFARM users will be able to use their tokens to borrow other assets — all while continuing to earn yield. An interesting aspect of this is the potential to stake iFARM with leverage. For example, say you deposit $10k worth of iFARM as collateral, and decide to borrow $5k of ETH. With this ETH, you could trade for more FARM and then stake — receiving more iFARM — effectively increasing your FARM yield by 50%! This method would earn leveraged FARM yields as well as lending interest.
How does the FARM Pool work?
FARM is a cashflow token for Harvest. When Harvest generates yields, 70% of these yields are used to increase the value of the deposits. The other 30% are converted into FARM tokens which are used for:
Rewarding farmers who staked their FARM into the FARM pool on the front page.
Increasing the value of iFARM - the yield-bearing FARM. iFARM is using the FARM pool under the hood.
In addition, the FARM pool also receives weekly FARM emissions from the total supply of 690,420. For detailed mechanics of FARM and the FARM pool, you can read more here.
The decision to implement iFARM was a good one, and it only serves to brighten the future for Harvest and FARM token and its holders. It not only gives increased yield potential — the composability potential for iFARM to be used in other DeFi applications is even greater! Think of all the potential partnerships and future use-cases that iFARM could be integrated into. This is only the beginning.
resource:Harvest 101: Understanding iFARM and Its Potential | by TheCryptoBlog | Medium
