The last few months have been somewhat crazy in the bulging DeFi sector. Ethereum has shown its dominance as the go-to protocol whilst other blockchains are quickly pivoting and showing signs they can cultivate their own DeFi ecosystems.
A series of new products are responsible for driving this explosion. Most notably, the introduction of new staking tokens and yield farming has taken the crypto-verse by storm. Allowing users to earn passive incomes and leverage liquidity pools. Amongst the hype, a new wave of staking tokens has emerged. Deliciously themed around food items.
YAM, Sushi, Spaghetti, and Cream, to name a few have popped up and generated millions of dollars in volume, in some cases within just a few hours. Questions surround these tokens as many are not audited and some appear to be straight copy and paste projects. Nonetheless, it is important to understand these tokens, their dynamics, and what they hope to add to the growing DeFi ecosystem.
Key Metrics in DeFi
It is also vital to consider the delivery of a new DeFi metric available only at DappRadar. aTVL or Inflation-adjusted total value locked shows a clearer picture of the value being created in DeFi right now as it calculates out token price increases over time that can distort the data.
Tokens such as the below are adding to the traditional TVL metric in vast amounts but once we eliminate that price increase from the equation – a different picture emerges with aTVL being approximately $2 billion less than is being reported daily at the time of writing.
Furthermore, looking at the number of active unique wallets interacting with these DeFi dapps we can also clearly see that the activity is that of whales. Both these metrics on top of traditional TVL will add the clarity needed in the DeFi space.
Let’s explore the food-related defi tokens feeding the recent DeFi staking token frenzy.
Sushi
SushiSwap is being touted as the next step forward in the Uniswap protocol design: an evolution. The creator’s state they are taking Uniswap’s elegant core design and adding community-oriented features that they believe help improve the design of the protocol, as well as provide further benefits to the actors involved.
With SushiSwap, users can also provide liquidity and receive fee rewards just as on Uniswap, but they can also simply hold the native token called SUSHI and continue receiving part of the fees.
YAM
Yam is the fastest rising DeFi farming product after Yearn.Finance. The highest total value locked reported has been close to $600 million. The tokens TVL, trading volume, and token price fluctuated erratically to begin, and then after an irreparable bug was discovered in the smart contract, the token price of $YAM fell from $160 to $0.2.
The team behind YAM has been working and it is still alive and the project still holds over half a million dollars in TVL and V2 is now up and running and receiving similar support.
Pasta
The token of the Spaghetti project is $Pasta. Launched on 17th Aug, its volume reached the highest at 181.76M on 19th Aug and then dropped down significantly.
Cream
The Cream DeFi project offers staking and lending using Ethereum DeFi tokens, eg, COMP, BAL, YFI, LINK, LEND, with CRV being recently supported. Those familiar with 90’s hip hop won’t have missed the reference to the word used by the Wu-Tang Clan to describe money – C.R.E.A.M.
Shrimp
Shrimp is a complete copy and paste of the YAM project. The website even opens up with the strapline ‘isn’t this YAM’. However, there is one core difference between Shrimp and YAM. Using Shrimp, users can not only stake popular DeFi tokens, but also some less well-known tokens such as DICE and Cream.
Tacos
You can farm Tacos in Shrimp, the DeFi product we mentioned above. $TACO is a deflationary currency. Every Tuesday, a weekly Taco King will be voted for and rewarded with $TACO. And every day, a percentage of $TACO will be burnt forever.
CHOP
$CHOP is the token of the Porkchop project. Its operation is different and similar to Tacos in that it is a deflationary token. When you buy or send $CHOP, 1% of the $CHOP token is burnt forever. The team states they are working on a liquidity staking pool that will introduce a real tangible defi product to the market.
Melon
Melon was actually founded back in 2017 and has no intention of being another food-related DeFi token. Melon is in fact quite different from the DeFi tokens mentioned above. Melon is an Ethereum-based protocol for decentralized on-chain asset management.
It is a protocol for people or entities to manage their wealth as well as the wealth of others within a customizable and safe environment. So it is not a DeFi farming product but certainly feeds into the larger DeFi ecosystem.
Remember all dapps are experimental, so never put more value in such dapps than you are comfortable with losing. As always we will continue to monitor developments. Make sure you bookmark the new DappRadar DeFi page and sign up to our newsletter below to get updates direct to your inbox.
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