Harvest Finance recently surpassed the $1 billion Total Value Locked (TVL) level!
This all happened in just under 2-months since the protocol started in early-September. Honest farmers are rushing to lock their assets to harness Harvest Finance to do all the farming hard work for them.
Today, I would like to talk to you about advanced farming strategies on harvest like these 3 below
I previously did a tutorial on Harvest for beginners - take a look at it here.
Wait, Why would you choose 20% APY over degen's 170%?
Now, before we proceed, you’re probably wondering why somebody would want to switch over to WETH farming at 7% APY rather than the spartan degen $FARM “Profit Sharing,” which currently yields 170% APY?
It is important to understand that Harvest Finance is trying to provide a wide range of different routes to farm via their protocol.
These other strategies, such as WETH farming, are for the Ether bulls who really are against giving up ETH holdings but still want to farm. Through the WETH Farm, these ETH holders have an option to keep holding their ETH whilst still earning a yield through Harvest Finance.
Furthermore, some farmers might be quite apprehensive about buying $FARM to earn a yield on Harvest Finance. Providing other farming routes such as WETH allows these farmers to farm through different coins that have solid pricing track records. Although it provides a lower APY, they would feel like it is a safer investment as they already have skin in the game through ETH beforehand.
These are the main reasons why some farmers are avoiding the $FARM token to earn a yield on Harvest Finance - and that is perfectly fine!
I think it is great that Harvest Finance provides other options away from $FARM to take part in their protocol.
What are fTokens?
You might have noticed that you need to deposit fWETH into the WETH farm to earn a yield. These ‘f’ tokens are the yield-bearing versions of particular assets. WETH has fWETH, DAI has fDAI, and WBTC has fWBTC.
To make deposits into these farms, you need to have the corresponding ‘f’ token of the asset to work with the protocol. These ‘f’ tokens are always redeemable for the original asset on a one-to-one basis, which means you can easily swap your fWETH for WETH at any time (and then WETH for ETH ofc).
How to get fTokens?
Getting these fTokens is a straightforward task. For the purpose of this mini-tutorial, I will assume that you already have a METAMASK wallet and own some WETH. If not, take a look at this guide for MetaMask. To get WETH, simply just head to Uniswap Excahgne and swap ETH for WETH - it will automatically wrap ETH for you and provide you with WETH.
First up, we need to head to the https://harvest.finance/ homepage and click “Connect Wallet";
This will bring up a separate MetaMask notification window asking you to connect. Simply hit “Connect”;
Once connected, it is time to get hold of our fAsset. I will be using the WETH farm in this tutorial, so I will need to get some fWETH.
The main homepage shows you all of the assets you can deposit with;
To deposit WETH, simply enter how much WETH you would like to deposit and hit “Deposit”;
Here, we could easily just hit “Deposit and Stake,” which would automatically deposit your WETH and swap it on the fly for fWET. However, in this tutorial, I wanted to break it down a little to see what is going on in the background.
After hitting “Deposit,” a separate MetaMask notification will pop up, asking you to confirm that Harvest Finance is allowed to spend your WETH. This is just letting the protocol to have access to your WETH - this is not the step where we are actually making the deposit. Hit “Confirm” here;
As you can see, there is a transaction fee involved in this process. Once that transaction has been confirmed, another MetaMask window will appear, which is the one that actually deposits your WETH into the protocol. Here we simply need to hit “Confirm” again;
In this particular transaction the magic of swapping WETH in order to receive fWETH happens. Once the transaction has completed, you will see your fWETH inside MetaMask wallet;
There will also be a notification on the homepage stating that you have fWETH (or any other fAsset) in your wallet that is not staked;
Staking Your fWETH
The next step is to actually deposit your fWETH into the protocol to earn a yield. Head over to the “Stake” page on the Harvest Finance website. Here, if you have more than one fAsset, you could easily stake them all at once by hitting “Stake All” at the top of the page (it's pretty handy as it's all bundles into one transaction).
For the purpose of this tutorial, we just want to stake our fWETH, so we click the APY button under the fWETH farm;
This will bring up the staking page for fWETH.
The page tells us again that we have 0.5 unstaked fWETH. To stake your fWETH, simply enter the amount in the box (or click MAX), and then hit “Stake”;
This will bring up another MetaMask notification asking you to confirm that you would like to deposit your fWETH into the protocol (yes, another confirmation on Ethereum network to pay for). As always, there will be a transaction fee that you need to pay. Hit “Confirm”;
Once that transaction has been processed, you will officially be staking your fWETH and earning $FARM as a yield.
Once confirmed, the dashboard will show that you are now officially staking fWETH;
You can now head over to the “Dashboard” section to double confirm that you are indeed staking the fWETH;
In the highlighted box, you can see that the fWETH is staking. The entry above is the $FARM I deposited into the “Profit Sharing” farm in my previous tutorial.
As mentioned earlier, this entire process can be cut down into just a few steps by clicking “Deposit & Stake” when swapping WETH for fWETH. It will bring up a series of MetaMask notifications in one go, and you can just confirm them one-after-another and stake your fWETH instantly. I just felt the need to break everything down for the purpose of this tutorial.
My rewards after 12 hours:
at current rates that's
So like 8 cents/day or $30/year for doing absolutely nothing for a 0.5ETH deposit.
Happy Harvesting, guys!
