September's Top Yield Farming Opportunities

Markets may swing, stall, or surge — but the sharpest investors stay in motion. This guide aims to help you find ways to earn top yields on your crypto assets, particularly stablecoins and ETH.

Today, we’re breaking down five of the best crypto yield plays right now, built for those looking to earn yield without chasing memecoins or timing the market. Read on for onchain yield opportunities you can’t afford to ignore. 💸👇

p.s. Check out Yield Hunter (beta) to view automatically generated yield opportunities.

🏦 Reserve

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Best For: Diversified yield
Risk Level: Medium

About:

Reserve is a crypto-native index protocol that produces a variety of Decentralized Token Folios (DTFs).

Each “folio” is fully collateralized onchain, backed 1:1 by a diversified basket of digital assets and represented by a fungible ERC20 token that can be permissionlessly minted and redeemed 24/7. This design provides ample flexibility to accommodate multiple use cases, spanning from market exposure indexes to overcollateralized yield-bearing vaults.

Similar to thematic ETFs in TradFi, Reserve’s DTFs can track market sectors such as DeFi, stablecoins, and AI-adjacent infrastructure. Additionally, its yield-bearing indexes offer investors easy access to passive returns while unlocking additional DeFi yield opportunities.

Top Yield Opps:

Mint USD3 through Reserve to earn an automatic 4.1% APY. Optionally, pair your Reserve USD3 with Ethena sUSDe and provide liquidity through Stake DAO to receive an additional 15% APY from trading fees and Curve token (CRV) incentives.

🧑‍🌾 40acres

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Best For: Stablecoin yield
Risk Level: High

About:

40acres is a DeFi lending platform that helps users unlock the powers of their MetaDEX “veNFTs” with self-repaying, non-liquidating loans.

Users who deposit governance NFTs from Aerodrome (Base), Velodrome (Optimism), or Pharaoh (Avalanche) can borrow USDC stablecoins against their positions at a ratio based on the average weekly value of veNFT rewards multiplied by eight. This formula presently provides for maximum loan-to-value ratios of approximately 25% across all listed veNFTs.

Repayment of these loans is automatic, with 75% of weekly veNFT rewards allocated towards loan repayment, 20% for lender compensation, and 5% taken by the protocol treasury. They can also be repaid at any time with no additional cost.

40acres borrowers can choose between manually directing their veNFT voting power towards whitelisted pools or having it automatically distributed across top pools by fees.

Top Yield Opps:

Receive up to 15.7% APR on stablecoins by lending USDC against veAERO, veVELO, or vePHAR through 40acres.

🔁 Loopscale

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Best For: Leveraged yield
Risk Level: Medium

About:

Loopscale is an order book-based lending platform on Solana that makes use of fixed-rate loans to improve capital efficiency, enable more precise risk management, and support novel markets that are difficult to implement with traditional DeFi lending architectures.

Lenders seeking a hands-off experience can deposit into Loopscale “Vaults,” which have a single loan asset and can deploy capital across multiple Loopscale lending markets. Vaults are overseen by “Curators,” who are responsible for managing market parameters.

Conversely, lenders can take a more hands-on approach by interacting directly with the Loopscale order book using “Advanced Lending” functionalities, which gives the lender direct control over loan collaterals, rates, and deductions.

Loopscale borrowers receive fixed-rate loans for known durations, which can be easily looped to generate guaranteed returns through leverage on yield-bearing assets like liquid-staked SOL, LP tokens, and stablecoins.

Top Yield Opps:

Earn 11.1% APY by lending to Loopscale’s USDC Genesis Vault, or loop sUSDe with up to 10x leverage to earn maximum yields of 15.3% APY.

💧 Lido

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Best For: Blue-chip yield
Risk Level: Variable

About:

Lido is the oldest and largest liquid staking protocol on Ethereum. This cornerstone of the Ethereum staking ecosystem controls a dominant 87% market share among ETH liquid staking providers.

In September, Lido expanded its suite of product offerings with the introduction of “Lido Earn,” a simple gateway for users to discover, allocate, and monitor positions across Lido-curated vaults. Lido Earn debuted with two inaugural vaults, both of which continue to offer above-market yields in comparison with vanilla stETH liquid staking.

The Golden Goose Vault (GGV) delivers seamless access to enhanced stETH yields from leading blue-chip DeFi protocols, like Uniswap and Aave. Likewise, the Decentralized Validator Vault (DVV) bolsters staking decentralization while generating improved yields by allocating capital to a diversified group of Ethereum node operators through Mellow Finance.

Top Yield Opps:

Earn an estimated 4.2% APY when you deposit into Lido’s GGV, or boost it to 4.8% APY with additional MELLOW points incentives by depositing into the Lido DVV.

💸 Exponent

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Best For: Yield splitting
Risk Level: Low

About:

The Pendle Finance of Solana, Exponent enables users to split yield-bearing tokens into their principal (PT) and yield (YT) components. PTs can be redeemed for a vault’s underlying tokens at maturity and YTs accrue all returns generated from the underlying until vault maturity.

Exponent users who anticipate yields to decline in the future or who want to guarantee a fixed return should purchase principal tokens, while those who want to speculate that future yields and accrued incentives will be higher than expected should purchase yield tokens.

Top Yield Opps:

Earn 19.1% APY until December 15 with Exponent’s Hylo USD (hyUSD) or lock in 17.8% APY on Double Zero Staked Solana (dzSOL) until December 20 with Exponent principal tokens.