Make More Money with Your Cryptocurrency: A Review of Yieldly

Summary

Yieldly is a promising DeFi application on the Algorand blockchain, offering no-loss lotteries, staking pools, and cross-chain swapping, with potential for growth and improvement.

Abstract

Yieldly is a DeFi application that operates on the Algorand blockchain, providing users with innovative financial tools such as no-loss lotteries, multi-asset staking, and cross-chain swapping. The platform's no-loss lotteries allow users to stake Algorand for tickets to win weekly jackpots and earn Yieldly tokens, with rewards distribution based on the amount staked and the global rewards pool. While the Yieldly staking pool offers high estimated APYs, users may experience lower actual returns. Cross-chain swapping is highlighted as a feature with significant future potential, enabling seamless asset conversion across different blockchains. Although the platform shows promise, it requires further development to enhance user rewards and fully realize its potential, with upcoming advancements anticipated to increase its usage and popularity.

Opinions

The author finds Yieldly to be a user-friendly DeFi platform, especially suitable for beginners in cryptocurrency.
The no-loss lottery is seen as a unique feature that provides a chance to win Algorand while also earning Yieldly tokens.
There is skepticism about the actual returns from Yieldly staking pools not matching the high estimated global APY.
The author expresses that the platform could be more rewarding for users, suggesting that the distribution of Algorand generated via interest should be reconsidered.
Cross-chain swapping is viewed as a critical feature that addresses a significant pain point in the cryptocurrency space, with the potential to greatly enhance the utility of Yieldly.
The author is optim

Make More Money with Your Cryptocurrency: A Review of Yieldly

The Buddings of a Promising Tool

The Homepage of Yieldly. Screenshot Taken by Author.

Yieldly is a great DeFi App to use, especially for those who are just getting their feet wet using cryptocurrency based apps and services. I started using the platform the second week of its launch. I was originally planning to use it when it first released but was on vacation and forgot to move some of my Algorand over. Yieldly, for those who don’t know is a Decentralized Finance (DeFi) application that runs on the Algorand blockchain and utilizes the Yieldly Algorand Standardized Asset (ASA) as its reward token. The platform aims to be a place where Algorand holders can participate in no-loss prize lotteries, multi-asset staking, and cross-chain swapping. I will explain a little more about each of these ahead.

No-Loss Prize Lotteries

The lotteries are essentially massive yield farming pools but without risk of losing any of your own money. How it works is you stake Algorand (Algo) get tickets. Each whole Algo is worth 1 ticket. Your tickets allow you to not only participate in the weekly drawings for the lottery amount but they also allow you to stake for Yieldly token.

Weekly No-Loss Lottery Overview. Screenshot by Author.

As you can see from my figure above, I have about 612 Algo in the Yieldly lottery. While it’s cutoff of the image, the platform does let me know that I have a 0.003% chance of winning the weekly jackpot, which is 19,764 Algos. Staking your algos in the no-loss lottery earns you Yieldly tokens, which is the topic of my next session. The formula in which Yieldly uses to distribute rewards is located here. Essentially, the equation comes down to how much Algorand you have staked over the amount of total global rewards available for a week multiplied by the total awards unlocked so far. Basically, the more algorand one has in the pot and the less people are claiming rewards the more rewards one will earn. I’ve found that when I claim once a week, I earn a lot of Yiedly just after the lottery drawing and as the next drawing comes closer I earn less and less. Keep that in mind if you want to participate.

Yieldly Pool

Yieldly Staking Screen. Screenshot By Author.

Yieldly staking has arguably been one of the more frustrating components of the platform. The estimated global APY is often quite high — 82% in the picture above but it has been as high as 115%. I often find that my returns do not match the Estimated Global APY and although I do not have a lot of Yieldly staked I think given the expected return I should be seeing higher yields. The amount of Algos distributed out are also quite paltry. To my knowledge, the platform owners keep the Algo generated via interest as payment for running the platform. While that’s fine, I feel like if you really want people to earn money on the platform they need to also earn more Algos or Yieldly through the staking pool.

Cross-Chain Swapping

Yieldly Bridge Screen. Screenshot Captured by Author.

Cross-Chain Swapping is one of the aspects of the platform where I see the greatest future potential. The ability to swap Algorand and ASAs for Ethereum tokens, Binance Tokens, and Polygon Tokens. This is one of the current nightmares for cryptocurrencies that really needs to be addressed before any digital currency can be addressed. Much akin to fiat currencies backed by governments, if you want to swap dollars for euros you can do so easily at a foreign exchange or allow your bank to do it for you. With cryptocurrencies we now have a wide variety of coins but very few ways to move a currency to another without using an exchange platform (which takes up too much time) or having to buy the crypto the merchant accepts. With Cross-Chain swapping that nightmare becomes history, as one can now take a cryptocurrency and swap it for equal value of another. Being able to do this on the Algorand blockchain is a boon since Algorand has low fees.

Currently, the only currencies capable of being swapped to and from are Algorand to Ethereum and vice-versa, but eventually there will be many more. I’m sure folks will even be able to swap their earned Yieldly tokens one day, which will make for a very interesting platform.

Conclusion

Overall, I think Yieldly is a great platform but requires improvements to really shine. There’s a lot of potential with the lottery games, and staking pools, but they do most certainly need to be fleshed out and developed more. I would like to see more rewards handed out, especially since the app is claiming to improve upon the yields of Algorand. I think once the cross-chain bridge is more developed, Algorand users will have a great way to quickly swap between assets. The current road map shows a lot of progress being made for Yieldly in 2021 and if the platform owners deliver we should see far more use and popularity for the Yieldly platform. My overall advice is to give the platform a try but be wise about how much you invest. You never know, your 0.001% chance may just win you 20,000 Algos.

Roadmap for Yieldly Platform. Screenshot by Author.