[Weekly] Market Return on StableCoin-based Strategies（25 Apr 2022)

We provide a weekly update of the platforms we track, based on the strategies discussed in Serenity Fund’s Overview of Stablecoin Investments and the periodical updates.

(Note: Yields derived from mining reward tokens are based on the prices of tokens on 25 Apr. Yields that are cumulative, e.g. Uniswap and Compound’s basic earnings and Binance funding rates, and are actual yields over last week, compounded weekly to derive the APY.)

Quick analysis on 25 Apr:

• Risk Free Rate: 2.01%. Risk free rate, representing the safe yield from Compound, Aave and Curve, was lower than last week’s 2.37%. Trading fees came back to a normal level after the Beanstalk incidence last week and the yield calculated by the platforms are back to normal. Compared to two weeks ago, the interest free rate was still lower, indicating a more bearish market in general.
• Curve/Yearn/Convex: The Curve/Yearn Large-Cap Benchmark Rate is now 6.0%, expectantly lower than last week’s 9.0% and 7.5% the week before. There have been some TVL movements between the pools but are not significant. A 6% yield is lower than the inflation rate of USA, suggesting that funds are parked in these relatively safe vaults for security or value reservation reasons, rather than seeking yield. During DeFi summer, yields were over 10% in these pools.
• Other Stablecoin Platforms: the yields vary from 4% ~14%, and averaged 9%, same as last week. Gro Protocol’s PWRD-3CRV continued to top this category this week, but the rewards are linearly distributed over 12 months. If you choose to deposit the same pool tokens into Convex, the yield can be marginally higher now at 16%. In a declining market, yields from traditional finance services like TrueFi and Maple are higher. In Truefi, if you would like to extend credit to Alameda Research for a few months, the yield can be 18%.
• Other (non-USD stablecoin or non-Ethereum) platforms, aka Exotic Strategies: Exotic strategy yields’ are from 6% to 48% now. Mirror Prorocol’s USO (oil) vault continued to top this category, but its yield is declining. USDN’s Back-up ratio is merely 100% now, and USDN is slightly off-peg at 0.97 USDC; so even USDN and EURN pools’ yields are higher now, we suggest to stay away for a while to watch out. For EVM chains, some the penalties are negative now (e.g. DAI/USDT/USDC have lower earnings in Curve’s Aave pool in Avalanche than the same in Ethereum), incentivising funds to move back to Ethereum.
• Uniswap/Alpha: Uniswap earnings were low last week as well, for half stablecoin, half ETH pairs, in the mid of a bearish market sentiment.
• Binance Coin-Margined Funding Rate: funding rates were mostly positive but low. Low trading volume and low fund rates seem to indicate that market participants are less active now, at less for the DeFi segment — maybe more activities are taking place on the NFT side.

The above summary is a snapshot of what the market looks like over the last week and as of Monday. This is by no means the portfolio of any of Serenity Fund. Neither is the above table meant to be a ranking table nor to be exhaustive. There are various other defi protocols and products that can offer different risk and return exposures. Follow our Twitter below to have more timely and detailed information on the defi market.

(Serenity Team, 25 Apr 2022, Twitter: https://twitter.com/SerenityFund )