Yearn Finance: yield aggregators rating breakdown
7 chains
The protocol that invented this category, and still the most honest one about what it charges: Yearn’s documentation states the fee structure plainly — historically 20% performance and 2% management, 10% performance on factory-deployed vaults — and the APY shown on the front end is explicitly net of those fees. Vault strategies and their current positions are published. That is the standard everything else here should be held to.
The protocol that invented this category, and still the most honest one about what it charges: Yearn’s documentation states the fee structure plainly — historically 20% performance and 2% management, 10% performance on factory-deployed vaults — and the APY shown on the front end is explicitly net of those fees. Vault strategies and their current positions are published.
How the score is built
Each criterion is scored 0–10 and weighted. The median column is the middle score across every entry in this ranking, so a row reads as a position rather than a number.
| Criterion | What we measured | Weight | Score | Category median | Rank | Weighted gap |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Who moves your money, and what happened last time | — | 30% | 6 | 7 | 6 of 8 | -0.30 |
| Can you see what you actually own? | yes — stated in the documentation is the displayed APY net of fees · published · 2026-08-27 · source | 22% | 9 | 7 | 1 of 8 | +0.44 |
| Size and survival | — | 20% | 6 | 6.5 | 5 of 8 | -0.10 |
| What they take | 20% historically; 10% on factory-deployed vaults performance fee · published · 2026-08-27 · source | 18% | 7 | 6.5 | 3 of 8 | +0.09 |
| Chains and assets | — | 10% | 7 | 7 | 4 of 8 | 0.00 |
Measured 27 August 2026 · weights and method · decided by can you see what you actually own?, worth +0.44 points against the median
Who moves your money, and what happened last time: 6/10
Who can change a strategy, how fast, and whether a timelock or a multisig stands between a compromised key and your deposit. Then every incident on record with what happened to depositors: Yearn’s DAI vault lost about $11m to a price-manipulated Curve strategy in February 2021 and repaid users from the treasury; a misconfigured legacy contract cost roughly $10m more in April 2023, with no comparable make-whole. Same protocol, opposite outcomes.
Scored 6 of 10 against a category median of 7, which places it 6th of 8 among yield aggregators on this criterion. At a 30% weight that is 0.30 points below the median contribution of the weighted total. The best score in the category is 8, the worst 5.
Can you see what you actually own?: 9/10
Whether the current strategy and its underlying positions are published in a form a depositor can read, whether the advertised APY is net of fees, and whether historical performance is available rather than a trailing best number. A vault that shows a yield and not its composition is asking for trust it has not evidenced.
Scored 9 of 10 against a category median of 7, which places it 1st of 8 among yield aggregators on this criterion. At a 22% weight that is 0.44 points above the median contribution of the weighted total. The best score in the category is 9, the worst 5.
Size and survival: 6/10
Total value locked at a stated timestamp, and how long the protocol has operated through full market cycles. In a category where the product is discretion, a long record is itself evidence.
Scored 6 of 10 against a category median of 6.5, which places it 5th of 8 among yield aggregators on this criterion. At a 20% weight that is 0.10 points below the median contribution of the weighted total. The best score in the category is 10, the worst 4.
What they take: 7/10
Published performance and management fees, quoted from the protocol’s own documentation, and whether the displayed APY already has them deducted. Where a protocol’s fee schedule is not stated plainly in its own docs, that is recorded as a finding rather than estimated.
Scored 7 of 10 against a category median of 6.5, which places it 3rd of 8 among yield aggregators on this criterion. At a 18% weight that is 0.09 points above the median contribution of the weighted total. The best score in the category is 9, the worst 5.
Chains and assets: 7/10
Chains with real deposits and the range of assets supported, from public data at a stated timestamp.
Scored 7 of 10 against a category median of 7, which places it 4th of 8 among yield aggregators on this criterion. At a 10% weight that is exactly level with the median of the weighted total. The best score in the category is 10, the worst 5.
Other measurements
Its nearest neighbours in this ranking
| # | Entry | Can you see what you actually own? | How it differs |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2 | Spark Savings | 7 | Behind by 2 on can you see what you actually own?. |
| 3 | Convex Finance | 8 | Behind by 1 on can you see what you actually own?. |
| 5 | Beefy | 7 | Behind by 2 on can you see what you actually own?. |
| 6 | Stake DAO | 7 | Behind by 2 on can you see what you actually own?. |
Incidents priced into this score
- 2021-02-04 — An attacker used flash loans to manipulate the Curve 3pool price the yDAI v1 strategy relied on. The vault lost about $11m, of which the attacker kept roughly $2.8m. Yearn minted 9.7m DAI against treasury YFI to restore the vault and repay affected depositors. [users made whole: confirmed] [source]
- 2023-04-13 — A legacy yUSDT contract had referenced the wrong Fulcrum token since its 2020 deployment. An attacker minted roughly 1.2 quadrillion yUSDT from a 10,000 USDT deposit and extracted about $10m across several protocols. No comparable make-whole followed. [users made whole: no] [source]
Questions about this score
Will Yearn cover my losses if a vault is exploited?
+
It did once and did not the second time, and there is no policy that entitles you to either outcome. The February 2021 DAI vault loss of about $11m was repaid from treasury; the April 2023 legacy contract loss of roughly $10m was not. Treat a past bailout as evidence about a moment and a treasury balance, never as cover you are entitled to.
Are Yearn's advertised yields net of fees?
+
Yes, and its documentation says so explicitly — which is the standard the rest of this category should be held to and mostly is not. Fees are stated plainly: historically 20% performance and 2% management, with 10% performance on factory-deployed vaults, and the displayed APY already reflects them.