🔎How to find good yield opportunities
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GM friends. Here’s what I’ll cover today:
🔎 How to find good yield opportunities
📊 Crypto chart of the week
🗞️ The latest DeFi news
🔎How to find good yield opportunities
I wrote a lot of newsletter issues on yield and airdrop opportunities I find interesting.
Just 15 days ago, I published an article on 25 airdrops that I am farming.
But I realized I never wrote an issue on how I actually find opportunities like those.
I thought now would be a good time to do that.
So in this issue, I will cover a few methods I use to find yield and airdrop opportunities, and what I am looking for when researching DeFi yields.
Let’s dive in 👇
First of all, let’s start with a checklist.
Typically, this is what I am searching for in protocols that I want to farm:
At least one audit completed (mandatory for security reasons)
A minimum TVL of $10M-$20M (you can check this with DeFiLlama)
High base yield (I am not really a fan of protocols that give rewards to liquidity providers only in the form of points. If you can find a yield opportunity with rewards in both points and liquid tokens that you can claim immediately, that one seems much more appealing to me)
Its team raised funds from well-known VCs like YZi Labs (this isn’t a must, as not all successful dApps have raised funds from VCs - Hyperliquid didn’t - but it can be a sign that the project is here to stay)
Has a unique product (No one wants another Uniswap fork. But it might be worth farming an innovative stablecoin protocol that generates yield in a completely new way or brings something new to the market)
Has a strong community (An active community means that there could be a large number of potential token buyers at TGE. And a high token valuation leads to a high airdrop value)
The last three criteria are primarily for tokenless projects that have not launched their own token yet.
Now, the question is, how do you find opportunities like this?
The first method requires using DeFiLlama:
Go to DeFiLlama
Click on “Metrics” → Select “Yields: All Pools”
On the page you will be sent to, you will be able to see thousands of yield opportunities. You can use filters to sort them
Click on “Tokens” and select “All_USD_Stables” to see only stablecoin yield opportunities or the other assets you’re interested in
Then click on the “TVL Range”, and apply a filter for a minimum TVL of 10000000 ($10M)
Click on “Attributes” and select “No IL”, “Audited”, and “Million Dollar”
Lastly, click on “APY” to sort the DeFi yields by the highest APY
And that’s it. DeFiLlama will then show you a wide range of high DeFi yield opportunities based on the above filters.
You can select one from that list to see some stats about it, such as:
How the APY/TVL has changed over time
A risk rating of that yield opportunity from Exponential
The 30d Avg APY
… and more
You have to spend some time researching each opportunity to check how sustainable the yield is and whether that protocol is worth farming or not, but this tool will make the research process much easier.
Before I share a few other ways for finding yield opportunities, here’s how Figure Markets lets you earn a 9% yield backed by real-world assets:
Together with Figure Markets
Earn Like a Bank with Democratized Prime
For a very long time, the best yields were locked away behind Wall Street doors.
The yield backed by home equity lines of credit can be very high, but this has historically been a privilege reserved for financial institutions.
Not anymore.
Figure Markets launched Democratized Prime, a product that enables anyone to lend side-by-side with the largest institutions in the world and access the same strategies that many banks used to make billions.
Here’s why it matters:
~9% APY, sustainably – Lenders can earn a 9% APY backed by high-quality equity lines of credit.
Unprecedented access – Retail can finally earn what only banks could before.
Liquidity on demand – Lenders can withdraw every hour as long as there are other bids from other lenders available.
Proven track record – Figure is the #1 non-bank mortgage lender in the U.S., with ~$11.9B in outstanding loans.
Choose your own rates - Anyone using Democratized Prime can set the minimum interest rate they want to earn on their assets for lending them.
If you’re looking to earn a high, sustainable real yield that doesn’t come from token emissions, check out Figure Market’s Democratized Prime.
For the first time, you don’t need to be a bank to earn like one.
Another method I’ve been using to find high DeFi yields involves using X lists.
I created an X list (that is public and you can follow if you wish), to which I added multiple CT accounts that regularly cover yield/airdrop opportunities.
https://x.com/i/lists/1749495881814933936
I check it almost on a daily basis to see if I find any interesting new airdrop/yield opportunities shared by these accounts in their content.
And the third (and last) method I want to show you makes use of X's advanced search feature. If you’ve been using X for a long time, you might know that you can sort your searches by a wide range of custom filters.
I use only two filters:
“filter:follows”
“min_faves:5”
With these two filters, when you search for certain keywords on X, X will show you only the posts that 1) are made by people you already follow and 2) have 5+ likes.
To find new yield opportunities, I search things like this on X:
“high yield” filter:follows min_faves:5“airdrop” filter:follows min_faves:5
And then I check the latest results to see if any posts grab my attention.
I found this to be a great way to find high DeFi yields.
That being said, those are my main methods for finding yield opportunities.
As you can see, they are very easy to use.
And I also found them to be very effective, as I’ve been heavily farming airdrops for 2+ years and managed to make a good amount of money from this activity via the opportunities I’ve discovered in these ways.
I hope you found this helpful 🫡
Crypto chart of the week
Aster & Lighter surpassed Hyperliquid in trading volume
Lighter has been getting a lot of traction lately as its team has announced that 30-50% of their future token supply will go to active traders.
Crypto Meme😂
The latest developments in DeFi
Metamask announced it will launch in-wallet perps powered by Hyperliquid
Base L2 announced a new bridge between Base and Solana
Hyperliquid community member proposed reducing HYPE supply by 45%
Consensys CEO confirmed that the Metamask token is coming
Mantle announced exclusive trading fee discounts for MNT holders on Bybit
Yield Basis, a dApp built by Curve Founder to solve impermanent loss, went live
Plasma introduced Plasma One - its stablecoin-native neobank and card
Solana revealed the National Bank of Kazakhstan launched its stablecoin on Solana
Nansen introduced Nansen AI - a mobile app that provides on-chain insights using AI
Falcon Finance announced an airdrop for KAITO stakers. You need to register for it on its website by Sept. 28 to claim it
DeFi App announced a $1000 Bonus $HOME Reward Program for all its active users
Ethereum has scheduled its next big network upgrade, called Fusaka, for Dec. 3
LayerZero bought back 5% of its ZRO token supply from early investors
YZi Labs (formerly known as Binance Labs) announced a new investment in Ethena
Huma Finance will open claiming for part 2 of its S1 airdrop tomorrow
Resolv’s Season 2 airdrop claim went live
Fluid expanded its token FLUID to Solana
Monad introduced Monad Momentum - its ecosystem incentives program
Portal to Bitcoin announced that its mainnet will go live on Oct. 13
That’s all for this week!
Until next time,
The DeFi Investor
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Pure fkn gold!
This is a fantastic write up. Straight and easy to follow, especially for beginners, start simple while progressing to complexity and more yields.