The forum kept numbering, the … YIP-88, “Governance Overhaul— – DAO Restructuring, stYFI, and …th are re-checkable on demand.

References - veyfi.eth on Sn…Aug 2026 (primary). - YIP-91 —– yTranche (https://gov.yearn.f…l overview (primary). - YFI —– Yearn docs (https://docs.year…reasury (primary). - YIP-56 —– Buyback and Build (https://go…flywheel (primary). - veYFI —– Yearn docs (https://docs.year…s founder and the fair launch.

Name Yearn Finance (Yearn DAO) Type Protocol DAO —– DeFi yield aggregator (automa…ly 2020 Governance token YFI —– fair-launched with no premin… since 2022 Products yVaults —– automated, auto-compounding y…e/tooling/treasury/coordinape)

Yearn Finance is the original …han for how its token arrived —– the YFI fair launch became th…tion" project has cited since —– and for what the DAO did afte… with no mint function at all —– which leaves it no version of…ash side of the balance sheet.

The fair launch and yGov On 1…ely valueless 0 supply token" —– no allocation to himself, no …ance/yfi) ) That distribution —– later shorthanded as the DeFi "fair launch" —– put governance entirely in th…e, and executed by a multisig —– an off-chain-signalling / on…rather than top-down salaries.

yVaults, the treasury, and a D…nd Yearn's strategies farm it —– supplying to lending markets,…ing and re-depositing rewards —– abstracting a full yield-farm…eb 2021) minted 6,666 new YFI —– about 22% of the supply —– with one-third earmarked for …to fund the protocol's future —– one of the clearest examples …ent) and contributor rewards —– routing value to the DAO's ba…ng it straight out to stakers.

veYFI: Yearn adopts vote-escro…ure the bulk of gauge rewards —– vaults emit dYFI (a token red…ft / 4 years) of the position —– up to three-quarters —– and the forfeited YFI is redi…os/stablecoins/frax-finance) —– the same bargain of trading l…regated and rented a layer up.

The forum kept numbering, the …oken from that December close —– stated as an anchor rather th…46 veYFI for and zero against —– and sixteen voters. A DAO tha…ing vote, not the newest post —– a check no proposal total, fo…th are re-checkable on demand.

How Caper approaches this Yea…t how the token confers power —– and there the story is famili…icipation record is soulbound —– non-transferable by construct…ing-a-caper) on the treasury —– the weight itself, not the p…verified against the contract.

References - veyfi.eth on Sn…/snapshot.box/#/s:veyfi.eth) —– the binding vote venue: 80 pr….fi/t/yip-91-ytranche/14659) —– a numbered proposal on the fo…ion (https://docs.yearn.fi/) —– vaults, governance and the pr…contributing/governance/yfi) —– the fair launch, no-premine d…/blob/master/YIPS/yip-57.md) —– the 6,666-YFI mint to 36,666 …p-56-buyback-and-build/8929) —– disbanding staking rewards fo…ntributing/governance/veyfi) —– the vote-escrow lock, 4-year …e-defi-expressionist) (2020) —– background on Yearn's founder and the fair launch.

Yearn Finance is the original …ecoins across lending markets.Yearn matters to DAO history l…ash side of the balance sheet.

The forum kept numbering, the …1a) , opened 16 December 2025.Re-read on 2 September 2026 th…th are re-checkable on demand.

How Caper approaches this Yea…g/convex-finance) lives with.A caper (/wiki/foundations/wh…ated the way locked veYFI can.Supply is not a governance lev…verified against the contract.

How Caper approaches this Yea… while a member accrues it by trading as well as by votingvoting, one per ballot cast, it can never be bought off t…verified against the contract.

How Caper approaches this Yea…arned weight is each member's pro-rata exit claim (/wiki/foundations/leaving-a-caper) on the treasury — the weight itself, not the pro-rata slice by balance (/wiki/dao-governance/concept…p/rage-quit-and-exit-rights) on the treasurya rage-quit pays, say stays tied to real econo…verified against the contract.

The forum kept numbering, the …61a) , opened 16 December 2025 — 249 days earlier. Re-read on 2 September 2026 the space still holds 80 proposals and 346 followers and YIP-90 is still the newest, so the gap runs unbroken from that December close — stated as an anchor rather than a day count, which would be wrong the day after it was written. Meanwhile the forum has gone…th are re-checkable on demand.

How Caper approaches this Yea…nsferable by construction, so it cannotwhile a member accrues it by trading as well as by voting, it can never be bought off them, borrowed or aggregated the w…verified against the contract.

References - veyfi.eth on Snapshot (https://snapshot.box/#/s:veyfi.eth) — the binding vote venue: 80 proposals, newest YIP-90 (16 Dec 2025), read 22 Aug 2026 (primary). - YIP-91 — yTranche (https://gov.yearn.fi/t/yip-91-ytranche/14659) — a numbered proposal on the forum that never reached a ballot, posted 6 Jul 2026 (primary). - Yearn documentation (https:…s founder and the fair launch.

The forum kept numbering, the ballot stopped counting Yearn runs the two-venue arrangement most large protocol DAOs run: discussion and temperature checks on the gov.yearn.fi (https://gov.yearn.fi/) Discourse forum, binding token votes on the veyfi.eth Snapshot space (https://snapshot.box/#/s:veyfi.eth) . The two have come apart. Read on 22 August 2026, the space holds 80 proposals and 346 followers, and its newest is YIP-90, “yETH Optimistic Recovery Plan” (https://snapshot.box/#/s:veyfi.eth/proposal/0xe76f57663ce9311eb830ef097812702cbbb55fccbb280d254cdfc1f2c11c261a) , opened 16 December 2025 — 249 days earlier. Meanwhile the forum has gone on producing numbered proposals: YIP-91, “yTranche” (https://gov.yearn.fi/t/yip-91-ytranche/14659) was posted on 6 July 2026 and, at the time of reading, had drawn no replies in 261 views and had never appeared on a ballot. YIP-91 exists as a document and does not exist as a vote. The gap is sharper because of what the ballot did last. YIP-88, “Governance Overhaul—DAO Restructuring, stYFI, and Incentives” (https://snapshot.box/#/s:veyfi.eth/proposal/0x9b3a40326411eea6c51ec389a802ed695de53961fa49f6d3525e256513d0a7f9) , closed on 10 October 2025 with 631.46 veYFI for and zero against — and sixteen voters. A DAO that reorganises its own governance on sixteen ballots has not been outvoted; it has been left to a handful of people who still show up. Two more proposals followed in December, and then the venue went quiet. This is the divergence a proposal count cannot show (/wiki/dao-governance/concepts/analysis/dao-metrics-and-analytics) : a forum that looks alive and a ballot that has not been used in eight months describe the same DAO, and only one of them is where power actually changes hands. The measurement that catches it is the date on the newest binding vote, not the newest post — a check no proposal total, follower count or forum-activity chart performs. Every figure here is read live off Snapshot (https://snapshot.org/#/) 's public GraphQL hub and the forum's own JSON, and both are re-checkable on demand.

Name Yearn Finance (Yearn DAO)…del Token-weighted (/wiki/daos-governance/concepts/voting/token-weighte…elated Curve DAO (/wiki/daos/organizations/dexs/curve-dao) , Convex (/wiki/daos/organizations/lending/convex-finance) , Frax (/wiki/daos/organizations/stablecoins/frax-finance) , DAO tokenomics (/wiki/daos-governance/concepts/treasury/dao-tokenomics) , Coordinape (/wiki/daos-governance/tooling/treasury/coordinape)

Yearn Finance is the original …n bolted a Curve (/wiki/daos/organizations/dexs/curve-dao) -style vote-es…ing its own token by proposal. The contrast case is Beefy (/wiki/daos/lending/beefy) , a yield optimizer of the same vintage whose supply is fixed at 80,000 tokens with no mint function at all — which leaves it no version of that lever, and forces every cost onto the cash side of the balance sheet.

The fair launch and yGov On 1…token distributions (/wiki/daos-governance/concepts/treasury/dao-tokenom… on-chain-execution (/wiki/daos-governance/concepts/fundamentals/on-chai…through Coordinape (/wiki/daos-governance/tooling/treasury/coordinape) …rather than top-down salaries.

yVaults, the treasury, and a D… over its own token (/wiki/daos-governance/concepts/treasury/dao-tokenom…t for the treasury (/wiki/daos-governance/concepts/treasury/dao-treasur…ng it straight out to stakers.

veYFI: Yearn adopts vote-escro…on Curve's veCRV (/wiki/daos/organizations/dexs/curve-dao) . Locking YFI …de the vote-escrow (/wiki/daos-governance/concepts/voting/token-weighte… alongside Curve (/wiki/daos/organizations/dexs/curve-dao) , Convex (/wiki/daos/organizations/lending/convex-finance) , Balancer (/wiki/daos/organizations/dexs/balancer-dao) and Frax (/wiki/daos/organizations/stablecoins/frax-finance) — t…regated and rented a layer up.

How Caper approaches this Yea… Curve-style lock (/wiki/daos/organizations/dexs/curve-dao) , inheriting t… of that cluster (/wiki/daos/organizations/lending/convex-finance) lives…ro-rata exit claim (/wiki/daos-governance/concepts/membership/rage-quit…verified against the contract.

Name Yearn Finance (Yearn DAO)…del Token-weighted (/wiki/daos/concepts/voting/token-weighted-voting) yGov v… Related Curve DAO (/wiki/dao/ecosystems/organizations/dexs/curve-dao) , Convex (/wiki/dao/ecosystems/organizations/lending/convex-finance) , Frax (/wiki/dao/ecosystems/organizations/stablecoins/frax-finance) , DAO tokenomics (/wiki/daos/concepts/treasury/dao-tokenomics) , Coordinape (/wiki/daos/tooling/treasury/coordinape)

Yearn Finance is the original …hen bolted a Curve (/wiki/dao/ecosystems/organizations/dexs/curve-dao) -style vote-escrow…ing its own token by proposal.

The fair launch and yGov On 1…token distributions (/wiki/daos/concepts/treasury/dao-tokenomics) common elsewh… on-chain-execution (/wiki/daos/concepts/fundamentals/on-chain-vs-off-chain-governan…through Coordinape (/wiki/daos/tooling/treasury/coordinape) (which spun out o…rather than top-down salaries.

yVaults, the treasury, and a D… over its own token (/wiki/daos/concepts/treasury/dao-tokenomics) by vote. Seco…t for the treasury (/wiki/daos/concepts/treasury/dao-treasury-management) and …ng it straight out to stakers.

veYFI: Yearn adopts vote-escro…d on Curve's veCRV (/wiki/dao/ecosystems/organizations/dexs/curve-dao) . Locking YFI mint…de the vote-escrow (/wiki/daos/concepts/voting/token-weighted-voting) lineage alongside Curve (/wiki/dao/ecosystems/organizations/dexs/curve-dao) , Convex (/wiki/dao/ecosystems/organizations/lending/convex-finance) , Balancer (/wiki/dao/ecosystems/organizations/dexs/balancer-dao) and Frax (/wiki/dao/ecosystems/organizations/stablecoins/frax-finance) — the same bar…regated and rented a layer up.

How Caper approaches this Yea…a Curve-style lock (/wiki/dao/ecosystems/organizations/dexs/curve-dao) , inheriting the s…st of that cluster (/wiki/dao/ecosystems/organizations/lending/convex-finance) lives with. …ro-rata exit claim (/wiki/daos/concepts/membership/rage-quit-and-exit-rights) on…verified against the contract.

Name Yearn Finance (Yearn DAO) Type Protocol DAO — DeFi yield aggregator (automated vault strategies) Founded 2020 (Andre Cronje, as iearn → yearn.finance); YFI token fair-launched 17 July 2020 Governance token YFI — fair-launched with no premine (https://docs.yearn.fi/contributing/governance/yfi) , no team/investor allocation; original supply 30,000, expanded to 36,666 by YIP-57 (https://github.com/yearn/YIPS/blob/master/YIPS/yip-57.md) Governance model Token-weighted (/wiki/dao/concepts/token-weighted-voting) yGov via YIPs ( Snapshot (https://snapshot.org/#/veyfi.eth) + multisig execution); veYFI (https://docs.yearn.fi/contributing/governance/veyfi) vote-escrow layer since 2022 Products yVaults — automated, auto-compounding yield strategies; the original DeFi yield aggregator Notable for The canonical DeFi fair launch; a DAO that voted to mint its own supply and later adopted Curve-style vote-escrow Primary sources yearn.fi (https://yearn.fi/) , docs.yearn.fi (https://docs.yearn.fi/) , gov.yearn.fi (https://gov.yearn.fi/) , yearn/YIPS (https://github.com/yearn/YIPS) Related Curve DAO (/wiki/dao/ecosystem/curve-dao) , Convex (/wiki/dao/ecosystem/convex-finance) , Frax (/wiki/dao/ecosystem/frax-finance) , DAO tokenomics (/wiki/dao/concepts/dao-tokenomics) , Coordinape (/wiki/dao/tooling/coordinape)

Yearn Finance is the original DeFi yield aggregator: a protocol whose vaults (https://docs.yearn.fi/getting-started/intro) take a user's deposit and route it through whatever lending and liquidity strategies are earning the most at that moment, auto-compounding the returns so an ordinary depositor gets an actively-managed yield without doing the work. It grew out of iearn, a set of contracts Andre Cronje (https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2020/12/08/andre-cronje-defi-expressionist) built in 2020 to rebalance stablecoins across lending markets. Yearn matters to DAO history less for the vaults than for how its token arrived — the YFI fair launch became the template every "no premine, no VC allocation" project has cited since — and for what the DAO did afterward: it voted to inflate its own supply, then bolted a Curve (/wiki/dao/ecosystem/curve-dao) -style vote-escrow lock onto governance. Yearn is a live record of a community repricing and re-architecting its own token by proposal.

The fair launch and yGov On 17 July 2020 Cronje released YFI with what he described as "a completely valueless 0 supply token" — no allocation to himself, no team or investor slice, no premine. All 30,000 YFI were distributed to people who supplied liquidity to designated pools over roughly a week; the only way to get any was to use the protocol. ( Yearn docs: YFI (https://docs.yearn.fi/contributing/governance/yfi) ) That distribution — later shorthanded as the DeFi "fair launch" — put governance entirely in the hands of users from day one, and it is the property most often held up as the antidote to the insider-heavy token distributions (/wiki/dao/concepts/dao-tokenomics) common elsewhere. Governance runs as yGov: Yearn Improvement Proposals (YIPs) are debated on the governance forum (https://gov.yearn.fi/) , ratified by Snapshot (https://snapshot.org/#/veyfi.eth) token vote, and executed by a multisig — an off-chain-signalling / on-chain-execution (/wiki/dao/concepts/on-chain-vs-off-chain-governance) split that predated most tooling and is still common today. Contributor pay was an early problem Yearn solved in public, pioneering peer-allocated compensation through Coordinape (/wiki/dao/tooling/coordinape) (which spun out of Yearn) rather than top-down salaries.

yVaults, the treasury, and a DAO that repriced its own token The product is the yVault: deposit an asset, and Yearn's strategies farm it — supplying to lending markets, providing liquidity, harvesting and re-depositing rewards — abstracting a full yield-farming operation behind one token. Because that machinery earns real protocol revenue, Yearn's governance has repeatedly had to decide what to do with the money, and those decisions rewrote YFI's own economics twice. First, supply. The 30,000-cap was never sacred: YIP-57 (https://github.com/yearn/YIPS/blob/master/YIPS/yip-57.md) (Feb 2021) minted 6,666 new YFI — about 22% of the supply — with one-third earmarked for contributor retention and two-thirds sent to the treasury under governance control, taking the total to 36,666. A community that had prized its fixed, fairly-launched supply voted, in the open, to dilute itself to fund the protocol's future — one of the clearest examples of a DAO exercising monetary policy over its own token (/wiki/dao/concepts/dao-tokenomics) by vote. Second, the treasury flywheel: YIP-56 ("Buyback and Build") (https://gov.yearn.fi/t/yip-56-buyback-and-build/8929) disbanded the old YFI staking-rewards system and redirected protocol earnings into buying YFI back from the market for the treasury (/wiki/dao/concepts/dao-treasury-management) and contributor rewards — routing value to the DAO's balance sheet instead of paying it straight out to stakers.

veYFI: Yearn adopts vote-escrow In 2022 Yearn added a vote-escrow layer (https://docs.yearn.fi/contributing/governance/veyfi) modelled on Curve's veCRV (/wiki/dao/ecosystem/curve-dao) . Locking YFI mints non-transferable veYFI for a term of one week to four years; a four-year lock carries 100% weight, two years 50%, and the weight decays as the unlock date nears and must be renewed. veYFI holders capture the bulk of gauge rewards — vaults emit dYFI (a token redeemable for YFI), and lockers can boost their share up to 10× based on how much veYFI they hold relative to their vault deposits; unlocked depositors earn only the base 10% (https://docs.yearn.fi/contributing/governance/veyfi) . The distinctive twist is the early-exit penalty: leaving before the lock ends forfeits min(75%, time_left / 4 years) of the position — up to three-quarters — and the forfeited YFI is redistributed to the remaining lockers, so patience is paid for by the impatient. ( veYFI docs (https://docs.yearn.fi/contributing/governance/veyfi) ) The move placed Yearn firmly inside the vote-escrow (/wiki/dao/concepts/token-weighted-voting) lineage alongside Curve (/wiki/dao/ecosystem/curve-dao) , Convex (/wiki/dao/ecosystem/convex-finance) , Balancer (/wiki/dao/ecosystem/balancer-dao) and Frax (/wiki/dao/ecosystem/frax-finance) — the same bargain of trading liquidity for time-weighted say, and the same open question of whether that locked weight stays with committed holders or gets aggregated and rented a layer up.

How Caper approaches this Yearn's fair launch is rightly admired: no premine, no insider slice, governance in users' hands from block one. But the launch settled who got the token, not how the token confers power — and there the story is familiar. YFI is transferable and tradable, so influence tracks holdings; the DAO minted 22% more of it by vote; and to re-couple control to commitment Yearn ultimately reached for a Curve-style lock (/wiki/dao/ecosystem/curve-dao) , inheriting the same ve-model tensions the rest of that cluster (/wiki/dao/ecosystem/convex-finance) lives with. A caper (/wiki/foundations/what-is-a-caper) pursues the coupling Yearn's lock was reaching for without a lock to tokenise: its voting weight (/wiki/governance/voting) combines the stake a member holds with the participation they have actually earned, and that participation record is soulbound — non-transferable by construction, so it cannot be bought, borrowed or aggregated the way locked veYFI can. Supply is not a governance lever either: a caper's tokens come from a bonding curve (/wiki/markets/bonding-curve) , not a mint proposal, so there is no equivalent of a YIP-57 dilution vote. And because that same earned weight is each member's pro-rata exit claim (/wiki/dao/concepts/rage-quit-and-exit-rights) on the treasury, say stays tied to real economic exposure. This is a design contrast, not a claim of superiority; the mechanics are on the linked pages and verified against the contract.

References - Yearn documentation (https://docs.yearn.fi/) — vaults, governance and the protocol overview (primary). - YFI — Yearn docs (https://docs.yearn.fi/contributing/governance/yfi) — the fair launch, no-premine distribution and 30,000 supply (primary). - YIP-57 (https://github.com/yearn/YIPS/blob/master/YIPS/yip-57.md) — the 6,666-YFI mint to 36,666 total, split contributor retention / treasury (primary). - YIP-56 — Buyback and Build (https://gov.yearn.fi/t/yip-56-buyback-and-build/8929) — disbanding staking rewards for a treasury buyback flywheel (primary). - veYFI — Yearn docs (https://docs.yearn.fi/contributing/governance/veyfi) — the vote-escrow lock, 4-year 100% weight, 10× gauge boost and early-exit penalty (primary). - CoinDesk, Andre Cronje: DeFi Expressionist (https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2020/12/08/andre-cronje-defi-expressionist) (2020) — background on Yearn's founder and the fair launch.