Harvest Protocol on The DeFi Drop

1.
Harvest has been around since 2020, one of the early pioneers of yield aggregation. How has the protocol evolved from those early days to remain competitive in today’s DeFi landscape? Take us through the “ages” from then until now — DeFi changes on a weekly basis!

Harvest (harvest.finance) was founded by a team of anon devs shortly after yield farming summer kicked off to help users easily identify and access the various yield sources that were continuously appearing in DeFi on a day-to-day basis.

Additionally, the protocol performs automated compounding for the user to eliminate the steps of manually claiming rewards, selling them, and redepositing the profits, which gives users a true APY rate of rewards. A core tenet of Harvest when founded was to make DeFi and yield farming easy and more accessible to the everyday user, and none of that has changed through the years.

What has changed during its lifecycle are the enhanced tools offered to users to better inform them of the available opportunities in DeFi with a more streamlined and effective user interface, and historical portfolio data within the toolset which we feel empowers the user to make better and more informed decisions when selecting from available yield farms.

More recently, Harvest has rolled out its new Autopilot strategies which automatically allocate liquidity to the best performing yield sources. No longer do users have to move deposits manually from farm to farm to obtain the rates. The automation does it for them based on data available on the blockchain.

With these tools and information sets available to DeFi users, we feel that Harvest provides one of the most powerful protocols in the ecosystem which outperforms its competitors and exemplifies the principles DeFi was intended for: Transparency, Equality, and Self-Custody.

2.
You currently have $40M TVL spread across multiple vaults.
What strategies or assets are attracting the most attention right now and lets highlight some, so Portals users can take a look on the explorer?

Autopilot is our newest toolset and what our users are really excited about.

Typically yield farms are smart contracts which are siloed from other farms, which means if you deposit into a stablecoin farm earning X%, but tomorrow another farm starts to outperform it, the user must manually withdraw their funds and deposit into the other higher performing farm.

Using new technology offered by a 3rd party partner, IPOR, the Harvest Autopilot tool allows for automated reallocation of user funds to a defined set of stablecoin farms. Using data available on the blockchain, the automation built within the Autopilot strategies is constantly monitoring for changes to the APY% rates, and if another known farm begins to outperform where user funds are allocated, the Autopilot system will automatically roll the users’ funds to that higher performing farm.

This solves one of the bigger issues in yield farming — users having to constantly monitor the performance of yields and manually roll to better yields. Now, the automated functions within Harvest’s Autopilot automatically do this for you.

3.
Harvest Autopilot... for those who aren't aware: Supply once - Autopilots automatically allocate to the best-performing vaults 24/7. Did Harvest pioneer this move DeFi? Harvest has built a reputation for auto-compounding and automated strategies across DeFi. How does the automation actually work in practice, and why is it more effective than doing yield farming manually?

I wouldn’t say Harvest pioneered this, but I do believe we are one of the first protocols to make this a core offering alongside our other vaults that provide auto-compounding of users’ deposits. We are constantly working with partners in the space to make sure we are incorporating the best performing assets within the protocols deployed strategies.

As for how the automation works, Harvest works with a 3rd party protocol called IPOR to help move users’ deposits automatically into predefined strategies. We don’t just randomly chase the highest yield percentage because there are a lot of illiquid offerings out there and blatant scams, so every farm is first validated by the Harvest tech team by reviewing the code of any new offerings to try and mitigate potential losses due to code defects or volatility from illiquidity of the farm.

Then, approved farms are added to the Autopilot strategy so it can monitor yield performance and allow for user funds to be automatically rolled over by the smart contracts when there is a better performing farm.

It is key to highlight that this is all programmed on the blockchain, and automatically performed by the defined code. Harvest never has direct access to user funds. The smart contracts can only move funds around to the predefined farms, or back to the user for withdrawal.

This automation removes a lot of the manual steps the user would normally have to perform themselves, and depending on the users’ regional jurisdiction (tax laws) it can also save them some money and headaches.

I am not a tax expert so I am not giving any tax or financial advice here, but in many cases tax laws say that a tax event occurs when the user has self-realized the profit, meaning they have exited their initial deposit. Because the automation is performing the trade for the user, and profits are not realized until the user withdraws their funds, the automation performed by the protocol potentially makes this a more simplistic tax event.

In comparison, if the user was doing this manually and having to self-compound their deposit, or withdraw and redeposit to chase a better performing yield, each time they exited to compound or chase could be a taxable event. So not only does Harvest protocol help users with efficiency through automation, it can also help simplify and reduce tax events.

4.
You capped the $FARM supply at 690,420 tokens, a big governance milestone. With emissions now ended, how does this fixed supply shape the future value and utility of $FARM?

Harvest capped the supply after initial launch as it was determined the cap was too high and would unnecessarily inflate circulation, potentially impacting the free market trading price. The new number of 690,420 was determined to be sufficient to support emissions through the original 4-year emission window while still maintaining strong value for liquidity depositors.

Even though that 4-year window of emissions has ended, a strategic reserve of $FARM exists which can be used for future emissions, partnerships, and ecosystem grants.

In terms of utility, the proposition of $FARM has never changed since day one, and we believe it is one of the few tokens that has a meaningful use case for holders. Essentially, users can stake their $FARM tokens into a profit-share vault which allows them to share in revenue generated by the protocol every time a compounding event occurs.

Harvest has never charged fees on deposits or withdrawals. The only time a fee is charged is when profits are realized from farming, and that fee is taken from the profit only — never the user’s principal balance. That fee is then shared with $FARM stakers.

5.
Speaking of utility, the Communal Harvest pool and iFARM receipt token are interesting innovations. Can you break down how they work, and what advantages they bring compared to traditional staking?

iFARM, simply put, is a kind of receipt token when users stake their $FARM into the profit-share, and they receive a token back representing their staked share. Since that staked $FARM potentially has continuously growing value as it collects a share of fees from the protocol, it has a great use case for leverage borrowing.

When iFARM was created, it was very innovative because most protocols at that time didn’t give you that kind of staked share token back, so stakers would essentially lose control of that implied value while the token was staked.

It is much more common these days, but back when it was created, the idea of being able to stake, earn yield, and then further leverage that staked asset was very cutting-edge.

6.
Harvest collaborates with both emerging and established projects, continuously deploying new strategies. What’s your process for evaluating which projects and farms make it into the Harvest ecosystem?

Harvest primarily builds on top of established platforms, even ones we’d previously call competitors such as Yearn. Today, with the Autopilot functionality, that’s no longer the case. Everyone is an ally.

7.
Security is central in yield strategies. What steps do you take to ensure strategies are safe for users while still maximizing returns?

Harvest has undergone multiple smart contract audits over the years, with the most recent one completed by Halborn in January 2025. These audits help ensure the robustness of our core contracts, which are designed to be modular. This means they can be adapted to new farms simply by updating contract addresses, without compromising the underlying security.

When it comes to 3rd party farms, since their code is external to Harvest, extra caution is required. Our team performs thorough due diligence before integrating any such protocol. While we can’t offer guarantees about third-party systems, we prioritize reviewing their code to minimize potential risks.

Sometimes this conservative approach may mean passing on higher-yielding opportunities if they don’t meet our safety standards. But we believe sustainable returns are only valuable when paired with responsible risk management. Our goal is to strike a healthy balance between performance and safety to reduce exposure for users as much as possible.

8.
Tracking yield in DeFi can be complicated, especially with liquidity provision. How does Harvest’s UI help farmers clearly understand where their yield comes from and what risks are involved?

On the surface, our UI is very straightforward to provide the user with the most critical information, without overcomplicating and overloading them with data. Users can see the performance of specific farms over historical periods, projections over a future period of time, and how their deposits have performed over their lifecycle with Harvest.

We also have a robust GitHub and GitBook which explain to users how the protocol works and the risks involved. Because Harvest relies on the reward systems of 3rd party protocols, it is very important for users to understand that Harvest itself is a toolset for making their entry into DeFi more simplistic by automating the depositing and compounding of funds with 3rd party protocols — but this does not eliminate the risks involved with yield farming.

While we work diligently to review code and communicate with 3rd parties about protocol security, if a 3rd party protocol is hacked and a loss of funds occurs, the fault would lie with that 3rd party protocol Harvest was connected to. Users should always understand that exposure level.

9.
Looking at the bigger picture, what role do you think aggregators like Harvest will play in the next cycle of DeFi adoption?

I think we are entering the DeFi yield infra cycle of so-called "consolidation." In the past years, the industry spun out new yield opportunities faster than any user could understand them.

The consolidation layer is what we are doing now with the Autopilot layer, allowing users to tap into a wide array of sources via a single entry point.

10.
Harvest has moved away from formal token governance toward contributor consensus. Why did you make that change, and how do you see community participation evolving going forward?

Governance has typically been a kind of smoke and mirrors act in DeFi, where large token holders dramatically influence decision-making over everyone else holding protocol tokens. Voting participation is also historically low across DeFi protocols. These two issues combined mean decision-making via governance voting is easily manipulated and serves only those with the largest token bags instead of the community as a whole.

As Harvest evolved, it became more and more contributor-oriented by using members of the community to perform day-to-day oversight of the protocol. Eventually, the founding devs left entirely and handed over control of Harvest to a non-profit foundation managed by the community.

Now, instead of token holders influencing the decision-making at Harvest, it is those who participate and contribute to the success of Harvest that have a say in the growth and direction of the protocol. It has been nearly two years since this shift occurred and Harvest has been thriving since. We see this as proof that community integration is a much more important factor than token-holder voting.

11. Looking back since launch, Harvest has seen multiple market cycles. What has been the biggest lesson in surviving and continuing to grow through DeFi’s volatility?

Simply put, it is the community that allows Harvest to thrive. We don’t have fancy CEOs or influencers to pay, we don’t drive Lambos or own yachts. We are a humble team of community members that realize we are very lucky to be part of a financial revolution, and that Harvest is a key part of making that accessible to current and future DeFi users.

The focus of everyone who contributes at Harvest is how do we improve the protocol every day so that we continue to be a great protocol for users in the space, which in turn allows us to survive the various market cycles.

Harvest’s strength is that it works for users in all market conditions. Stack returns while the market is down, so when it rebounds your stacks become more valuable. Stack when the market is up to collect those growing value assets. Between smart treasury management, a humble community, and an awesome protocol offering, we have survived and thrived through all market conditions.

12.
And now, time our final question which every guest receives...Today the total TVL of DeFi as per DeFi Lama is $158bn and what's your prediction for this number at 12pm UTC on 31 December 2025?

To infinity and beyond!