About Harvest Finance (FARM)

Harvest Finance is a yield aggregator built to automatically maximize returns of users' assets by tapping into in DeFi projects running on Ethereum, Binance Smart Chain and Polygon. Abetted by smart contract functionality, Harvest seeks out the highest yields and most timely, optimal strategies, however fleeting.

"Harvest Finance collates capital from various yield farmers to do yield farming more effectively saving time and money for users," InvestorPlace said.

The platform's native token is FARM. Holders get a voice in governance proposals, according to CoinGecko.

Harvest users also stake the tokens in profit sharing pools and liquidity pools within an array of decentralized exchanges (DEXs), earning rewards and a cut of DEX transaction fees. “The first-time farmers, while using Harvest Finance, will not have to face the hurdle of calculating fees for the transaction being done or while moving assets between DeFi protocols," InvestorPlace explained. "It’s the Harvest which does this for the users, and it’s audited through smart contracts, thereby saving the trouble of doing it all independently.”

Yield-seeking assets are deposited into Harvest vaults. These vaults execute various yield farming strategies; the profits from these strategies, as Messari explained, are split between liquidity providers and rewarding users staked in their profit sharing pool.

Here is an example involving Curve Finance, a popular DeFi farming project. In this example, a user: deposits a stablecoin – USDT, DAI or USDC – into Harvest’s yCRV stablecoin farm; then Harvest collects yCRV LP tokens which are deposited into the CRV pool to farm CRV. Finally, the "farmed" CRV tokens are sold on Uniswap. Profits are split between the yCRV strategy and Harvest depositors. Most (95%) of profits will be reinvested into the yCRV strategy with 5% of profits going to users (rewarded in DAI).

 Harvest suffered a flash loan exploit in October 2020. Afterward, the total value locked (TVL) in the project sharply dropped.

Security audits have been completed  by Haechi Labs and Peckshield, and additional audits are in progress, said DeFi Pulse.

Who created FARM?

Harvest Finance is the creation of anonymous developers. The only visibility to the team, said CoinGecko, is "via a handful of community managers that volunteer their time." The development team creates and controls vaults.

When was FARM created and how much was it worth?

Harvest launched at the pinnacle of the so-called DeFi summer, on September 1, 2020; the FARM token began trading a few days later. It quickly soared above $500 before pulling back to about $130 as of mid-September of 2020.

 Yield farming was becoming a major trend right then as DeFi users on Ethereum were faced with high transaction costs which undermined the yield opportunities.

Harvest Finance was created so that users could reduce costs. TVL reached more than $1 billion within a month of its launch, Nasdaq.com said.

FARM tokens were distributed in "a fair-launch manner" (i.e. no pre-mine, no investors) when the project kicked off, Messari said.

How is the price of FARM determined?

The token's value comes from the profits generated in the various deployed strategies, the platform explains.

Supply is capped. The FARM community voted to cap the supply of FARM tokens, needed to provide incentives to yield farmers, at 690,420. Most of these tokens are in circulation.

"A key innovation of the FARM token is that it entitles holders to a performance fee taken from Harvest's yield farming strategies," the Harvest team has said.

While each strategy may farm different assets, the performance fee is used to buy FARM on the open market; FARM is then distributed to those who stake FARM in the Profit Sharing pool.

The price of FARM is subject to consistent buy pressure as a result.

Why does FARM have value?

Harvest at launch required a native crypto so as to be able to incentivize to yield farmers, and allow Harvest to stake other platforms and collect rewards in return.

FARM, when deposited in Profit Sharing pools, becomes a means of participating in farming revenue, per DeFi Pulse.

When a user deposits tokens in a Harvest vault, they get an fToken, which is ERC20 token. If a user, for example, deposits into the USDC vault then they'd receive fUSDC representing a portion of the associated vault. Deposits, once withdrawn, result in a corresponding amount of fToken tokens being burned.

As the TVL in the protocol has increased, so too has the FARM token's price. Since June of 2021, FARM has surged by 100% to about $82, as of early May 2022.

What are the main benefits of FARM?

• By pooling deposited assets into strategized vaults and harvesting yield at opportune times, Harvest allows users to deposit their asset while the protocol maximizes yields on their behalf, simply, automatically, according to Messari. 
• Harvest lowers the entry barrier for regular users, those who aren't necessarily keen to constantly track DeFi activities and move funds between opportunities, as DeFi Pulse noted. "Harvest handles the APY tracking, strategy development and auditing, gas costs, and regular harvesting to ensure that returns compound."
• Holders of the FARM token can profit share in yield farming revenue; and they receive incentives for providing liquidity in Uniswap. 
• The open source Harvest smart contracts have been built from scratch and tested (and re-tested) with security issues at the fore, DeFi Pulse said.
• They are not forks of existing contracts.