Things move fast in decentralized finance. And top DeFi yield aggregator project Yearn moves even faster.

Indeed, while the successful start of Ethereum 2.0 captured the majority of attention this week because it bodes a mainstream future for the network, there was another string of developments in recent days that will likely prove pivotal for Ethereum’s DeFi ecosystem in the years ahead: Yearn’s latest collaborations.

Just one week ago Blockonomi covered Yearn’s merger with the comparably smaller yield aggregator protocol Pickle Finance, which created considerable buzz around DeFi because such a move between decentralized projects was unprecedented. Since that article, Yearn has gone on to lock down to lockdown extensive partnerships with 4 further promising DeFi projects: C.R.E.A.M. Finance, Cover Protocol, Akropolis, and SushiSwap.

The takeaway? Yearn, an already considerable and respectable project before these synergistic melds, is fashioning itself into a DeFi juggernaut whose future could future could productively span decades, not just a few years. That said, let’s dive into what these new partnerships are all about.

C.R.E.A.M.

C.R.E.A.M. Finance, or Cream, is a peer-to-peer lending platform and algorithmic money market (AMM) project.

On the heels of Yearn’s Pickle merger announcement, the popular yield aggregator’s team announced that it would be entering into a partnership with Cream’s developments, specifically to collaborate on the launch of Cream’s coming v2 lending and leverage products.

As such, the plan is for Cream’s newly optimized system to work as an “in house money market” for Yearn, which paves the way for things like “Yearn vault strategies [getting] access to leverage through Cream.”

Cover Protocol

Cover Protocol is an upstart DeFi insurance project which offers users the ability to take out policies against large DeFi protocols for protecting against things like hacks or smart contract flaws. And this much-needed utility is precisely why Yearn just partnered with the Cover team.

Superstar Yearn dev Andre Cronje noted in a Nov. 28th announcement:

“Yearn developers have been working with Cover Protocol devs since inception, so this collaboration comes natural for both. The two teams working together as one will help optimize, enhance, and amplify the work that is already underway. Yearn can focus on its best-in-class vaults, while Cover becomes the backstop coverage provider for the Yearn product suite, as well as for DeFi as a whole.”

This is big news, of course, because it’ll allow Yearn to start offering its vault products albeit with considerably lowered risk profiles.

Akropolis

Yearn followed up its Cover Protocol announcement by revealing it would be merging development resources with DeFi lending and savings project Akropolis.

Notably, the meld will see Akropolis’s vault products merged with Yearn’s vaults, while “Akropolis becomes the front-of-house institutional service provider of these, offering bespoke access to their network of clients, with investment strategies tailored specifically to them.”

SushiSwap

Currently the 8th-largest dApp per total value locked (TVL), the SushiSwap trading protocol has become a tour de force in DeFi and a legitimate contender to Uniswap.

That’s why heads turned on Nov. 30th when Yearn unveiled it was also entering into a partnership that would see SushiSwap become the “AMM arm of Yearn.” Among various synergies that the deal will open up, one of the most significant is that “Yearn strategies will use SushiSwap going forward.”

Conclusion

Folks may sleep on these partnerships now, but make no mistake: they have all the makings of threads that will become much more significant over time.

Indeed, not only are we see Yearn leveling up in huge ways right before our very eyes right now, but amid this new paradigm we’re also likely to start seeing other decentralized communities piece together some mergers and collaborations of their own.

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Source: https://blockonomi.com/yield-aggregator-protocol-yearn/