YFI clones: when a 'Wifey' is not enough

The success of YFI's token has spawned a series of knockoffs, including YFII, CREAM and WIFEY and the first scam since DeFi's inception.

YFI's success spawned an army of clones

The success of YEarn's YFI token is rapidly spurring a series of imitations, with varying degrees of legitimacy. Some of them have turned into scams, others have already gone inactive, while one is being celebrated as China's first successful DeFi token.

Since many DeFi protocols are forkable and the barrier to entry for competitors is low, it would not be surprising if, as the market enters a new phase, more copies show up in order to get a $ 4,3 billion block. of total value locked (TVL) in the DeFi pie.

YFII, from China with love

yfii.finance launched the YFII token on July 26 as a fork of YFI, the token of yEarn. The fork includes the proposed upgrade of YIP 8, which did not survive the governance of YFI. In the update, the total supply is doubled up to 60.000 and a Bitcoin-like halving mechanism is added.

The Chinese DeFi token immediately faced headwinds when part of the community spread the rumor that the project is a scam, for which Balancer has decided to blacklist it.

With $ 20 million in its cash pools, the stock has raised doubts about how decentralized DeFi is and whether all components of a DeFi platform should be completely secure or not. The pool was relisted and yearn.finance implemented a strategy to grow YFII using Curve's y pool.

YYFI, the first DeFi scam

YYFI was launched on July 29 as another YFI token clone but was quickly identified as a scam. Once the fork got enough liquidity, the owner minted 1 million yyfis and started clearing the Balancer Pool.

The risk of YFI creator Andre Cronje minting an unlimited number of tokens as the sole owner of the contract was lifted just hours after its launch. But Cronje quickly passed the check to community members to protect himself from that risk.

CREAM & WIFEY

Wifey.finance, which announced its WIFEY token this week, has joined forces with the CREAM protocol for distributing the token - "wifey" ironically echoes the way some pronounce YFI. CREAM is the first project that developed Compound's loan protocol specifically to take advantage of the trend of yielding games.

As DeFi continues to attract capital and returns remain attractive, many protocols are bound to be forked. DeFi is becoming increasingly risky and to the Investors It pays to be cautious when interacting with forked protocols that promise to deliver high returns. Fortunately, these kinds of experiments will help DeFi evolve towards a more stable and reliable system capable of achieving mass adoption.