Yield farming is what most of DeFi was about in summer 2020 — protocols printing tokens to attract liquidity, users chasing APYs that sometimes hit quadruple digits, and a whole generation of degens learning to rotate capital between pools every 48 hours.
The modern version is more sophisticated. Pendle splits yield-bearing assets into principal and yield tokens, letting users trade future yield directly. Convex aggregates Curve emissions for passive holders. Yearn still runs vault strategies. Ethena pays funding-rate yield via its USDe stablecoin. The category has matured from “farm and dump” to genuine financial products.
For the broader DeFi view see the DeFi sector. Data below is live from CoinGecko.