Yield Strategies & Real Yield vs. Emissions

What you'll learn

• The Yield Question No One Wants to Answer
• Pendle: Splitting Yield into Principal and Yield Tokens
• Lido and Liquid Staking
• Convex, Aura, and the Bribe Economy
• Real Yield: GMX, Synthetix V3, and the Honest Comparison
• What to Remember

Key terms

Real yield

DeFi yield paid in external assets (ETH, stablecoins, BTC) sourced from protocol revenue, as opposed to yield paid in the protocol's own newly-issued token.

Token emissions

Newly minted protocol tokens paid out as yield to depositors or LPs. Functionally a transfer from future token holders to current depositors, not external income.

Liquidity mining

A specific implementation of token emissions where a protocol pays its own token to users who provide liquidity. Popularized by Compound's COMP launch in June 2020.

Principal Token (PT) / Yield Token (YT)

On Pendle, the two tradeable instruments created by separating a yield-bearing asset into its principal (PT, zero-coupon-bond-like) and its variable yield stream (YT) for fixed-rate trading.

Pendle Boros

A Pendle product launched August 2025 that extends the PT/YT framework to perp-futures funding rates, letting traders take fixed-rate exposure on derivatives funding.

Liquid staking token (LST)

A token (e.g., stETH from Lido, rETH from Rocket Pool) that represents staked ETH plus accrued staking rewards while remaining liquid and composable across DeFi.

Liquid restaking token (LRT)

A token that represents LST collateral re-staked into Eigenlayer or similar restaking protocols to secure additional services. Examples: ezETH, weETH, rsETH.

veToken (vote-escrowed)

A locked-token model where users lock the protocol's token for a duration in exchange for boosted rewards, governance voting, and fee shares. Pioneered by Curve's veCRV.

Bribe economy

The market for paying veToken holders (directly or via marketplaces like Votium, Hidden Hand) to direct emissions or governance votes to specific pools or proposals.

Ponzinomics

A pointed critique applied to protocols whose yield is structurally paid in tokens sold to incoming depositors. When new depositor inflow stops, the system unwinds. Not necessarily fraud, but Ponzi-shaped in economic structure.