Glossary

Annual Percentage Yield expresses how much an opportunity would earn over one year if the current rate continued and compounded.

Base APY is the portion of yield from the core market mechanism, such as lending interest or staking rewards, before token incentives.

Reward APY is the extra yield from token incentives, points, or emissions on top of base market yield.

Total Value Locked is the dollar value of assets deposited in a market, pool, or vault at the latest observation.

Liquid staking lets you hold a receipt token representing a staked position that can move in DeFi while earning staking yield.

Native staking locks or delegates assets directly to validators or the chain staking system to earn network rewards.

Lending markets pay yield when borrowers pay interest to use deposited assets as liquidity.

A vault aggregates deposits into an automated strategy that routes assets across underlying markets.

Liquidity pools hold paired assets so traders can swap. LPs earn fees and sometimes incentives.

Impermanent loss is the difference in value between holding pool tokens versus holding the underlying assets separately as prices move.

Oracles feed external prices or data to smart contracts. Many DeFi markets depend on them for liquidations and accounting.

Smart-contract risk is the chance that code bugs, economic design flaws, or upgrades cause loss or frozen funds.

Governance risk comes from token-holder or admin control over protocol parameters, fees, or upgrades.

Upgradeable contracts can change logic after deployment through proxies or admin keys.

A lockup period restricts when deposited assets can be withdrawn without penalty or delay.

A withdrawal queue orders exit requests when instant liquidity is not available, common in staking and some vaults.

Yield farming actively pursues token incentives across protocols, often with frequent rotation.

A depeg is when a priced asset, often a stablecoin or liquid staking token, trades away from its intended reference value.

A wrapped asset is a token on one chain that represents an asset from another chain or custody model.

Bridge risk is loss or delay from moving assets between chains through bridges or custodial issuers.

Data confidence reflects how complete, fresh, and consistent the underlying observations are.

Observed risk is Yield.ly's evidence-based summary of measurable factors. It is not a safety rating or guarantee.