YAM, decentralized financeâs (DeFi) latest farm-fresh product, has never had a code audit. Yet, thatâs not holding back traders from pumping the tokenâs price from zero to $138 in the 20 or so hours since it launched. The token now is trading hands at $126, according to YAMalytics.
YAM by Yam Finance is a mishmash of DeFi products packaged in one humble tuber, generally meant to track the U.S. dollar. Or, as the founding team put it, YAM is a âminimally viable monetary experiment.âÂ
Which can be translated to say the project has no real purpose â itâs just for fun.
That hasnât stopped DeFi traders from piling in. YAMâs market capitalization sits at $13.5 million with some $29,361,386 in 24-hour trade volume, according to CoinGecko.Â
The experiment joins a cornucopia of other DeFi summer âmemeâ coins such as Tendies and YFI.
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Its codebase pulls from multiple other DeFi projects including Compoundâs on-chain governance, Curvâs governed treasury and Uniswapâs pools for token distribution (not to mention a few others).Â
Uniswap is where the magic is happening right now. Called yield farming, Uniswap gives token market liquidity providers a proportional amount of the platformâs native token, YAM, back for their trouble. Place a token pair like ETH/COMP in a pool and get YAMs in return, the logic runs.
Read more: What Is Yield Farming? The Rocket Fuel of DeFi, Explained
Farming has dragged these other tokens up alongside YAM. Six of the eight coins available for yield farming posted positive gains in 24 hours, with Compoundâs COMP token up 49%, according to Messari (over a $300 million increase in market capitalization).
YAM most notably borrows from Ampleforthâs elastic supply schedule. Called a ârebase,â the projectâs code will sprout new tokens at set intervals to push or pull YAMâs price back towards one dollar. Traderâs are rushing in to scoop up price gains before the rebase occurs.
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According to the blog, founders Brock Elmore, Trent Elmore, Clinton Bembry, Dan Elitzer and Will Price conducted no pre-mine, garnered no VC interest and took no foundersâ share. The team could not be reached by press time.
The reckless speed at which the project has grown is not lost on the team â particularly because YAM has never passed a food inspection, so to speak.
The code base has never been audited, a fact the founders are quite upfront about.
âNothing approaching the rigor of a formal audit has been conducted at this time,â the Medium article reads. âThis was a 10-day project from start to launch.â