Decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol Yearn.Finance’s governance token has skyrocketed by more than 15,000% in value over the past three weeks. The YFI token began trading around $ 31.65 in mid-July. Since then, it has come to $ 4,786 by the time of writing the news.
These massive gains have sparked a fork rush from opportunists eager to profit from YFI clones, according to crypto analytics firm Santiment. Some of these forks look like legitimate projects, but others are not so much.
Still, a fork that looks legitimate – YFII is backed by a few trusted members of the cryptocurrency community.
“YFII was soon legitimized when the admin key was burned and 11 signatures from core team and leading community members.
Among the 11 co-signers, Boxmining (popular cryptocurrency influencer) and Dovey Wan will likely be familiar.
YFII rose from $ 600 to $ 1,129 before dropping to $ 105. According to Santiment, the crash was partly due to the emergence of other high-yielding clones, lack of new innovation, and Bitcoin price increases, among other factors.
Still, the analytics firm believes that YFII, which traded at $ 139.69 at the time of writing, could have some potential, noting the presence of real governance proposals and developers. As Santiment said, it is thought that the clone, which he says is limited in the DeFi area due to language barriers, may also enter the Chinese market.
Another clone YFFI appeared in early August and tried to take advantage of the yield spree. However, little is known about who is behind this project. It has also turned out that senior owners have pre-mined a reasonable percentage of tokens before their official launch. The clone was an instant success, but dropped from about $ 619 to $ 1.22 and is trading at $ 2.98 at the time of writing.
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Santiment also points to an exit scam allegedly the creator of the YFI fork Asuka. The developer of the token is accused of abandoning the project just two days after the fork, causing its value to drop from $ 1,600 to about $ 18. The developer seems to have disappeared with around $ 60,000 in cryptocurrency.