Yield Farming: How to Earn Crypto by Lending Your Tokens

When you hear yield farming, a way to earn interest on crypto by locking it up in decentralized finance protocols. Also known as liquidity mining, it’s not magic — it’s just lending your coins to others so they can trade, borrow, or swap them, and you get paid for it. Think of it like putting money in a savings account, but instead of a bank, you’re using smart contracts on blockchains like Ethereum or Solana. You don’t need to be a coder. You just need tokens — say, ETH, USDC, or even lesser-known coins — and a wallet that connects to a DeFi platform.

Most liquidity pools, smart contract-based pools where users deposit pairs of tokens to enable trading are the engine behind yield farming. You add equal value of two tokens — like ETH and USDC — and the protocol uses them to let traders swap between them. In return, you get a share of the trading fees, plus sometimes bonus tokens from the platform itself. That’s where the big returns come from — but also the big risks. If one token’s price swings hard, you could lose money even if you earned interest. This is called impermanent loss, and it’s the #1 thing new farmers miss.

Not all yield farming is equal. Some platforms, like Raydium, a fast, low-fee decentralized exchange on Solana, offer solid returns with lower complexity. Others, like obscure tokens on new chains, promise 100% APY but vanish when the rewards dry up. The posts below show you real examples: what worked, what blew up, and what’s still hanging on. You’ll see how people used DeFi, a system of financial services built on open blockchains without banks to earn extra income — and how some lost everything because they chased the highest number without checking the code.

You won’t find fluff here. No "get rich quick" nonsense. Just real cases: the exchange that paid out consistently, the airdrop that turned into a ghost token, the platform that vanished overnight. If you’re wondering whether yield farming is worth your time in 2025, these stories will show you exactly what to watch for — and what to walk away from.