Have you ever seen My Strange Addiction? It's a TV show based around profiling people with strange compulsive behaviors that range from a woman who likes to eat sand for "the crunch" to a man who is sexually attracted to his car. Sometimes I feel like my personal strange addiction is DeFi. That's not to say that I'm sexually attracted to DeFi or want to chomp into it for some weird pleasure, I just really really like seeing my money stack up and DeFi fulfills that interest for me.
Polygon, to me, is the perfect place for smaller investors to get their feet wet in the world of DeFi. They have insanely low gas fees, with the average transaction cost to add LP tokens on Polygon being only $0.000248 (according to Polygon Gas Station), while on ETH it can cost upwards of $50. These low transaction costs even rival that of BSC, where fees for a similar transaction tend to lie between $0.30-$0.50. Throw in a plethora of projects to invest in and Polygon is a DeFi user's dream.
I've spent the last few months exploring the Polygon ecosystem and I've found five projects I find myself using everyday. I'm not going to say the projects I use are the only ones you should be using, everyone has a different perspective, these are just the five that I like. As always I recommend you do your own research, this is just my opinion! Let's get into it!
1. FarmHero
Probably the most unique project I have on this list. FarmHero is a novel protocol that mixes NFT, gaming and DeFi concepts. Users can earn in a variety of ways, by yield farming, single-sided staking, NFT farming, NFT trading, playing house games, rebasing rewards and I'm sure more earning methods to come. They have had an audit by CertiK completed, as well as employ the use of CertiK's SkyNet to monitor their website real time.
I've been in FarmHero for the last couple of weeks now and have been very happy with the results. I staked/vested most of my HONOR, then claimed the free NFT to stake for additional HONOR rewards. The APRs are pretty nutty, being over 1,000% APR for vesting rewards, I by no means use FarmHero as my primary money maker but it certainly is a fun addition to my portfolio.
Website: https://farmherio.io/
2. Firebird.Finance
A "one-stop" DeFi platform, Firebird provides a swap aggregator service (similar to 1inch), liquidity pools, vaults, governance staking and farming as a service. They've had a few audits completed, more info here, and have some really quality partnerships setup. Being the only vault certified for use by Kyber's DMM and the first to be in on the Iron Finance relaunch.
Their dev team runs quite a few weekly promotions to increase engagement, from incentivizing swap users to retweeting their content. Personally I'd use their swap anyway, as it tends to find me better rates for some of my smaller bags, but the added benefit of potentially winning cash is nice. I also use their vaults to stake my Kyber DMM pool tokens, I've been pretty happy with the results and additional HOPE I've received for doing so. Which HOPE is their governance token that can be staked to have a share in the project's profits. All in all I'd say it's worth checking out.
Website: https://app.firebird.finance/
3. Harvest.Finance
In my opinion Harvest is the DeFi project with the best fundamentals out there. They've had several audits done, with four on record completed, so security from that perspective looks pretty good. Harvest also recently launched three Polygon strategies with more being teased to come soon.
I've personally been sitting in the ETH-USDT and iFARM-QUICK farms on Quickswap and have been pretty impressed with rewards. My iFARM is already earning roughly 25% APY in it's underlying FARM assets, plus now compounding with LP fees and additional FARM rewards. Not a bad deal for an asset I plan to long term hodl anyway!
Website: https://harvest.finance/
4. DinoSwap.Exchange
According to the DinoSwap docs, DinoSwap is..
...a cross-chain infrastructure project that builds liquidity for layer-one blockchains, AMMs and partnering projects
For me DinoSwap falls more into my degen farms. They've got over $350M TVL as of writing this but I'd be willing to bet that's fairly inflated due to current DINO token prices. They're currently listed by DeFillama as one of the top 6 biggest DeFi projects on Polygon.
There are several different pairs to farm on DinoSwap, while the highest APR is on their native token pairings, I like to sit in the xMARK-USDC farm. It still offers 350%+ APR on what's essentially a stablecoin pairing. I've made a pretty good amount in DinoSwap that I then funnel over to Harvest or other long term projects on Polygon. I'm not sure how long DINO price will remain as high as it is so best to get in soon and safely!
Website: https://dinoswap.exchange/
5. Dfyn.Network
Dfyn is a cross-chain Decentralized Exchange (DEX) with a built-in gassless mode and farms. And let me tell you, Dfyn's gasless mode has saved me many a time when I accidentally swap all my MATIC over to some coin I want to farm. Dfyn's initial launch was on Polygon with plans to expand to BSC, HEC, Avalanche, Polkadot, Algorand, and more.
Like I said above I tend to turn to Dfyn when I need a gasless transaction, but I've also found quite a bit of use in their Luna and UST pools. As far as I know they're Terra's only partner on Polygon and rewards from their UST-USDT farms are quite good for a stablecoin pairing. Definitely worth have Dfyn in your back pocket for when mistakes are inevitably made!
Website: https://dfyn.network/
Final Thoughts
It seems every week new projects are springing up on Polygon, and that's the beauty of it! What can be profitable today can be absolute trash tomorrow, so when the gems out there are found it's that much more satisfying. What I tend to do is farm the degens (FarmHero, DinoSwap) so I can funnel more funds into my longer term investments (Harvest) without having to add additional fiat.
However what works for me may not be best for you so finding your best strategy for asset management is the true challenge here, I just hope sharing some of my favorites may lead you better down that path.
As always do your own research on all of this, don't believe anyone on the internet - especially me lol. Let me know if there's any you think I missed or should check out! Happy Earnings!
If you made it this for thank you very much for reading! Have a great day.
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