Best Crypto Lending Platforms
Top rated: Aave 8.0
Borrow against your holdings, or lend them out.
4rated →
5.3/10
Yield Aggregators
Company file: Yearn Finance, owners, incidents →
Yearn
The original yield aggregator, with the most public machinery in the category: per-strategy risk scores and 26 security disclosures since 2020. The record also holds four exploits; after the yETH pool was drained in November 2025 (about $9M), only 857 pxETH came back and Yearn says it is not liable for the rest.
Best for: V3 vaults with a published risk level you have actually read
Company file: Yearn Finance, owners, incidents →How this score was reached
5.3 is the weighted average of the five pillar findings below, minus one published deduction. Real weaknesses. Suitable only for a narrow, informed use case.
- Custody & Security35%
- 7.0
- Cost & Fee Transparency20%
- 7.6
- Regulation & Legal Standing5%
- 6.4
- Performance & Reliability30%
- 7.4
- Access & Support10%
- 7.6
Non-custodial with audited V3 vaults and a published risk framework. But on 30 Nov 2025 the yETH pool was drained (about $9M per DefiLlama): 857.49 pxETH was recovered and Yearn disclaims the rest under YIP-72, treating yETH as a separate product. A ~$300K donation attack on 16 Dec 2025 has no Yearn disclosure. V2/V3 vaults were not affected.
Management and performance fees are published and written into contracts; the treasury takes 0–50% of each vault's fees, set per factory. The performance fee makes net return materially lower than the headline APY.
Unlicensed with functioning on-chain governance and a long record of conservative strategy approval.
Deliberately not the highest yield available. TVL is about $204.5M (27 Sep 2026), against a $6.9B peak in Dec 2021, and a yUSND strategy lost 5.76% on a liquidation auction in Nov 2025, which Yearn says it absorbed.
Good documentation with per-strategy risk scores published — rare in this category.
Deductions applied
- −2.0Unrecovered user-fund loss. Users lost funds in the last 24 months and were not made whole. Applies once, regardless of cause.
Strengths
- Per-strategy risk scores published, which almost nothing else here does
- 26 security disclosures published since 2020
- The longest operating record in automated yield
Against it
- Performance fee makes net return materially lower than the headline
- Deliberately conservative, so rarely the highest yield on offer
- yETH exploit (Nov 2025, ~$9M): mostly unrecovered, and Yearn disclaims liability
The most public machinery, and an unpaid loss
Yearn publishes a risk score per strategy and has logged 26 security disclosures since 2020, with fee rules written into the contracts. In a category where most vaults tell you an APY and nothing about where it comes from, that is still unusual.
The record also includes four exploits. On 30 Nov 2025 an attacker drained the yETH stableswap pool, about $9M per DefiLlama; 857.49 pxETH was recovered with Plume and Dinero, and Yearn says under YIP-72 that it is not liable for the rest. That unrecovered loss carries our fund-loss penalty. Use the V3 vaults with a risk level you have read, and treat anything outside them as its own protocol.
Frequently asked questions
Is Yearn safe?+
The V2 and V3 vaults were not affected by the 2025 incidents, and the risk framework is public. But the yETH pool exploit of 30 Nov 2025 left depositors mostly unreimbursed, and a ~$300K donation attack on 16 Dec 2025 has no Yearn disclosure. You also underwrite every protocol a strategy touches.
Will Yearn repay yETH depositors?+
Only what was recovered: 857.49 pxETH is being returned. Yearn treats yETH as a separate, depositor-governed product and says under YIP-72 that it is not liable to reimburse the rest.
What is the real cost of a Yearn vault?+
Management fee plus performance fee, both published and set in the contracts; the Yearn treasury takes a 0–50% share of each vault’s fees, set per factory. The number worth comparing is net-of-fee return against simply holding.
Assessed by
By James Park
NFT & Web3 Gaming Analyst · September 27, 2026
◆ Disclosure
CoinRadar Daily is a non-commercial project. We have no commercial relationship with Yearn, earn nothing from any link on this page, and carry no advertising or sponsorship anywhere on the site. Findings rest on public sources; we did not open an account or transact.
Rubric v2.0How we score →
The rest of the yield aggregators table
- 03Yearn — you are hereV3 vaults with a published risk level you have actually read5.3
Related tables
How we score →Independent, rubric-scored tables for the services behind this story.
Best DeFi Protocols
Top rated: Uniswap Protocol 8.9
The base layer everything else is built on.
4rated →
Best Liquid Staking Protocols
Top rated: Lido 8.2
Staking that hands you a tradable receipt token.
4rated →