Deploy Finance, an agent-run Yearn alternative
Yearn and Deploy Finance both automate a strategy for you instead of asking you to run it yourself, but they automate different things. Yearn automates finding and rotating between DeFi yield opportunities. Deploy Finance automates a defined trading mandate — funding-rate capture or directional perpetual trading — on decentralized perpetual markets.
Compare Yearn and Deploy Finance
| Yearn | Deploy Finance | |
|---|---|---|
| Product model | Automated yVaults that deposit into DeFi yield opportunities on your behalf | Curated autonomous agents that trade from a self-custodial wallet |
| User action | Deposit an asset into a vault and receive vault shares | Fund USDC, choose an agent and allocation, approve trading permissions |
| Custody | Non-custodial; funds sit in the vault's smart contract, pooled with other depositors | Non-custodial; funds stay in your own wallet, not pooled with other users |
| Return source | DeFi lending, liquidity, and staking yield opportunities the vault's strategy rotates into | Perpetual funding spreads (Income) or directional price moves (Superstar) |
| Fees | Performance and management fees apply; exact terms are strategy-specific | No subscription, no management fee, no performance cut on your deposits |
| Best fit | Users who want DeFi-native yield opportunities automated across multiple protocols | Users who want a perpetual-market strategy — market-neutral or directional — executed for them |
What is Yearn?
Yearn is a DeFi yield-automation protocol. Its yVaults are capital pools that automatically pursue yield opportunities across the market, rebalancing and reallocating as conditions shift so depositors do not have to track and move funds between protocols themselves.
How Yearn works
- Deposit a supported asset into a yVault and receive vault shares representing your claim on the pool.
- The vault's strategy — set and updated by Yearn's strategists — decides where the pooled capital is deployed across DeFi lending, liquidity, and staking opportunities.
- Funds are held in the vault's smart contract rather than your own wallet; you hold a claim on the pool, not an individually managed position.
- Performance and management fees apply on top of the underlying strategy's yield; specific rates vary by vault and strategy.
Deploy Finance: autonomous agents on perpetual markets
Deploy Finance runs autonomous trading agents funded and settled in USDC, each holding to one fixed mandate rather than rotating between opportunities. The live agents are Income: Funding Rates and Superstar.
Deploy Finance's live features
- Income: Funding Rates: a market-neutral agent that seeks returns from perpetual funding spreads while managing its hedge.
- Superstar: a directional agent that takes long or short positions under its defined strategy.
- Self-custodial agent wallet: agents receive scoped, revocable trading permissions. They cannot transfer or withdraw your funds.
Yearn's automation rotates pooled capital between whichever DeFi lending, liquidity, and staking venues are paying best at the time. Deploy's agents run one defined mandate each on decentralized perpetual markets: Income seeks funding spreads without directional price exposure as its objective, and Superstar takes a directional stance. Neither Deploy agent is a yield aggregator moving between opportunities — each executes a fixed strategy from your own wallet.
Sign in with email or Google, fund the wallet with USDC, and choose an agent. You receive no vault share and no receipt token in return — the USDC stays in your wallet, and the approval screen shows what the session key can do before you grant it.
When should you choose Deploy Finance or Yearn?
Choose Deploy Finance when:
- You want exposure specifically to perpetual funding spreads or a directional perpetual strategy, not general DeFi yield.
- You want your funds individually held in your own wallet rather than pooled into a shared vault contract.
- You want no performance or management fee taken from your results.
- You want an agent to run a fixed mandate end to end, rather than a strategy that rotates across protocols.
Choose Yearn when:
- You want automated exposure to DeFi lending, liquidity, and staking opportunities as they shift.
- You are comfortable pooling funds into a vault's smart contract alongside other depositors.
- You want a strategist-managed vault rather than a single fixed mandate.
Different return sources: Yearn automates rotation across DeFi yield opportunities. Deploy Finance runs two live agents with a fixed mandate each on decentralized perpetual markets. No integration between the products is implied.
Choose the approach that matches the job
Choose Yearn if you want automated, pooled exposure to DeFi's broader yield opportunities. Choose Deploy Finance if you want a defined perpetual-market strategy — market-neutral or directional — executed from your own wallet, with no pooling and no performance fee.
Two ways to use Deploy Finance
Income: Funding Rates
Choose this agent if you want perpetual funding spreads specifically, rather than whichever venue a strategist has rotated the pool into.
Superstar
Choose this agent for a directional perpetual stance, which a yield-aggregating vault is not built to take.
Learn more
Start with Deploy Finance
Create a self-custodial Deploy Finance wallet and review the live agents.