Yield Protocol
Paradigm's first incubation, wound down citing weak demand for fixed rates
An Ethereum protocol for fixed-term, fixed-rate borrowing and lending, built on tokens that settle like zero-coupon bonds on a set maturity date.
- Disclosed backing (Series A)
Disclosed June 2021 Series A; the seed amount remains unknown.
- Peak protocol deposits
- Estimated
CoinDesk reported more than this in April 2022; dollar-valued assets in the protocol, not company revenue.
- Deposits at wind-down notice
- Estimated
About this much remained in the protocol in CoinDesk’s 4 October 2023 report; not a measured loss or refund.
Funding
| Round | Date | Announced | Investors |
|---|---|---|---|
| Seed | 2020 | ||
| Series A | 2021 |
Announced is what was said at the time. Cash actually received is rarely disclosed and is not assumed to match.
People
| Name | Role | Period | Now | Last checked |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Allan Niemerg | — | Working with frontier AI in legal technology, prediction markets and open-source funding | Oct 2026 |
Timeline
8 May 2020
Cointelegraph described Yield as the first project Paradigm incubated.
19 October 2020
Users could borrow Dai against ETH, lend at fixed rates, or provide liquidity. Rates depended on the market; the launch announcement warned that low liquidity could make rates unstable.
23 June 2021
Announced alongside a second version of the protocol and a fixed-rate integration with MakerDAO.
3 October 2023
31 December 2023
Reports differ on the endpoint: CoinDesk dates final-series maturity to 29 December, while Cointelegraph gives 31 December as the end of borrowing and lending. These are distinct reported descriptions.
31 January 2024
How it ended
On 3 October 2023 Yield said it would wind down: the March 2024 series would not launch, and all borrowing and lending would end by 31 December once the December series matured. It said there was not sustainable demand for fixed-rate borrowing on the protocol, and that regulation in the US, Europe and the UK made it hard to keep supporting it. A later notice told users to close their positions before official support ended on 31 January 2024.
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Sources
10 sources behind this page.
- 1DeFi Project Yield Protocol to Wind Down by Year’s End · CoinDesk · Oct 2023
- 2Fixed-rate lending protocol Yield raises $10M in Series A · CoinJournal · Jun 2021
- 3Paradigm Researcher Unveils Fixed-Rate DeFi Lending Protocol · Cointelegraph
- 4Yield Protocol to permanently 'wind down' operations by December 2023 · Cointelegraph · Oct 2023
- 5Fixed-rate lending protocol Yield Protocol announces it will end official support on January 31st · Cointime (republished on Bitget News) · Jan 2024
- 6Yield Raises $10M to Expand Fixed Rate DeFi Lending on Ethereum · Decrypt · Jun 2021
- 7Fully Doxxed: Allan Niemerg · Fully Doxxed (personal site)
- 8X account lookup: @niemerg · twitterapi.io (X data provider)
- 9X search: posts naming Allan Niemerg · twitterapi.io (X data provider)
- 10Yield Protocol is Live (archived 1 November 2020) · Yield Protocol · Oct 2020
Every figure above is clickable and opens the sources behind it. Copies were stored when each source was read, so a citation still resolves after the page it came from is gone.