Solana is home to many DeFi yield opportunities. Protocols to check at the moment include Huma Finance for USDC deposits, Exponent for fixed-yield markets, PiggyBank for vault-based strategies tied to tokenized stocks and stablecoins, Manifest for stablecoin vaults that earn from trading activity, and Hubra for aggregated earning opportunities.
Solana might have gained a reputation as the home of memecoin gambling, but the most recent data shows that it’s also growing as a venue for both DeFi and RWA tokenization, with a DeFi TVL of $6.4 billion, and a network RWA value of $1.7 billion, and there are plenty of DeFi opportunities available now on Solana.
The chain is also one of the most user-friendly, as it’s cheap and fast, so in this guide we’ll round up five yield strategies currently accessible on Solana.
As always, you need to weigh up the risks when using DeFi, which include the possibility of smart contract exploits, frontend hacks, and stablecoin de-pegs, alongside the volatility that is always present in crypto. Make sure to read the official documents for all protocols before you make a deposit, especially checking the security and audit sections.
Huma Finance
The first platform we’ll check is Huma Finance. This was covered here a while ago, but it has some good returns currently on offer, has a current TVL of $165.6 million, and is worth taking a look at again.
When you launch the app from the Huma website, you have the choice to use the Permissionless or the Permissioned platform, so to dive straight in without any identity checks, click on the Permissionless option.
From there, in the Deposit tab, you’ll find options to deposit USDC with various lockup terms, and the APYs will vary according to the lockup period (the longer you lock your assets, the higher the returns).
So for example, in the Classic option, if you select no lockup, you’ll currently receive 9.1% APY (8% in USDC and 1.1% in the HUMA token), while a six month lockup gets you a 13% APY (still 8% in USDC, but with 5% in HUMA).
Note that you can also stake the HUMA token (click on the Stake tab to do this) at a 3.3% APY, and you can boost your rewards through a referral system.
Exponent
Next up we have yield exchange Exponent, on which various fixed yield products are available. This one has a TVL of $80 million, and when you use it, you’ll get rates that are locked in over fixed durations.
When you click to enter the app from the website, you’ll get the option to sign up for the waitlist of the incoming second version of the protocol, but to get started now, you can just click through to the current version.
You’ll then be able to scroll through the various active markets, and for example the ONyc market offers a current fixed APY of 12.29%, with a maturity date in May.
The ONyc token is from the OnRe project, which itself is an interesting Solana-based RWA platform that is focused on bringing reinsurance premiums onchain.
Note also that although these are fixed term products, if you need to access your capital early, then you can sell your tokens–referred to as Income Tokens–on the open market, so you always have flexibility and can exit your positions.
PiggyBank
This protocol specializes in generating returns from xStocks–tokenized representations of regular stocks that…
