Before Correction, 70% Of Yield Farmers Planned to Stay In The Field – Survey

Sead Fadilpašić
Last updated: | 2 min read

In the male-dominated field of yield farming, the majority of DeFi (decentralized finance) farmers plan to continue the activity despite high risks and fees, found a recent survey by major ranking website CoinGecko. However, the answers were collected before the major correction in the market this month.

Source: Adobe/Budimir Jevtic

Would you continue to do yield farming & liquidity mining in the next 3 months?

Source: Coingecko

“The yield farming trend has taken the industry by storm – most crypto owners have heard of it by September 2020,” said the website. It surveyed 1,347 people between August 25 and September 4, finding that “yield farmers are still a small subset (312 out of 1,012) of cryptocurrency users who have heard of yield farming,” and though the number of farmers is “substantial,” the activity “remains a niche amongst sophisticated DeFi natives.”

To put it in percentages, 31% of respondents have participated in yield farming, and 59% of those are actively farming.

That said, the yield farming field – as the crypto space in general – is dominated by males aged between 30 and 59 years old, found the survey. More precisely, the majority of 34% of respondents are within the 30-39 years age category, followed by 33% of those aged 40-59 years, and 26% aged 20-29.

Only 6% of the respondents identified as female.

Meanwhile, the risks and fees are substantial.

“Gas fees take a chunk out of the portfolio before you even start,” said the report, yet 73% of yield farmers were willing to spend more than USD 10 in gas per transaction, which could mean paying more than USD 100 per day. Those who farmed with less than USD 1,000 may not have earned as much as those who invested more, given the high gas fees that come with the movement between pools and protocols. Still, these farmers said their return on investment (ROI) was up to 500%.

“High fees killed DeFi on Ethereum,” said crypto podcaster Brad Mills, adding that “DeFi is not for regular people” and that “Ethereum is no longer a friendly place for dapps, games or NFTs – average people are priced out of using Ethereum now.”

Telling just how high of risk takers many of the farmers are is the finding that 40% don’t know how to read smart contracts, and 33% don’t know what impermanent loss is, implying that they don’t know their real ROI.

That said, more than half invested more than USD 1,000, and the majority of these farmers did not employ leverage in their strategy – whether it’s because they don’t want to face additional risks with unaudited farming pools, or they have yet to learn how to employ leverage.

“Our opinion is that the high yield pools are not sustainable, but yield farming products are here to stay,” concluded CoinGecko. “However, until the high gas fee is solved, it is unlikely that retail users can enter farming without hurting their capital, and this is not taking into account other associated risks such as impermanent loss.”