How to Find the Best Staking and Farming Opportunities in DEFI

Welcome to this guide, where we will look at the main tools we use and you can use in order to find the best staking and farming opportunities for any cryptocurrency.

You may have come here through one of our staking guides, where we cover different platforms. Here, we’ll look at the process we’ve gone through to get to find those platforms, analyze them and see if they’re a good fit.

With the ever changing DEFI world and the emergence of new platforms and opportunities, this guide will help you to be able to see these new platforms on your own, without wasting too much time or being too complicated.

We will not go into crypto and farming terms, so if you are very new to this world, you may first need to learn some concepts to understand how these platforms work. Even so, this guide will be useful once you know the basic DEFI terms.

First, we will cover the tools and ways we use and you can use to find the best annual % in farming and staking of different cryptocurrencies, and then we will talk about the risk analysis of the platforms. The latter being very important and often overlooked, I recommend you stay until the end to get the full picture.

Tools

The tools or pages that we will see, do not require you to use them every day or every week, but looking once a month or every so often may be enough to find the best opportunities. Since there are not many changes on a daily basis in new opportunities.

So, for example, if you are looking for staking options in Avalanche, looking a couple of times a month if there are any new opportunities is more than enough. I also recommend you to watch twitter and follow people related to the cryptocurrency you are interested in, to see when new platforms or projects that may be interesting are launched.

With that said, let’s start looking at the best tools.

Defillama

The favorite tool and the one we use the most is Defillama, a page where you can find all the information of each network and the platforms that are in it. With filters and being able to see the most relevant platforms in each network.

You can filter by network to see the platforms with more capital in each network, or see the global. Looking at Defillama you can get a very quick idea of the main platforms of each network and where you can find the best staking and farming opportunities, with more security.

You can also see new projects that have less TVL (total locked value) but that are interesting and can have a great growth.

I recommend you to look at Defillama to see the most popular platforms in general of all DEFI, and then focus on each network the main protocols it has. And go into each platform to see what type of platform it is, and if it can offer you good staking or farming options for the cryptocurrency you are looking for.

Another very similar page that you can also consult is Dappradar, with play to earn games and different filters that Defillama does not have. Although dappradar’s information tends to be a bit less accurate and confusing. If you simply want to know the main protocols of a network, it is best to use Defillama.

 Coindix

Coindix is a page that shows you the best farms and staking of each cryptocurrency. With filters and indicating where that farm or staking is located, where you can see the annual %. In addition to having many filters to find just the cryptocurrency or LP Tokens you are interested in finding.

You can filter by blockchain, and it also has very interesting category filters such as LP Stakes, single stake, no imp. loss and stablecoin. It is one of the main tools to see new farming opportunities with stablecoins and where to find the best annual % with them.

Besides being able to filter by token, for example, if you only want to see farms or staking of Avalanche, you can put AVAX and it will show you in all networks the different opportunities of this cryptocurrency.

For me, defillama and coindix are the best and most complete sites to perform this type of search and not have to go platform by platform to see if there is any farm that interests you. And with the emergence of more and more applications, these sites are becoming more and more important to save you a lot of time.

Although these pages are very useful and accurate, sometimes there are farming opportunities, staking or different strategies that are not found here, and you will have to search for them on your own. As well as lesser known platforms that are not listed on these pages. So, let’s see how you can search for the best opportunities on your own without using these sites.

Main DEX of each network

The first way is to search in the main decentralized exchanges in farms the different options that each one has. It is possible that the decentralized exchange nº1 of the network is in coindix, but maybe the 2nd or 3rd most used is not, and that it has good opportunities with very good annual %.

This is as simple as using defillama, and enter the DEX of the network you are interested in, or the network that may have the cryptocurrency you want to do farming or staking with it. For example, in Solana you can go to Raydium and Orca. In Avalanche you can go to trader joe and pangolin, and if you want to look for even smaller decentralized exchanges, which sometimes offer better annual %.

Optimizers

Another way to avoid having to go to each DEX, is to go directly to farming optimizers, platforms such as yield yak on Avalanche, beefy finance on multiple networks, spectrum on terra or tulip on Solana.

These platforms, by optimizing the farms you find in the DEX, are a perfect way to see all the opportunities grouped in a single platform. Although in some optimizers you will not find all the farms available in a DEX, you will find many of them. And it is another way to see more quickly different farms and which ones may interest you more or have better annual %.

Above all, I recommend you to look at beefy finance, which has most of the networks and many different farms. Besides being one of the oldest and most used optimizers in DEFI. In beefy you can find very good opportunities, both in farming and staking of a single cryptocurrency, such as, for example, BNB.

Money Markets

Lending platforms are also usually a good option to place a single cryptocurrency. Although it is not staking, it is very similar, by placing your cryptocurrency, without risk of impermament loss and receiving an annual % for it. It can also be used as collateral for borrowing.

Although the annual % are usually lower in this type of platform than in staking, sometimes there are good annual % in new platforms, platforms with incentives for a period of time or if you are using liquid staking, you can place your cryptocurrencies as for example, msol or stsol and thus get an extra annual %. I recommend you to look at AAVE, being the main lending platform in DEFI.

Bridges

With the emergence of DEFI bridges and sending cryptocurrencies from one network to another, there has been a great need for cryptocurrency liquidity from other networks. We have seen this with wormhole or allbridge among many others.

Look for platforms that have the liquidity of bridges from other networks, and you can find good staking and farming opportunities on them. One platform that I personally have used and for a while you could get a good annual % with stablecoins is Saber on Solana or Orca. Since there were many tokens from other networks that needed liquidity for when users send tokens from for example the BSC to the Solana network.

So look for the DEX or platforms that hold the bridges tokens and bring liquidity from other networks to be able to do farming with good annual %. In some networks they are the main DEX that has these pairs of LP Tokens, and in networks like Solana it is Saber as a platform focused on having liquidity to move tokens from one network to another.

Networks with another Network’s native cryptocurrency

Finally, and surely this will become more and more common over time, is to find the native cryptocurrency of a network, for example BNB, on the Solana network. And this ties in closely with Bridges, which have enabled the native tokens of each network to be used on different networks.

What you can see the most is with BTC and ETH, which we find them on all the networks, apart from their own. And on many occasions, if you are looking for staking or farming options for BTC or ETH, perhaps the option with the highest annual % is on another network.

Although with other networks it is not yet as widespread as BTC or ETH, we have seen that in Solana we find the native Luna token, and possibly soon in the Terra network we will find the native Avalanche token.

What this means is that in order to use Luna in the Solana network, liquidity is needed. And therefore there are opportunities for farming with LP Tokens of for example LUNA-UST in Solana. And sometimes, you can find higher annual % in the farming of a Luna LP on the Solana network, than on its own native network, Terra. This happens with many tokens, and therefore, I recommend you not only look for staking or farming opportunities on the network itself, but go further and see what other networks that cryptocurrency is found on.

For example, if you want to do staking or farming with Avalanche, perhaps the highest annual % with an LP or staking is on a Terra network platform. Therefore, always search also in other networks, apart from the native token’s own.

These are the ways and tools we use to be able to find the best opportunities and maximize the annual % we can get with our cryptocurrencies. Twitter is another tool that if you follow the right people, you can find very good platforms for staking and farming.

To finish with this section, mention that the DEFI world changes and evolves very fast, and although this works today, it is possible that in a year or more, there will be different methods or ways to find the best opportunities.

For example, 6 months or a year ago there were hardly any bridges and therefore the farming opportunities that these platforms have provided may not exist. So it is best to keep abreast of the DEFI world, the new platforms and trends that are emerging.

Risk Analysis

Now that we have covered the methods and tools we use, we could not leave out the risks and security aspects to consider. It is not as simple as looking for the highest annual % that a platform can give you, because it is surely an unreliable platform or one with much more risk than another.

This is what we are going to see now. How you can analyze the risks and identify which platforms are more reliable or not. Because in the end, there is no point in farming if you receive as a reward a token that loses 99% of its value, or your funds disappear.

If you have been in Crypto for a long time or paying attention, you have surely seen several news of platform hacks where users have lost their money. Therefore, the security of the platform is another factor to consider, and not just looking at the annual % you receive.

If you want less complications, usually the platforms with more TVL (total locked value) and more used in each network, usually have a very low risk of hacks or problems with the capital you invest in them.

The first aspect is to understand the platform. Where does the annual % come from and what are you investing in. I know it may sound cliché, but it is the reality. If you don’t know where the annual % comes from, worry. An example of this was Iron Finance, where they gave a very high % with their token and their supposed stablecoin that was backed up to $0.75. There were many people who invested without understanding how it worked and when it all started to fall apart, many people lost a lot of their money.

Avoid platforms that offer a very high annual % compared to others and that have little capital. Many platforms, usually little known DEX offer annual % of 100-300% or more, and in many cases they are platforms that disappear with your money, or that simply give you as a reward a token that only drops in price because it has no utility. And in the end, even if you get 300% per year, if their token is worth 99% less, you really have barely earned anything by placing your tokens.

The age of the protocol, together with the team behind it and the TVL or total locked value are aspects that can give you more security and certainty that the platform is not going to be hacked or is less likely to be hacked. The more capital in the platform, the more people have trusted it, and although it does not mean that it is secure, it does give an extra confidence.

The network itself supports the platform. For example, with Anchor where support and links have been seen with the Terra network, in the Solana network with Orca or the Avalanche network with Trader Joe. Seeing the networks themselves or people who have a fundamental role in a network support a project, gives much more validity and at least you know that it is not a platform that will disappear with your money. In addition to usually have greater security to be supervised or working in conjunction with the network itself.

Audits. Audits can be somewhat misleading, because many times we see platforms that are audited with Certik or different companies, but this does not mean that they do not have risks. To know it well, we should read the report that makes the audit with the failures or risks that have been found. So, keep in mind that, if a platform is audited it is a good thing, but it does not always mean that it cannot be hacked or has no risk. I recommend you to read the audit and see the risks that stand out in order to better understand the risk of the platform being hacked.

Finally, I would like to comment on another aspect to consider after the hack that Grimm finance, a farm optimizer, suffered. When using this type of platform as an optimizer to maximize the annual %, you are assuming a higher risk. In case the platform is hacked, as it happened with Grimm, you can lose your capital. Luckily, it has only happened with Grimm and not with other farm optimizers. But it is a risk that you have to consider when using this type of platforms, and if it is worth it for the extra annual % you get compared to depositing directly on the platform where there is the farm.

If you take these factors into account, you will be able to identify which platforms are safer and which are not so safe, and be able to make better decisions with your money. When you look at the annual %, do not always look for the highest, but also consider the risk of each platform and if it is worth getting that extra annual % for the risk involved. Although it depends on the profile of each one, and if you are looking for a much lower % but a lot of security or something more risky and a higher %.

I hope this guide has helped you to know better how to find the best opportunities for farming and staking of any cryptocurrency and to analyze the risk of each platform. Remember that if you don’t have an account with binance, you can create one just below.