What is YieldNest?

YieldNest is a liquid restaking protocol managed by AI‑driven yield strategies. On May 14, 2024, Yieldnest deployed its innovative liquid restaking platform, featuring MAX LRTs like ynETH on Mainnet.

Yieldnest aims to deliver secure, high-yield strategies through easy-to-use AI-powered products, robust security, and continuous innovation. Providing high-yielding DeFi assets in a non-custodial, risk-adjusted manner to retail and institutional users alike.

Current TVL is sitting at $186M, previously reaching an all-time high of $512M.

The protocol raised a total of $5.26M in funding, including strategic rounds from investors such as Faculty Group, BACKED, Contango Digital Assets, Insignius Capital, Kahuna, Rana Capital, Mozaik Capital, Loi Luu, Michael Egorov, C2tp, Winthorpe, Steve Kokinos, Perspective, and Thena.

YieldNest is audited by well-respected auditing firms such as Chain Security, Hypernative, Zokyo, and Composable Security. Since its launch in Q2 2024, it has undergone 13 audits, with the most recent one conducted in May 2025.

YieldNest has a Risk Team, an independent risk and research group operated by LlamaRisk to conduct comprehensive risk analysis for the platform, not to mention the active bug bounty. This highlights how much Yieldnest values security for its users.

Looking at recent trends and growth, we can say platforms like Veda ($3.248B TVL), Upshift ($304.71M TVL), Solv ($278.44M TVL), and Mitosis ($54.4M TVL) are competitors to YieldNest.

YieldNest Token & Airdrop Details

YieldNest launched its Seeds loyalty program across multiple seasons. This campaign lets restakers accrue “Seeds” for YND eligibility. Around March 12, 2025, they confirmed the airdrop for active users and partners.

• Token: YND (Utility + Governance), deployed on Ethereum, BNB, and Ink
• Total Supply: 1,000,000,000 YND
• Genesis Airdrop Allocation: 6.56% of total supply = 65.6 million YND

Tokenomics & Distribution

• Community & Rewards: 40.94% (409.4M YND)
• Genesis Airdrop: 6.56% (65.6M YND)
• Private Sale: 18% (180M)
• Team & Advisors: 20% (200M)
• Ecosystem & Liquidity: 7% (70M)
• Marketing & Partnerships: 5% (50M)
• Strategic Round: 2% (20M)
• Public Sale: 0.5% (5M)

Vesting for Genesis Airdrop was fully unlocked at TGE; recipients could claim 100% on day one.

Users who participated in the OG, Season 1 and 2 Seeds loyalty program were all eligible for the genesis drop, with participation from 11,000 wallets, and 409.8M total seeds issued.

Timeline

Season OG — ended August 20, 2024
Season 1 — Aug 20 — Oct 22, 2024
Season 2 — Nov 2024 — May 28, 2025

Snapshot Date: May 28, 2025, 20:15 UTC

Seeds Distribution

Now, let’s calculate the estimated YND airdrop per user, per season, and the average profit scenarios.

To better understand how user behaviour impacts airdrop profitability, we analysed five different wallets that participated in various YieldNest airdrop seasons (OG, Season 1, and Season 2). The results show a notable variation in ROI relative to both deposit size and participation duration. See the table below 👇

Smaller depositors like Wallet 2, who staked $61.79 for around 9 weeks, achieved a respectable 2.48% ROI purely from airdrops.

Meanwhile, Wallet 3, with a mid-range deposit of $6,824 over ~11 months, realised the highest ROI at 6.95%, suggesting that long-term participation across multiple seasons yields better returns.

On the other end, Wallet 4 staked over $47,000 but saw a lower ROI of just 1.72%, highlighting diminishing airdrop efficiency at scale.

Wallet 5, the largest depositor in this study with ~$76,000, secured a solid 4.63% ROI — further affirming that YieldNest’s airdrop mechanism rewards loyalty and early engagement more than pure capital weight.

Some things to note:

• The Deposit Value in $ was based on the price of ETH at the time of their deposit.
• The overall ROI calculation on YND is based on the price at which each user received their airdrop.

What If They Sold at the TGE?

YND launched at 0.02151 on TGE (according to CoinMarketCap), just a hair above the typical valuation. While it may not seem like much, that small delta added hundreds of dollars in value to some wallets. Let’s say that each of these 5 users sold YND at its peak price.

What is the overall APY for each user?

APY (TGE) = (Profit at TGE ÷ Deposit) ÷ (No. of days ÷ 365)×100

So, What’s the Average APY?

Average APY = (68.42+49.65+33.86+74.93+35.66) ÷ 5 = 52.10%

Observations:

• Wallet 4 continues to dominate in APY performance due to short staking duration and high YND claim.
• Wallet 3, despite holding the longest, had a balanced APY due to participating across all seasons.
• Wallet 2 earned a relatively strong return on a small deposit, again showing that YieldNest rewarded early and small users fairly well.

The relationship visualised in the chart above shows that a mix of time, timing, and strategy, not just deposit size, plays a crucial role in optimising airdrop outcomes.

What’s Interesting?

We discovered a wallet containing approximately 90,000 YND tokens. The intriguing aspect of this wallet is that it has never interacted with YieldNest before, and it was created on the same day it claimed the tokens.

Digging further, we discovered that the above wallet was funded with ETH from another wallet, which had also never interacted with YieldNest before, but claimed 100 YND on May 24, 2025 (four days before the YieldNest final snapshot on May 28, 2025). Meanwhile, the YND claim contract was created on May 31, 2025, at 4:00:59 PM UTC.

We went even further and found that the contract address that the second wallet claimed from got a total of 2,500 YND from the Safe wallet that Minted YND on 23/05/2025, 09:44:59 AM UTC. Several other wallets also claimed 1 and 100 YND tokens from this same contract.

While it may seem like a test claim from the team before the official launch, the question is; How did the first wallet claim 90,000 YND tokens the same day it was created, with no previous interaction with the protocol?

Note: All these wallets are still holding the tokens.

Key Insights

• Mid-size consistent users win big: Wallet 3 had the best ROI, participating across all seasons and depositing $6.8K for nearly 11 months. Their airdrop value at peak reached 9.07% of the initial deposit.
• Small depositors can outperform whales: Despite a small $61.79 stake, Wallet 2’s peak ROI soared to 7.79%, outperforming larger wallets like Wallet 4.
• Whales plateau on yield: Wallets 4 and 5 deposited over $120K combined, but didn’t see proportionally high airdrop gains. This implies a flattening of rewards at high deposit tiers.
• On average, the 5 wallets we looked at pulled in about 52.10% APY from YieldNest’s airdrop, based on the TGE price of YND. That’s pretty solid, considering they didn’t have to do much besides deposit and wait. Some users with smaller deposits ended up getting great returns, while others who stuck around longer also saw decent yield.

Final Thoughts

YieldNest’s airdrop rewarded early adopters and loyal stakers across seasons, but the highest returns were secured by those who combined moderate capital, long-term commitment, and multi-season exposure. Meanwhile, peak price action shows that even modest swings in token value can unlock significant upside, especially for smaller, agile wallets.

All in all, YieldNest made it worth the time for both casual farmers and committed stakers, without needing to play complicated DeFi games.

Whether you’re a DeFi degen or passive participant, this case study offers a practical lens into what airdrops can (and can’t) do for your portfolio.

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