Yield vaults evaluated across mandate accountability, exit mechanics under stress, strategy-risk honesty, and fee transparency.
Yearn (v3)
#1 of 7 · published ranking
Yearn (v3)
83ChainChoice Score
4199
Why it leads
Best in the pool on mandate (8/10; next 7/10)
Cost
Not priced· Only 2 of 7 publish a comparable price
No provider can pay for a position in this table. The code that computes this order cannot read which links earn us a commission, and every build proves it. Every score below rebuilds from the published criteria.Ranking 2026.08 · 4 criteria · 7 products · same inputs, same order
Personal comparison
Yield Vaults ranked comparison
Only 2 of 7 providers publish a comparable price; ranking still uses verified product evidence.
RankProviderBest fitScore
1
Yearn (v3)Yearn (v3)The original yield vault protocol — now...Top ranked
Battle-tested vault architectureTrade-off: TVL is ~4% of its 2021 peak — less scrutiny per long-tail vault than the brand implies
Commission: This provider pays ChainChoice nothing for this link. Disclosure
Crypto products are high risk. Check the provider is authorised where you live before you deposit.
1 more assessed and ranked below — none of them hidden for commercial reasons.
Ranking blindCommercial terms excludedDated primary sourcesCrypto products are high risk. Check the provider is authorised where you live before you deposit.
Ranked on 4 published criteria weighted 30/26/24/20, which set goal alignment — 30 of the 86 points. The rest: regional access 20, evidence depth 18, ease of use 10, institutional trust 8. Profile match is shown in breakdowns but carries no weight.
Audit
Infrastructure
Methodology
2026.09.15
published 2026-09-16
Providers tracked
980+
across 119 categories
Last verified
2026-09-14
newest dated pricing or sentiment read
Named on the roster
2 people
managing directors · 6 automated processes
Decision guide
What matters most before choosing in this category
The best vault depends on who you are willing to let allocate your deposit, and on how confidently you could withdraw it in a bad week. Mandate accountability and exit under stress carry over half the weight here, because a headline APY tells you nothing about either — and looping, market making and pass-through farm risk are all routinely presented as passive yield.
What matters most before choosing in this category
The best vault depends on who you are willing to let allocate your deposit, and on how confidently you could withdraw it in a bad week. Mandate accountability and exit under stress carry over half the weight here, because a headline APY tells you nothing about either — and looping, market making and pass-through farm risk are all routinely presented as passive yield.
Do you know who decides where your deposit goes — the protocol, a named curator, or a delegated desk?
Would you still accept this yield if you knew the strategy was looping or market making rather than lending?
If everyone withdrew at once, does your exit depend on a buffer that thins exactly then?
Current editor lead
Expert review and scoring weights
Yearn (v3)
Yearn (v3)Data checked Sep 2026
The original yield vault protocol — now ~4% of its 2021 peak
Yearn invented this category and still runs it: v3 ERC-4626 allocator vaults compose strategies under onchain role management, typically charging a 10% performance fee on harvested yield with no management fee on single-asset vaults (the legacy 2%/20% model was retired). The honest counterweight is attention decay — TVL sits near $223M against a 2021 peak roughly twenty-five times larger, and contributor bandwidth is spread across many long-tail strategy contracts, so the brand's age overstates how much scrutiny any single small vault receives today.
Best forBattle-tested vault architecture
Main tradeoffTVL is ~4% of its 2021 peak — less scrutiny per long-tail vault than the brand implies
Verify before signupCheck the specific vault’s live fee display and whether it is a current v3 vault or a deprecated legacy product.
Methodology
How this category is reviewed
Reviewed on mandate accountability, exit mechanics under stress, strategy risk honesty, and fee transparency.
The order on this page is the published ranking for this category. Every criterion, weight and source behind it is on the methodology page.
Frequently asked
Questions people ask before choosing yield vaults
What is the difference between staking and yield vault in crypto?
Staking pays you for helping secure a blockchain, and the return comes from the protocol itself. A yield vault hands your deposit to a strategy — lending, market-making, basis trades, or a mix — and pays you what that strategy earns after fees. The distinction that matters is accountability: staking rewards are set by public protocol rules, while a vault's return depends on a manager's decisions, so this page scores whether the mandate is accountable, whether the strategy's risks are stated honestly, and what happens to your exit when the strategy is under stress.
What does a vault curator actually do?
A curator chooses which markets your deposit is allocated to and can usually change that allocation without asking you. Whether the curator is named, and whether they can be replaced, is the single biggest determinant of what you are actually holding — which is why mandate accountability is weighted first.
What matters most when choosing a yield vault?
Who allocates and whether you can leave. Mandate accountability and exit mechanics under stress carry over half the weight, because a headline APY tells you nothing about either.
Why isn't the vault with the highest APY ranked #1?
Because a higher APY is usually compensation for risk that has been moved rather than removed. The rate is shown as a fact and never scored; what is scored is who allocates, how you exit when everyone else wants to, whether the strategy is described honestly, and whether the real fee load is knowable before you deposit.
Not financial advice · For informational purposes only · Always do your own research
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