Yield Yak Review

How Yield Yak scores in yield aggregators

Yield Yak runs auto-compounding farms, mainly on Avalanche, and a newer set of ecosystem vaults (aiAVAX, aiUSD, aiBTC) that spread deposits across Avalanche protocols. This entry rates both in our yield aggregator ranking. Yak Swap and the YAK token are not scored. The basis is desk research of the Yield Yak documentation and its GitHub repositories, checked on November 6, 2026. No deposit was made. The category uses five criteria, each marked 0 to 10 and weighted equally, as set out in our ratings methodology.

The overall score is the plain average: (7 + 8 + 3 + 4 + 7) / 5 = 29 / 5 = 5.8. The previous overall was 5.6.

Three marks changed at this check. Audit disclosure rose from 2 to 3 because the docs now name CoinFabrik as the auditor of high-TVL strategies, where the earlier review found no firm named. Strategy transparency rose from 6 to 7 on the vault fee page's net-of-fees APY statement and the farms' actual-performance return basis. Licence & code openness moved from 9 to 8 when the category's licence scale was applied consistently on November 6, 2026: a live repository whose MIT terms appear only in SPDX headers, with no LICENSE file, is marked 8. The other two marks were re-checked and held.

Strongest criteria: licence and fee clarity

Licence & code openness scores 8. The farm contracts sit under an MIT LICENSE file and the aggregator under GPL-3.0, both recognised open-source licences. The mark is two points short of the top because the ecosystem vault code, a fork of Veda's Boring Vault, has no licence file of its own; the docs describe it as the MIT version and the contract files say MIT, but the repository does not grant it. The category scale marks MIT terms carried only in SPDX headers, with no LICENSE file in a live repository, at 8.

Fee disclosure at 7 rests on what is absent as much as what is charged. Neither farms nor vaults charge deposit or withdrawal fees, and the reinvest page breaks the farm fee into its two parts with a 100 AVAX example: 0.05 AVAX to the caller, 9.95 AVAX to the fee collector, 90 AVAX reinvested. The mark is not higher because the farm fee is a range that "change[s] with network conditions", and each vault's actual fee is left to the vault itself.

Strategy transparency at 7 credits the clearest APY statement in the docs: vault figures are net of fees, and the fee page shows how a 20% performance fee turns a 12.5% gross return into a 10% displayed one. Farm returns are reported from actual recent performance. What is missing is a written per-farm strategy or a statement that farm APYs are net of the reinvest fee.

Weakest criteria: audits and admin control

Audit disclosure at 3 is a measured deficiency. Naming an auditor is a step up from the earlier check, but a depositor still cannot tell whether a given farm was audited, when or with what findings. The docs are candid that new farms often are not, and that the platforms underneath may be unaudited too, with any losses passing through to Yield Yak users. The 100 YAK bug bounty has no platform, fixed tiers or scope document.

Custody & control at 4 reflects what the docs leave unsaid. The manual-withdrawal guide is useful and shows that a farm position can be exited without the website. But the docs never state who holds admin rights over strategies, what an emergency action can do with funds, or whether changes pass a timelock. Timelock contracts exist in the repository, and the strategy manager sets a 14-day delay on ownership transfers, but none of this is documented for users. No company or terms of service are named. Peers that publish a custody statement or a documented timelock score higher.

What the score does not cover

• APY, TVL and returns, which vary by farm and vault.
• The safety of the farms and lending markets underneath, impermanent loss on LP farms and liquidation on leveraged single-asset farms.
• Suzaku restaking vaults, Yak Swap and the YAK token.
• Who operates Yield Yak. The rubric has no entity criterion, and the contributors are not named.

Our guide to how yield farming works covers the risks an auto-compounder inherits.

Yield Yak vs Beefy and Harvest Finance

Beefy, another multichain auto-compounder, scores 8.4, and Harvest Finance 7.0. All three score 8 on licence, and Yield Yak trails both on audits and custody, where they name auditors with linked reports and document admin controls. Peer marks are as currently published and may change when those entries are rechecked.

Who it suits

The score suits an Avalanche user who values open code, no entry or exit fees and net-of-fee vault APYs, and who accepts limited audit coverage. It suits less well anyone who needs published audit reports for the specific farm, or written admin controls, before depositing. Check a farm's age and underlying platform first.