During the DeFi Summer of 2020, YAM Finance launched with a bang, and had its share of ups and downs within its first couple of days. It started out as an experiment to bring together some of the more innovative ideas in the space. It sparked a movement which brought massive attention to yield farming, and started the food token craze. After a bug was discovered in the v1 contract, many thought the project was dead. But no, the team and community have been working diligently to bring the protocol back to life and it's now a community-run DAO innovating at the intersection of decentralized governance and programmable finance.

Trent Elmore is one of the creators of YAM. He joins us to talk about the incredibly swift birth of the project, the rebase mechanism, the treasury, the infamous bug and how they saved the project. He also shares some of the new upcoming products on the YAM Roadmap, and how a truly decentralized community is rebuilding its brand.

Topics covered in this episode:

• Trent's background and how he got into crypto and DeFi
• How YAM and food tokens were born
• The team behind YAM
• What was the vision of the project at the beginning?
• The proposed utility of the protocol
• How the treasury funding works in the context of the rebasing mechanism
• The Game Theory for YAM holders
• How they built their communities and choose tokens
• YAM's connection between their governance and Snapshot
• The infamous bug in V1 and how they recovered from it
• What plans do they have for the treasury and products going forward, including the recent UMA collaboration

Episode links:

• YAM on Twitter
• YAM Finance
• Discord
• YAM on Medium
• Trent on Twitter

Sponsors:

• 1inch: Discover the best rates and most efficient swapping routes across leading DEXes. Optimize on gas cost and execute DeFi trades faster with 1inch V2 - https://epicenter.rocks/1inch

This episode is hosted by Sunny Aggarwal & Friederike Ernst. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/375