Methodology

What the index covers

Of the 156 indexed strategies, 111 are live at the time of the last data refresh (positive APY and positive TVL), spread across 6 networks and 4 asset families (USDC, ETH, USDT, BTC). The remaining 45 are inactive - their APY or TVL is zero at every fetch. Inactive strategies are removed from all ranked listings and hub pages. Their individual product pages remain accessible via direct URL but are not linked from any navigation. Historical data for inactive strategies is retained.

What counts as a yield source

The index covers vault-based autocompounding strategies. A vault accepts a deposit of a single underlying token, deploys it into one or more yield-bearing positions, harvests rewards on an ongoing basis, swaps them back into the underlying token, and redeposits. The user holds a share token representing a pro-rata claim on the vault.

Currently in scope: single-asset lending vaults (Aave, Morpho, Compound, and similar), liquidity-provider vaults for constant-function AMMs (Aerodrome, Uniswap v3, Curve), and hybrid vaults that layer lending with protocol incentives. All strategies denominate in one of the tracked asset families: USDC, USDT, ETH (and liquid-staked ETH variants), or BTC (and wrapped BTC variants).

Not currently indexed: isolated lending markets where the supply token differs materially from the withdrawal token, strategies requiring active management by the depositor, native protocol staking without a vault wrapper, and any strategy without an audited smart contract or verifiable on-chain track record.

How APY is calculated

The 24H APY displayed on hub and product pages is the arithmetic mean of all apyAutoCompound records returned by Harvest's indexer subgraph for timestamps within the past 24 hours. The subgraph can emit multiple records per hour depending on vault activity; the number of data points in any 24-hour window varies by chain and protocol. If no records exist within the window, the system falls back to the most recent valid APY observation on record. APY is expressed as an annualized percentage.

The 30-day APY is the arithmetic mean of all valid apyAutoCompound subgraph records from the last 30 days. It is not time-weighted and does not account for compounding within the window. Its purpose is to smooth out single-day spikes.

APY values in the subgraph originate from Harvest's on-chain strategy contracts, which derive them from the estimated yield rate of the underlying protocol positions. For strategies where reward tokens contribute to yield (such as AERO or CRV emissions), those reward streams are included at the rate computed by Harvest's backend, which converts reward token quantities to USD using its own pricing infrastructure. We do not independently perform this conversion; see Data sources for detail on upstream pricing. Reward token contributions are shown separately in the Yield Sources panel on each product page.

There is no lifetime APY figure in the index. Annualizing returns over multi-year periods conflates compounding periods with different market conditions. Lifetime share-price growth is shown instead as a less misleading long-term signal.

Yield Sources panel

The Yield Sources panel on each product page breaks down the total APY into its contributing streams. Each row corresponds to one entry in the Harvest API's estimatedApyBreakdown array, labeled by the corresponding token symbol from apyTokenSymbols(e.g., "USDC" for the base lending rate, "AERO" for protocol incentives). A "Compounding boost" row appears when boostedEstimatedAPY is non-zero; it represents additional yield from the autocompounding mechanic itself. The sum of all rows equals the total reported APY for that strategy.

How TVL is measured

Total Value Locked (TVL) is the USD value of all assets deposited in a given vault. The figure is taken directly from the totalValueLocked field returned by the Harvest API; it is not independently recomputed from on-chain reads. The API derives TVL from the vault's underlyingBalanceWithInvestment multiplied by the underlying token's USD price at the time of the snapshot.

TVL shown on hub pages is the sum of individual vault TVL figures within that hub's scope. It is not deduplicated. In practice, the strategies currently indexed are single-level, so double-counting is not a material concern.

Product page metrics

The following metrics appear on individual product pages and are not covered elsewhere in this methodology.

Share price

Share price is the redemption rate of one vault share in terms of the underlying token. It is sourced from the Harvest API's pricePerFullShare field and normalized for the vault's token decimals. When a vault launches, share price is typically 1.0. It increases monotonically as the vault harvests rewards, swaps them back into the underlying token, and compounds. Share price does not decrease in normal operation; a falling share price would indicate a loss event.

The "% since inception" figure shown below the share price is computed from the history record as (latest - earliest) / earliest × 100, where earliest and latest are the first and last sharePriceHistory entries returned by the subgraph for that vault. This reflects growth since our indexer first observed the strategy, not necessarily since the vault's on-chain deployment date.

Best day and worst day

The Historical statistics table on each product page shows "Best day" and "Worst day" for both APY and TVL. These refer to the single calendar day within the displayed 30-day window with the highest and lowest recorded value, respectively. They are single data points from the subgraph history, not aggregated daily averages. The date shown alongside each value is the timestamp of that subgraph record.

Market benchmarking rank

The market benchmarking section on each product page shows a rank such as "#3 of 28 tracked USDC strategies." The cohort for this ranking is all strategies in the index with the same underlying asset (USDC, ETH, BTC, or USDT) that have a positive 24H APY at the time of the last data refresh. The rank is determined by 24H APY in descending order. The cohort size changes when strategies become active or inactive between fetches.

The "X% higher than the average" comparison is against the arithmetic mean of the same cohort. The cohort average is computed at fetch time and is not smoothed or time-weighted.

Data freshness and update cadence

Strategy data is refetched from the Harvest API once per hour via an automated process (cron: 0 * * * *). Historical APY, TVL, and share-price data is updated each hour for all indexed strategies. After each fetch, the site's static HTML is rebuilt and redeployed. A visitor may therefore see data that is up to approximately one hour old.

There is no real-time streaming of on-chain data. APY and TVL figures will not change between rebuilds, even if the underlying on-chain state changes.

The "Tracked for X days" figure on each product page is derived from the earliest timestamp in the strategy's APY history record - the first time our indexer observed a data point for that vault. It is not the vault's deployment date.

Ranking methodology

Strategies are ranked by 24-hour APY in descending order on all hub pages (the homepage, asset hubs, and network hubs). This is the default and currently the only ranking mode applied when a page loads.

There is no risk weighting, no minimum TVL threshold, and no age filter built into the default ranking. Users can sort by 30-day APY, TVL, or momentum (24-hour APY minus 30-day APY) using the sort controls on each hub page. Momentum signals whether a strategy is currently running above or below its recent average.

Strategies with zero APY or zero TVL are excluded from ranked listings entirely, regardless of the API inactive flag.

Volatility and consistency scoring

Each product page shows an APY Consistency score from 0 to 100. It is derived from the coefficient of variation (CV) of the strategy's daily APY observations over the last 30 days. CV is the standard deviation divided by the mean - a dimensionless measure of relative variability. The window is anchored to the latest available data point, not the current date, so the score remains meaningful even when the subgraph has not emitted new rows recently.

A minimum of 5 data points within the 30-day window is required to produce a score. Strategies below this threshold show a dash.

A separate stability label (very consistent / consistent / moderate / volatile) appears in the 30-day APY sub-label on the hero panel. This uses raw standard deviation with fixed thresholds (0.5 / 1.5 / 3 percentage points). The consistency score is the primary, more nuanced figure.

Inclusion and exclusion criteria

Inclusion is currently editorial and discretionary. The index covers strategies operated by Harvest that pass two automated conditions: the operator API must not flag the strategy as inactive, and the strategy must have a positive APY and a positive TVL at the time of the last fetch. There is no minimum TVL threshold and no minimum age requirement.

Strategies are excluded when: (a) the operator flags them as inactive, (b) their reported APY or TVL is zero or negative at every fetch for an extended period, or (c) they do not match any of the tracked asset families. Exclusion is automated; no manual review step currently exists.

Formal inclusion criteria for third-party operators - minimum audit requirements, TVL floors, track-record length - will be published as an amendment to this methodology before any third-party strategies are added.

Risk framework

This site does not publish per-strategy risk ratings or opinions. The five dimensions below describe the categories of risk present in DeFi vault strategies generally. They are informational context only and do not constitute financial or investment advice. For any strategy's specific risk profile, consult the operator's own documentation, audit reports, and on-chain contract history.

• Smart-contractA flaw in the vault contract or an integrated protocol contract leads to loss of deposited funds.
• OracleA manipulated or stale price feed leads to incorrect collateral valuation, triggering unintended liquidations or enabling an exploit.
• LiquidityA user is unable to withdraw funds from a position at or near the expected value, due to illiquid markets or locked positions.
• DepegFor stablecoin and wrapped-asset strategies: the underlying token loses its peg, permanently impairing the value of the deposit.
• GovernanceA protocol's governance mechanism is exploited or manipulated to change contract parameters adversely for depositors.

Data sources

Strategy metadata - vault addresses, token names, platform names, estimated APY, TVL, APY breakdown by source, and reward token information - is sourced from the Harvest API at api.harvest.finance/vaults. This API is operated by Harvest and reflects the state of the protocols as read by their backend infrastructure.

Reward token APY contributions (e.g., AERO, CRV) are converted to USD by the Harvest API using its own pricing infrastructure. The specific price sources used - whether DEX quotes, on-chain oracles, or third-party price feeds - are maintained by Harvest and are not separately documented in the API's public reference. If a price source is stale or inaccurate, the APY reported on this site will reflect that inaccuracy.

Historical time-series data (daily APY, TVL, share price) is sourced from Harvest's hosted indexer subgraph, queried via GraphQL per vault address. Up to 500 records per 30-day window are returned per series. For the full history view on product pages, up to 1,000 records are requested per series. Records are not deduplicated to one per day server-side; multiple records per day are averaged or taken as-is depending on the metric.

We do not integrate third-party RPC providers or external aggregation services. All data originates from Harvest's own API and subgraph. Data accuracy on this site is therefore directly dependent on the accuracy of those upstream sources.

Limitations and known gaps

• 01Hourly cadence, not real-timeAPY and TVL figures reflect the state of the last hourly fetch. Intraday spikes or dips are not captured. Strategies with extremely volatile yields will not be accurately represented by our snapshot-based system.
• 02Reward token conversion is upstreamWe do not perform our own USD valuation of reward tokens. If the Harvest API's pricing for a reward token is stale or inaccurate, the APY reported on this site reflects that inaccuracy.
• 03Risk levels are not quantitatively scoredThis site does not publish per-strategy risk ratings or opinions. The risk dimensions listed in the Risk framework section describe the categories of risk present in DeFi vault strategies; they are informational only and do not constitute advice.
• 04Third-party operators not yet indexedThe index currently covers only Harvest-operated strategies. DeFi protocols that deploy similar vault structures (Yearn, Beefy, Convex, etc.) are not represented.
• 05No lifetime APY figureWe do not publish a single annualized figure for the full tracked history of a strategy. Share-price growth since the indexer first observed the vault is shown instead, which is a more honest representation of compounded returns over time.
• 06Tracked-since date is not deployment dateThe "live since" figure reflects when our indexer first observed data for a strategy, not when the vault was deployed on-chain. For strategies deployed before our indexer began tracking them, the figure understates the actual vault age.

Methodology versioning

This methodology is versioned. Each meaningful change to how data is collected, calculated, or presented will be logged here. Hourly data refreshes are not methodology changes and are not logged. Future version entries will note: (a) what changed, (b) why the change was made, and (c) how it affects historical comparisons or displayed figures.

Disclosure