Yearn.finance (YFI) “acquires” yet another DeFi protocol amid massive expansion plans

Yearn.finance (YFI) is in the midst of massive expansion plans, acquiring Ethereum-based protocol upon Ethereum-based protocol to achieve its ambitions in the DeFi space.

It began last week with Pickle Finance, the yield aggregator that underwent an immense hack of $20 million just days before the news of the acquisition broke. The acquisition did not involve any monetary exchange, though brought on Pickle’s core team as developers for Yearn’s yVaults.

This was followed by a number of other acquisitions (CREAM and COVER) that are meant to boost Yearn’s product lineup and developer base.

The latest is an acquisition with Akropolis, which coincidentally underwent a hack as well. It appears that Yearn is looking to merge with projects down on their luck, presumably because their teams would be more acclimated to joining forces with a powerhouse like Yearn.finance, one of the most prominent Ethereum coins and applications in existence.

Akropolis x Yearn.Finance

Announced early this morning, Akropolis, a multi-faceted DeFi ecosystem currently focusing on yield aggregation and lending services for more institutional-focused clients, is merging forces with Yearn.Finance.

It was announced on Monday morning:

“Yearn will continue to develop best-in-class Vault and Lending protocol solutions. Akropolis becomes the front-of-house institutional service provider of these, offering bespoke access to their network of clients, with investment strategies tailored specifically to them.”

Thus far, Yearn is a product that has seemingly been focused on retail investors, who lack the knowledge, time, and gas to farm Ethereum’s DeFi fields by themselves.

Akropolis may extend Yearn’s reach to its institutional client base, which should boost the total locked value in the protocol and the entire DeFi space by extension.

What’s the deal?

These mergers and acquisitions seemingly represent the first time Ethereum-based protocols have merged forces to more easily accomplish a task.

So what’s going on here? Is there an underlying thesis to all these moves, or just the start of an antithetical Amazon-like conglomerate within the crypto space. Andre Cronje, the founder of Yearn.finance, explained what is going on in a blog published one day ago:

“The teams merge, the protocols leverage off of each other, vision is aligned and shared by all team members, this is something new that I don’t think fits into the boxes we have previously used. Decentralized finance allows us to be both collaborative, and symbiotic, while still being individual.”

Cronje added that he isn’t too sure if “acquire” is the right term to use for these sorts of relationships, noting that this is far from a conventional acquisition.

YFI is up eight percent in the past 24 hours, pushing to $26,500.