什么是收益耕种/流动性挖矿 Yield Farming / Liquidity Mining

In the Chinese context, the concepts of yield farming and liquidity mining are often collectively referred to as “liquidity mining.” Indeed, in a broad sense, both terms refer to the process of providing liquidity to decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols to earn passive income. However, there are subtle differences between them, and understanding these differences helps us grasp these concepts more accurately.

To better understand them, I suggest introducing another fundamental concept—staking, as mentioned in the previous chapter—for comparative understanding. Below are the basic definitions of these three concepts:

Staking refers to the process of locking a native asset of a blockchain that uses the PoS (Proof-of-Stake) consensus mechanism for a certain period to help maintain the operation of the blockchain and earn corresponding rewards.

Yield farming refers to the method where people provide liquidity to DeFi liquidity pools or collateral pools, i.e., “crypto deposits,” to earn passive income. In simple terms, users lock their assets into a DeFi protocol, and in exchange for this locking behavior, the protocol automatically pays these “farmers” with cryptocurrency rewards over a period.

Liquidity mining refers to providing crypto assets to liquidity pools and earning fees and crypto rewards based on their proportion in the pool. It can be said that liquidity mining is a form of yield farming, but it occurs in a more specific domain—AMM (Automated Market Maker)-based decentralized exchanges (DEXs) and liquidity pools.

It is not difficult to see that the main differences among the three lie in the scenarios and motivations: staking, as a core element in many blockchain consensus mechanisms, exists across various scenarios, and generally, stakers are more inclined to maintain network security rather than just earning passive income; yield farming occurs within DeFi protocols, focusing on returns, i.e., pursuing higher APY (annual percentage yield); and when this investment strategy is specifically applied to AMM decentralized exchanges, it can also be called liquidity mining.

Of course, these three are not simply a matter of complete inclusion; the diagram above is just to provide an intuitive display of their relationships. **$LUMIA **$SOMI **$MILK **