yAxis Will Integrate Chainlink Keepers To Automate Yield Harvesting And Rebalancing

yAxis Project
6 min readJul 29, 2021

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We are excited to announce that yAxis will be integrating Chainlink Keepers on the Ethereum blockchain to automate key protocol functions, including regular yield harvesting and rebalancing of funds when switching between yield farming strategies.

Chainlink Keepers uses low-cost, verifiable off-chain computation and a highly reliable network of incentivized nodes to provide a decentralized transaction automation service, enabling development teams like ours to outsource regular smart contract maintenance. This integration is the next logical step for the yAxis team as we look to further increase protocol security and efficiency.

We decided to integrate Chainlink Keepers because it’s powered by the same decentralized network of professional DevOps that already secures tens of billions of dollars within the DeFi ecosystem through Chainlink Price Feeds. It will provide a superior user experience to yAxis, as all yield generating activities are abstracted away in a deterministic manner.

The Keeper Basics

Before diving into the specifics of how Chainlink Keepers will be utilized within the yAxis protocol, let’s first take a look at the role keepers play in the smart contract ecosystem. “Keeper” is a term that refers to an external person, entity, and/or group that are crypto-economically incentivized to call on-chain functions for smart contracts when predefined conditions are met. Keepers can be trust-minimized bots running scripts (in the case of Chainlink Keepers), other smart contracts, or simple Externally-Owned Accounts (EOAs) that trigger events.

For many, keepers, and the role they play within blockchain ecosystems, represents a relative unknown. Many keeper mechanisms consist of anonymous entities, which is surprising considering these network actors are commonly tasked with not only securing but also adding intrinsic value to smart contract protocols. Without a guarantee that a keeper will perform its given task, protocols are at risk of failing to execute as promised.

Keeper jobs may involve executing limit orders on DEXes, harvesting yield from vaults, liquidating undercollateralized loans, rebasing elastic supply tokens, topping up token balances that fall below minimum thresholds, and a multitude of other tasks. Since smart contracts are not auto-executing, they require keepers to make on-chain transactions that trigger the execution of their logic.

Automating the yAxis Ecosystem With Chainlink Keepers

yAxis is a yield aggregation solution on the Ethereum mainnet that enables users to maximize yield on their digital assets in a passive manner. Through only a few clicks, users can get top DeFi returns on a wide range of cryptocurrencies including stablecoins like DAI, USDC, and USDT. To fully automate the yield aggregating process for users while maintaining high reliability and blockchain-based security, yAxis ecosystem requires a transparent, verifiable, and high-uptime keeper solution to ensure key smart contract functions are called on a regular basis in a timely manner.

The initial use of Chainlink Keepers within the yAxis protocol will be two-fold:

  • Chainlink Keepers will automate the harvesting of yield from yAxis strategies on the behalf of users. Keepers will trigger yield harvests either at specific time intervals or after a threshold amount of rewards have been accrued.
  • Chainlink Keepers will monitor yAxis vault statistics and trigger fund movements across the various yAxis strategies if and when predefined thresholds are passed, ensuring users are always earning the highest yield on their assets.

In addition to protocol enhancements, Chainlink Keepers will also empower the core yAxis Dev team to focus solely on the development of our ecosystem, saving us both time and money since core backend infrastructure doesn’t need to be built from scratch.

Some of the specific features that attracted yAxis to Chainlink Keepers include:

  • High Uptime — Chainlink Keepers are run by the same professional DevOps teams that have an established on-chain performance history of providing high reliability to Chainlink Price Feeds during extreme network congestion and market volatility.
  • Low Costs — Chainlink Keepers have several gas-optimizing features that lower the costs of automating maintenance tasks for users, including a rotating node selection process to prevent gas price auction wars and stabilize costs.
  • Decentralized Execution — Chainlink leverages a decentralized and transparent pool of Keepers to provide strong guarantees around secure contract automation, saving teams time and mitigating the risks around manual interventions or centralized servers.
  • Expandable Computation — Chainlink Keepers perform off-chain computations and generate calldata verifiable by smart contracts, allowing developers to build advanced, trust-minimized dApps at lower costs.

The integration of Chainlink Keepers will provide the yAxis development team with built-in access to a decentralized, provably reliable, and crypto-economically incentivized network of Keepers for automating critical smart contract functions. The result is more decentralized fund management and quicker response times in exceptionally rare cases when a utilized strategy is exploited.

“Chainlink Keepers enables us to automate the harvesting of yield and rebalancing of funds across strategies, ensuring capital is deployed in the most efficient and APY-maximizing way possible with a high degree of transparency and reliability,” stated yAxis.

“The gas optimizations and historic reliability of Chainlink Keepers made it the clear choice for our protocol, allowing us to focus on building a more diverse and powerful yAxis ecosystem rather than using engineering resources to reinvent the wheel.”

About Chainlink

Chainlink is the industry standard oracle network for powering hybrid smart contracts. Chainlink Decentralized Oracle Networks provide developers with the largest collection of high-quality data sources and secure off-chain computations to expand the capabilities of smart contracts on any blockchain. Managed by a global, decentralized community, Chainlink currently secures billions of dollars in value for smart contracts across decentralized finance (DeFi), insurance, gaming, and other major industries.

Chainlink is trusted by hundreds of organizations, from global enterprises to projects at the forefront of the blockchain economy, to deliver definitive truth via secure, reliable oracle networks. To learn more about Chainlink, visit chain.link and subscribe to the Chainlink newsletter. To understand the full vision of the Chainlink Network, read the Chainlink 2.0 whitepaper. Want to discuss an integration? Talk to an expert.

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About yAxis

yAxis is the trusted DeFi platform to earn reliable returns on digital assets. Our aim is to grow users capital and maximize returns by seamlessly transitioning between multiple, DAO-approved, DeFi yield generating strategies.

yAxis constantly monitors the DeFi landscape — seeking out the best returns, so you don’t have to. yAxis allows users to deposit funds, earn passive income, and grow their capital.

The yAxis Project is also a multi-audited, open-source platform with one of the most robust, dynamic cybersecurity solutions in the DeFi industry. The safety of our users’ funds is paramount, and we work tirelessly to improve our security credentials and minimize risk.

Utilizing yAxis’ key features of trusted security, ease of use and reliable returns, yAxis appeals to DeFi natives as well as retail and institutional capital.

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