Yearn Finance price almost hits $70,000, what is driving the YFI bulls?

A lackluster cryptocurrency market did little in offsetting Yearn Finance's bullish bias as the price of its governance token YFI reached new record highs in USD terms on May 11 almost touching $70,000.

Yearn Finance price almost hits $70,000, what is driving the YFI bulls?

The YFI/USD exchange rate added 10.02%, approximately $6,258, to reach $68,748 ahead of the London opening bell. The pair quickly went lower as traders decided to realize their profits, hitting roughly $67,067.

YFI token performed equally well against Bitcoin, the flagship cryptocurrency whose own uptrend slowed down after hitting a milestone high of roughly $65,000 last month. Tuesday morning, the YFI/BTC exchange rate was near its five-month high of 1.192 BTC. Meanwhile, at its intraday peak, the pair's bid was 1.247 BTC, up 58%.

The sudden yet massive upside moves in the Yearn Finance token market seem in form as its top rival coins underperformed severely. At first, BTC continued to show bearish after failing to log a breakout above a psychological resistance level of $60,000. Its strong positive correlation with other top digital assets also pushed their prices lower.

Yearn Finance's YFI was comparatively weaker so far in 2021. The token would surge by almost 160% compared to its altcoin peers' thousands of percentages worth of upside gains. Technically, YFI served as a hedge as the rest of the cryptocurrency market returned from their overbought levels. But as looking closely, what worked in the favor for the Yearn Finance token is its ability to cast aside a flurry of its major issues.

Yearn had a rocky beginning in the starting of the year as headed with lack of funding into the year. The YFI group had no reserves set aside for its core contributors that limited it from gaining any upside exposure. Andre Cronje, the creator of the Yearn Finance protocol, even shared his frustration by writing a blog titled, “Building in DeFi Sucks”.

However, the following weeks witnessed huge community involvement to solve the reserves issue. The YFI holders introduced two proposals and passed them through a democratic vote. The first “Buyback and Build” upgrade assisted in introducing a buyback program that added YFI to their treasury for redistribution.

Meanwhile, the second “Funding Yearn's Future” proposal minted 6,666 new YFI tokens to create the protocol treasury, with a primary focus on funding core contributors.

The next major upgrade came in the form of Yearn V2. Its mid-January launch earlier met with negative reviews due to UI issues. But the team responded promptly to address those concerns to a successful conclusion. In the months following the fix, the total value locked inside the Yearn Finance pool has climbed to $4.243 billion.

The most notable changes Yearn V2 brought to the Yearn Finance protocol included a new fee structure, multi-strategy vaults, and highly differentiated strategies with the help of a new ecosystem partnership with Cream. YFI prices responded bullishly to the events.