Yield Generating Quant
Strategies in DeFi: Ideas,
Strategies, Building Blocks and
Things You Should Know About
Agenda
● A DeFi perspective of yield-generating strategies
● Building institutional-grade yield generating strategies in DeFi
● How to think about risk
● Examples
A quick update about ITB…
Lots of new customers launches…
Luno
Indodax
GOPAX
Plasma Finance
FXStreet
XT.COM
Upcoming Exciting Features
● Real time market-pulse dashboard
● NFT analytics
● More…
Quant Yield-generating strategies…
The history of financial markets is the history of the
debt and yield…
Yield generating strategies are typically associated
with passive models in fixed-income or equities
markets…
In recent years quant models made inroads into yield
generating strategies…
Main Trends
Smart-Beta Methods
• Generate higher yields applying factor-investment
models to fixed income portfolios
Yield-Based Options
• Model calls and puts based on the yield of specific
securities
High Yield ETFs
• Develop baskets of high-dividend paying equities
DeFi introduces new dimensions to quant yield-generating strategies…
The DeFi Yield-Generating Perspective
Near-Complete Transparency
Protocol Diversity
Programmability
Governance Changes
Medium Frequency
DeFi blurries the line between beta and alpha
strategies…
A Risk-Return View of Traditional Yield-Generating
Strategies
In DeFi
There are many building blocks to develop quant yield
generating strategies in DeFi…
A View Into The Building Blocks of DeFi Yield
Generating Strategies
You can earn yield in many
ways in DeFi protocols….
But can we do it at scale…
Scaling DeFi quant yield-generating strategies
at an institutional level…
Key Characteristics of Institutional-Grade Quant-DeFi
Yield-Generating Strategies
A Perspective of Institutional-Grade Quant DeFi Yield-
Generating Strategies
Let’s look at some practical examples…
Liquidity Provision
Lending
Staking
Some Key Points About Building Quant DeFi Yield-
Generating Strategies
Rapid experimentation is key
Yield-Generation is happening outside Ethereum
Enable exposure to multiple protocols and crypto-assets
Infrastructure is key
Risk as a first-class component
Anyone can run 1-2 yield-generating strategies with
small capacity but running at scale requires
infrastructure….
Risk management & DeFi yield-generating
strategies…
Traditional portfolio risk management practices don’t
apply in DeFi….
We need to think differently…
Some Key Points About Building Quant DeFi Yield-
Generating Strategies
Intrinsic
Protocol Risk
Exogenous
Protocol Risks
Other Risk
Factors
• Liquidations
• Imbalances
• …
• Hacks
• Forks
• …
• Asset manipulations
• Centralized control
• ….
Summary
● DeFi offers a new playground for quant yield generating strategies
● Building institutional-grade DeFi yield generating strategies require infrastructure
● Risk management should be a key building block of institutional-grade DeFi yield
generating strategies
Thank You!
Jesus Rodriguez
jr@intotheblock.io
medium.com/@jrodthoughts
intotheblock.com

DeFi Quant Yield-Generating Strategies