
Trent Elmore: YAM Finance 🍠 – The Rise, Fall, and Rise Again of the OG Foodcoin
01/19/21 • 70 min
During the DeFi Summer of 2020, YAM Finance launched with a bang, and had its share of ups and downs within its first couple of days. It started out as an experiment to bring together some of the more innovative ideas in the space. It sparked a movement which brought massive attention to yield farming, and started the food token craze. After a bug was discovered in the v1 contract, many thought the project was dead. But no, the team and community have been working diligently to bring the protocol back to life and it's now a community-run DAO innovating at the intersection of decentralized governance and programmable finance.
Trent Elmore is one of the creators of YAM. He joins us to talk about the incredibly swift birth of the project, the rebase mechanism, the treasury, the infamous bug and how they saved the project. He also shares some of the new upcoming products on the YAM Roadmap, and how a truly decentralized community is rebuilding its brand.
Topics covered in this episode:
- Trent's background and how he got into crypto and DeFi
- How YAM and food tokens were born
- The team behind YAM
- What was the vision of the project at the beginning?
- The proposed utility of the protocol
- How the treasury funding works in the context of the rebasing mechanism
- The Game Theory for YAM holders
- How they built their communities and choose tokens
- YAM's connection between their governance and Snapshot
- The infamous bug in V1 and how they recovered from it
- What plans do they have for the treasury and products going forward, including the recent UMA collaboration
Episode links:
Sponsors:
- 1inch: Discover the best rates and most efficient swapping routes across leading DEXes. Optimize on gas cost and execute DeFi trades faster with 1inch V2 - https://epicenter.rocks/1inch
This episode is hosted by Sunny Aggarwal & Friederike Ernst. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/375
During the DeFi Summer of 2020, YAM Finance launched with a bang, and had its share of ups and downs within its first couple of days. It started out as an experiment to bring together some of the more innovative ideas in the space. It sparked a movement which brought massive attention to yield farming, and started the food token craze. After a bug was discovered in the v1 contract, many thought the project was dead. But no, the team and community have been working diligently to bring the protocol back to life and it's now a community-run DAO innovating at the intersection of decentralized governance and programmable finance.
Trent Elmore is one of the creators of YAM. He joins us to talk about the incredibly swift birth of the project, the rebase mechanism, the treasury, the infamous bug and how they saved the project. He also shares some of the new upcoming products on the YAM Roadmap, and how a truly decentralized community is rebuilding its brand.
Topics covered in this episode:
- Trent's background and how he got into crypto and DeFi
- How YAM and food tokens were born
- The team behind YAM
- What was the vision of the project at the beginning?
- The proposed utility of the protocol
- How the treasury funding works in the context of the rebasing mechanism
- The Game Theory for YAM holders
- How they built their communities and choose tokens
- YAM's connection between their governance and Snapshot
- The infamous bug in V1 and how they recovered from it
- What plans do they have for the treasury and products going forward, including the recent UMA collaboration
Episode links:
Sponsors:
- 1inch: Discover the best rates and most efficient swapping routes across leading DEXes. Optimize on gas cost and execute DeFi trades faster with 1inch V2 - https://epicenter.rocks/1inch
This episode is hosted by Sunny Aggarwal & Friederike Ernst. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/375
Previous Episode

The Great Epicenter Host Extravaganza 2021
The new year has brought with it a new bull run. This is great news for crypto holders, but at what cost? Will this bring with it a number of negative implications such as regulatory push back and privacy battles? Listen as the five hosts of Epicenter come together for an in-depth chat to share their predictions for the crypto space in 2021.
Topics covered in this episode:
- Each of our hosts share how 2020 went for them
- In-depth individual predictions on where things are headed with the current bull market
- Public backlash to the crypto system
- Regulatory and tax related implications to crypto
- The battleground of privacy
- US regulatory pressure and the effect on the US Dollar
Episode links:
- Omen Prediction Market - Will The Flippening happen in 2021?
- Brian on Twitter
- Friederike on Twitter
- Meher on Twitter
- Sebastien on Twitter
- Sunny on Twitter
Sponsors:
- 1inch: Discover the best rates and most efficient swapping routes across leading DEXes. Optimize on gas cost and execute DeFi trades faster with 1inch V2 - https://epicenter.rocks/1inch
This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture, Brian Fabian Crain, Meher Roy, Sunny Aggarwal & Friederike Ernst. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/374
Next Episode

Aaron Wright: The LAO – DAOs From a Legal Perspective
Aaron Wright is a professor at Cardozo Law School and Co-founder of OpenLaw. Before this he was a successful entrepreneur, having sold his first company to Wikia - the for-profit version of Wikipedia. Today Aaron is a renowned thought-leader in the blockchain space at the forefront of DAOs. Last year OpenLaw launched The LAO, a DAO on Ethereum for investors looking to earn returns on Ethereum-based projects.
Aaron joins us to share his expert legal knowledge on all things DAO, and discuss his latest projects the LAO and Flamingo DAO.
Topics covered in this episode:
- Aaron's background and how he got into blockchain and the DAO space
- The early vision for DAOs
- Stakeholder participation in DAOs
- Wrapped and unwrapped DAOs
- Proxy voting on DAOs
- Governance mechanisms
- The multi-token model
- How DAOs are characterized under law and the legislation surrounding them
- The Wyoming Blockchain Bill
- The different categories of DAOs
- Where does Aaron see the DAO ecosystem headed in the future
Episode links:
- OpenLaw website
- The LAO
- Mike Hearn: Autonomous agents, self driving cars and Bitcoin
- Aaron's book - Blockchain and the Law: The Rule of Code
- OpenLaw on Twitter
- The LAO on Twitter
- Aaron on Twitter
Sponsors:
- 1inch: Discover the best rates and most efficient swapping routes across leading DEXes. Optimize on gas cost and execute DeFi trades faster with 1inch V2 - https://epicenter.rocks/1inch
This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture & Friederike Ernst. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/376
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