Yield Observatory · Field guide
What the hell is going on on this desk
A plain-English tour of the Yield Observatory — the live transparency dashboard on yieldagents.io. Every number maps to a real DefiLlama field. Nothing here is a trade, a rating, or a promise.
12 communications specialists locked this structure · 6 branded infographics
How the communications panel decided to explain this
Twelve specialists (retail educator, compliance, brand, data journalist, onboarding, mobile UX, risk framing, visual systems, glossary, FAQs, scannability, and an adversarial “confused first-timer”) argued until one rule won: teach the risk-free lens first, then walk the desk top-to-bottom.
Lead with one idea per section. Never dump the board before the yardstick exists.
Say informational, not advice early and often. Name the source. Label every computed number.
Spread over the risk-free line is the story. APY alone is noise without a baseline.
If I can’t answer “what am I looking at?” in ten seconds, the page failed. Desk map + glossary win.
Match the control-room palette. Infographics with few exact labels, no fake percentages baked into art.
Scannable TOC, short leads, cards for breadth. Deep math lives in “under the hood,” not the hero.
01What it is
A live Situation Desk for on-chain dollar yields — not a trading terminal.
The Yield Observatory is the public window into the same universe YieldAgents’ robots can see. It pulls live stablecoin and real-world-asset (RWA) pools from DefiLlama, filters them for size and sanity, and lays them out like a professional desk: hero stats, agent watchlist, dense board, steadiness charts, peg strip, TVL context, and a capital log.
It is not a place to place trades, not a bank, and not a recommendation engine. Every figure is either a named DefiLlama field or a clearly labeled COMPUTED helper. When a pool is missing, we leave a hole — no ghost cards, no invented APYs.
02The risk-free lens
Every yield is priced as a spread over an on-chain T-bill line.
The desk’s yardstick is the on-chain risk-free line: a TVL-weighted blend of tokenized U.S. Treasury / money-market assets that live on-chain (things like BUIDL, OUSG, USDY when they have a qualifying pool this fetch). It is not the Fed funds rate and not a bank savings rate.
Positive spread means the pool currently pays more than those T-bill-like anchors. Negative means it pays less. A huge top spread is a signal to inspect — especially if the board tags the row FARM (reward incentives can vanish overnight).
03What the agents harvest
Five robots. Eight canonical assets. The watchlist is their live pinboard.
YieldAgents runs five agent personalities (T1–T5) that put idle dollars to work across on-chain dollar yield. The Observatory’s Agent Watchlist pins the exact assets those robots harvest — one tile per matched asset, deduped to the deepest-TVL pool when the same asset exists on many chains.
OUSG · USDY · BUIDL
Tokenized Treasuries / money-market style RWA anchors. Often define the risk-free blend.
sUSDS
Protocol savings / staked-dollar rates that accrue while you hold.
Aave · Moonwell · Morpho
Supplying stables to over-collateralized lending markets (USDC variants).
Liquidity · Custom
Fee / incentive pools and blended strategies appear in the wider board categories.
The hero counter AGENT-TRACKED N/8 means “how many of those eight have a qualifying live pool this fetch,” not how many robots are online. Missing assets stay missing until DefiLlama has a real pool — then they light up automatically.
04The live yield board
The full filtered universe — sortable, filterable, honest about farms.
Below the watchlist sits the dense Yield Board: every stablecoin pool that cleared the filters (stablecoin flag, TVL ≥ $10M, APY in a sane band). Default sort is spread over risk-free, so the ranking itself teaches the desk’s lens.
APY
DefiLlama’s live apy field — may blend base protocol yield and temporary rewards.
Spread
APY minus the risk-free line. Green = above the T-bill-like anchors; red = below.
Δ 7d
Seven-day change in the rate — whether it’s climbing or fading, not your holding return.
TVL
Dollars locked in the pool. Depth is context: a high APY on tiny TVL is a different animal.
Steadiness
Our computed 0–98 score (see §05). N/A when volatility history is missing.
FARM tag
Reward APY ≥ base APY. Incentive-heavy. Treat as temporary until proven otherwise.
Tap any row (or watchlist tile) to open the drill-down drawer: real chart history, base/reward split, raw steadiness inputs, and DefiLlama’s own outlook labeled “their model, not ours.”
05Steadiness — computed, not a safety rating
A calm rate you can keep often beats a spiky rate that looked higher for a day.
Steadiness is the only major number we compute ourselves. It blends lower 30-day yield volatility, deeper TVL, and longer observed history. Weights renormalize when an input is missing — we never invent a volatility or a mean. The score is capped below 100.
The Steadiness Lens scatter plots the whole universe (x = steadiness, y = APY, bubble = TVL). The glowing horizontal line is the risk-free rate. Upper-right (steady and still paid) is a visual “sweet spot” — not a buy list. Steady vs Jumpy pairs the calmest and spikiest live extremes with real ~90-day charts so you can see the difference, not just read about it.
06Where the data comes from
Public DefiLlama feeds. No private oracle. No key. No smoothing.
The desk auto-refreshes about once a minute. On failure it freezes the last-good snapshot and marks the state stale — it does not wipe numbers to zero or invent replacements. Peg stability prices come from DefiLlama’s stablecoin feed so we never assume every “dollar” is exactly $1.
07Desk map — every container
A guided map of the live page. On the desk itself, every panel also has a ? with the same depth of explanation.
Situation Desk
Risk-free line, top spread, universe size/TVL/median, agent-tracked N/8, live clock.
Agent assets
Pinned harvest assets with APY, spread, 7d change, steadiness band, real sparkline.
Full universe
Sortable/filterable table of every qualifying pool. FARM tags. Tap for drawer.
Steadiness scatter
Universe as bubbles — steadiness × APY × TVL. Risk-free line drawn through.
Steady vs jumpy
Live extremes charted side by side so volatility is visible, not abstract.
Dollar stability
Large stablecoins’ price vs $1.00 in basis points. Alert past ~50 bps off peg.
Where capital sits
Donut by category (RWA / Savings / Lending / Liquidity / Other) + bars by chain.
Capital movers
Ten pools with the largest absolute 7-day APY moves — shocks and fading farms.
Pool drill-down
History, base/reward, steadiness inputs, DefiLlama outlook — full honesty stack.
Provenance
Endpoints, sync time, counts, risk-free symbols, re-sync control. Legal posture.
08Under the hood
Boring technology on purpose. Transparency over cleverness.
| Part | What it is | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Surface | Next.js route /observatory inside yieldagents.io | Same brand, fonts, and nav as the product — not an orphan microsite. |
| Data | DefiLlama pools + chart + stablecoins APIs (browser-side, no backend proxy) | Public, key-less, CORS-open. Anyone can verify the same feed. |
| Risk-free blend | TVL-weighted APY of RWA anchor pools present this fetch | Yardstick moves with the market; never a hardcoded “3%.” |
| Steadiness | Renormalized weights on σ, mean, history length, TVL · capped < 100 | Comparison aid only; missing inputs → N/A, not fake confidence. |
| Help system | ? on every container → viewport-aware popover | Explain in place so the desk stays usable without this essay open. |
| Refresh | ~60s poll · last-good freeze on error · isolated 1s clock | Honest freshness without thrashing the whole React tree. |
09Honest limits
What this page is not. Read this before trusting a headline number.
| Claim | The truth | |
|---|---|---|
| ✅ | Live public data | Pools, charts, and peg prices come from DefiLlama fields we name in the provenance footer. |
| ✅ | Agent-tracked honesty | Only assets with a real matching pool render. OUSG / Moonwell stay dark until they qualify. |
| ✅ | Computed labels | Steadiness and “steady vs jumpy” verdicts are labeled COMPUTED with raw inputs shown. |
| ❌ | Investment advice | Nothing on the desk is a recommendation to buy, sell, or allocate. Informational only. |
| ❌ | Guaranteed yield | APYs are point-in-time. Farms end. Pegs slip. Protocols fail. Capital is at risk. |
| ❌ | Safety rating | STEADY / FIRM / CHOPPY / FRAGILE are volatility-style bands, not audits or insurance. |
| ❌ | Complete coverage | Filters exclude tiny / insane pools. Some real assets simply aren’t on DefiLlama yet. |
Ready to read the desk?
Open the live Observatory with this map in your head — or tap any ? on the page for the same explanations in context.