# Yield Generation

**Automated Yield Farming**

While the Cambrian explosion of new lending and automated market maker pools has fueled total value locked (TVL), it has also made it increasingly challenging for yield farmers to manually allocate capital inefficient and optimal ways.

[Yearn](https://yearn.finance/) has demonstrated that smart contracts can automate the rebalancing of funds across various strategies to optimally earn lending interest, market-making fees, and rewards tokens. Over time, new strategies will be deployed that maximize returns while minimizing risk and dependencies.

nYUSD uses the following high-level strategies for generating yield:

{% content-ref url="yield-generation/lending" %}
[lending](yield-generation/lending)
{% endcontent-ref %}

{% content-ref url="yield-generation/market-making" %}
[market-making](yield-generation/market-making)
{% endcontent-ref %}

{% content-ref url="yield-generation" %}
[yield-generation](yield-generation)
{% endcontent-ref %}

{% content-ref url="yield-generation/nepriv-risk-tokenized-protocol" %}
[nepriv-risk-tokenized-protocol](yield-generation/nepriv-risk-tokenized-protocol)
{% endcontent-ref %}



nYUSD is able to generate higher yields than competing protocols due to a combination of important design decisions that amplify the rewards that are returned to nYUSD holders:

* Exit fees are returned to the pool, rewarding long term holders&#x20;
* Price oracles favor the collective over the individual, again rewarding long term holders&#x20;
* Smart contracts must manually opt-in to earn yield. This allows the protocol to put more capital to work than would be otherwise possible.
* Smart strategies balance risk and reward more effectively than deploying capital in any single underlying strategy.
