Big pools don't pay less because they are safer. They pay less because they are big. Every new dollar lowers the share that is lent out, and the rate falls with it. The lower number is the cost of size, not a safety rating.

Weekend term: borrow rate. What borrowers pay. Your supply rate is cut from it. Borrowers pay 6%. 80% of the pool is lent out. The protocol keeps 10%. You earn about 4.3%. Every supply rate on a board is a borrow rate with those two cuts taken.

Weekend term: APR vs APY. APR is the plain yearly rate. APY adds compounding. 10% APR compounded daily is 10.52% APY. At 4%, the gap is 8 basis points. When two screens disagree by a sliver, check which one each is quoting.

Compound V3, Ethereum, USDC on this board this week: 4.09%, up 61 basis points since late September. xitter.cf/Compound_xyz/status/21…

Compound V3, Ethereum, USDC. 20 August: 4.96%. 25 September: 3.48%. This week: 4.09%. Five weeks down 148 basis points, then four weeks back up 61. Nobody announced either move. Borrowers left, then came back.

On Wednesday, one Aave V3 USDC pool on Ethereum paid 11.23% on $25.6M. Today: 3.78% on $152.1M. About $126M has arrived since, and the rate fell 745 basis points. A rate that far above its own average does not wait for you.

Every field on a rate board, and what each one hides. Headline APY: two numbers, glued. Base: what borrowers pay. Rewards: a token, not cash. 30-day mean: is today normal. Utilisation: your rate and your exit. Depth: can size leave. Tier: should you be there. Save this.

Term: rewards. The part of a rate paid in a protocol's own token rather than by borrowers. It is quoted in percent. It is paid in a token with a price. If the token falls 30%, so does that part of your yield, whatever the headline said.

A stablecoin is built to hold its price. The yield on it is not built to hold anything. Treat the dollar as the stable part and the rate as the part that moves every hour. Most screens present it the other way round.

An APY assumes the rate holds for a full year. Nothing on this board has held still for a month. Read every APY as what you would earn if today repeated 365 times. Then check how many days in a row it has actually repeated.

No bank quotes a savings rate without its name, the account and the terms next to it. Most yield screens quote a percentage and a logo. The pool size, the chain and who is actually paying you are left for you to find. That is the part that decides whether the number is real.

Two ways to earn more on the same stablecoin. A: +50 basis points, same tier. B: same rate, one tier safer. Most people take A without noticing B was on offer. Which would you move for, and at what size does your answer flip?

The rates on this board refresh roughly every hour. Most people check theirs once a quarter, usually when something has already gone wrong. The rate you chose was true the day you chose it. Nobody promised you it would stay.

Weekend term: utilisation. The share of a pool that is lent out right now. It sets your rate. It also sets your exit. At 90%, only a tenth of the pool can leave today, and that includes you.

Your stablecoin yield is not a savings rate. It is what other people pay to borrow. When traders want leverage, it climbs. When they don't, it falls. Every lending rate is a live reading of somebody else's appetite for risk.

Weekend term: basis point. One basis point is 0.01%. On $100,000 it is $10 a year. The gap between the top of this board and the average stablecoin dollar on it this week: 343 basis points. On $100,000, that is $3,430 a year.

The week on the board, 21 to 26 September. Top rate: 7.11%, on a $262K pool. Average stablecoin dollar: 3.68%. Routes you can actually execute: 15 of 41. Biggest slide: Compound V3, Ethereum, USDC, 130 basis points under its 30-day mean.

Compound V3, Ethereum, USDC. 20 August: 4.96%. 16 September: 4.07%. This morning: 3.48%. 148 basis points in five weeks. No announcement, no vote, no incident. Utilisation moved and the rate followed it.

Top of this board right now: 7.11%. What the average stablecoin dollar on it actually earns: 3.68%. The first number sits on a $262K pool. The second is weighted across $1.69B. Almost every yield headline you see is the first kind of number.

40 markets here, across Aave, Compound, Morpho and Spark. Every row shows base against rewards, its 30-day mean, its gas cost and a tier. Not the biggest number. The number with its working shown.