It’s been a tough past few days for the crypto market. Bitcoin and Ethereum are both down by approximately 5% in the past 24 hours, plunging as gold and the U.S. equities market drop in a fashion not seen in many weeks. There are some cryptocurrencies that are holding strong, though. One of these is the Ethereum-based Compound (COMP) coin, the native governance token for Compound. COMP is up 7% in the past 24 hours, rallying to $190 and as high as $210 on decentralized exchanges.

Chart of COMP's price action against USDC on Uniswap. Chart from 

Here’s why the DeFi-centric token is up while major cryptocurrencies drop.

Here’s Why Ethereum’s Compound Is Up Today

The key factor behind Compound’s growth over the past 24 hours is the launch of a new DeFi cryptocurrency called YAM for the Yam protocol. Yam is an experimental Ethereum-based DeFi protocol that is attempting to meld the concepts of “yield farming,” governance, and price elasticity. As the blog post announcing the launch of the project reads:

“Yam is an experimental protocol mashing up some of the most exciting innovations in programmable money and governance. Built by a team of DeFi natives, it features: an elastic supply to seek eventual price stability, a governable treasury to further support stability, fully on-chain governance to enable decentralized control and evolution from Day 1, and a fair distribution mechanism that incentivizes key community members to actively take the reins of governance.”

YAM is a pseudo-stablecoin that has an elastic supply that can increase and decrease depending on market conditions to try and achieve a market value of $1. The only way YAM can currently be purchased is to, 1) buy it through Uniswap pools or decentralized exchanges, or 2) deposit eight Ethereum-based crypto assets into the Yam protocol. These eight assets are COMP, LEND, LINK, MKR, SNX, WETH, YFI, and ETH/APML Uniswap v2 LP tokens. As Compound is a coin supported to “farm” the cryptocurrency, demand for the asset has picked up, hence the ongoing price increase. The other seven cryptocurrencies being used to generate YAM are also up over recent hours, responding to a spike in demand.

Does COMP Have Value in the Long Run?

While COMP is up to $190~200, some don’t think that the asset has value in the long run. One trader commented that weighing the fundamentals of the protocol, the Ethereum-based asset should only be worth around $50:

“I’m short on $COMP, the fundamentals of the ‘governance’, given the public information, don’t make too much sense today… IMHO, the fair value of the token, (assuming similar long term profitability as other crypto AUM businesses) should be at around $50 today.”

This may change, though, as Yam has outsized effects on the DeFi industry.

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Price tags: ethusd, ethbtc
Charts from TradingView.com
Here's Why Compound (COMP) Is Up 7% While Ethereum Is Plunging