What is APR and vAPR?

These terms are mentioned all over in decentralized finance: APR, APY, vAPR etc.

What do they mean?

In decentralized finance, the term APR means "Annual Percentage Rate" and refers to the interest earned on a deposit made for one year.

How to calculate your returns using the APR value

Let's look at an example: Alice has $1000 deposited in the val3EPS pool and the APR of the pool is 50%, how much money would she have after 1 year?

$1000 * 0.50 = $500

Alice makes a return of $500 for liquidity providing over one year. How much would Alice make per day?

$1000 * 0.50 / 365 = $1.37

These calculations can vary between days or even hours for various reasons discussed below in the next section.

What is vAPR

vAPR refers to Variable Annual Percentage Rate. It is the interest you would earn on your deposits over a year. It is called variable because it changes often, as it depends on the trading activity over the last 24 hours in the pool, the price of the assets you deposit, the price of the assets you are rewarded with, and the current rewards rates.

Risks of liquidity providing

While some of the APRs on Ellipsis and other DEXes can look very enticing, it is important to know the risks of LPing. Smart contract risks aside, a deposit in a pool exposes the liquidity provider to all of the underlying tokens.