In DeFi, yield feels immediate. A percentage appears on a dashboard, updates constantly, and gives the impression of clarity. You deposit assets, watch APY accumulate, and assume you’re observing a stable income stream. But what looks like clarity is often compression—complex systems reduced into a single number.Yield as a Compressed RepresentationAPY is not a mechanism. It is a simplified output of many interacting forces. Liquidity conditions, trading demand, incentive programs, volatility,...