Coined by Bankless in 2020, the “DeFi Mullet” concept is increasingly becoming a standard business model in crypto. The idea is simple, yet profound.

Give users a clean, familiar fintech experience on the front end, while blockchain-powered primitives and DeFi protocols power everything behind the scenes.

The average user doesn’t need to bother (or even care) about liquidity pools or how smart contracts work. They just need an app or website that works and a few buttons they can click. The ‘infrastructure’ must handle the rest, invisibly.

All that sounds great and is indeed much-needed. But there’s a catch (as well as a solution).

Look at what happened over the past twelve months or so. Coinbase routed over a billion dollars in loans through Morpho, a decentralized lending protocol most of its users haven’t heard of and likely never will. Société Générale, a ‘Global Systematically Important Bank’ (G-SIB), also started using Morpho for institutional lending.

PayPal integrated with Spark Protocol. MetaMask plugged into Li.Fi’s cross-chain infrastructure to abstract away the chaos of 40+ chains, 30+ DEXs, and 18+ bridges.

These are only a few examples, but the pattern is unmistakable. Some of the biggest players in global finance are no longer fighting DeFi. They’re wearing it under the suit instead. And besides other factors, that’s the DeFi Mullet in action.

The fact remains, however, that most existing DeFi Mullet implementations solve for access. They make it easier to lend, borrow, or swap through pretty interfaces. Which is undoubtedly very important, especially considering how UX has been a key obstacle to DeFi’s mass adoption.

But they don’t solve for yield sustainability.

For instance, the lending protocols underlying such integrations still rely on the same mechanics that are subject to chronic compression:

• emission-based rewards that decay,

• liquidity pools that expose users to impermanent loss,

• strategies and frameworks that only work during bull markets.

So, while the front end got a makeover, the back end is still running the same, tired playbook.

That’s a question we asked while building Seasons. Let’s call it the Yield Mullet.

Simple in the front: Hold 10,000+ $SEAS. That’s it. No staking, lock-ups, pool management, rebalancing, or any additional hassle. No claiming even.

Sustainable in the back: The reflexive, Volume x Velocity mechanism captures a 10% fee from every transaction—buys and sells alike—and distributes a portion of it as yield, in the form of diversified alternative assets to nodes (i.e., wallets with 10K+ $SEAS).

In one fell swoop, this system eliminates the five persistent pain points facing global yield seekers: chronic compression from capital dilution, emission decay and ‘death spirals’, forced complexities, impermanent loss, and security risks.

And since its launch in December 2025, Seasons’ end-to-end tokenized mechanism has already distributed $77,122+ in total yield to 276 nodes. All while the rest of crypto bled, suffering some of its worst coordinated, market-wide drawdowns since 2022.

By growing steadily through chaos, Seasons has proven that the Yield Mullet works. Mainly because the yield doesn’t depend on which way the markets move. All that matters is that they move. Up or down, buy or sell, volume is volume. Bull or bear, we don’t care.

Moreover, the $77K+ distributed as yield so far represents real value, generated by real economic activity and transaction fees, not self-defeating inflationary models or mere speculation. And it reached real wallets, without a single user needing to juggle multiple assets or positions across chains and protocols, lock up tokens, claim rewards, or monitor complex strategies.

Hold. Receive. Repeat. That’s the whole user experience.

This mechanism - the Yield Mullet - doesn’t need market euphoria to function. It doesn’t even need new narrative cycles or token pumps. It only needs movement. And in crypto, there’s always movement.

The DeFi Mullet thesis proved a critical point: users don’t need to understand the infrastructure to benefit from it. That unlocked billions in institutional capital while making crypto rails invisible and more accessible to existing and potential users.

But simplifying the interface is only half the job. Making the underlying value-generating mechanisms and yield flows sustainable is the other half. It requires frameworks that don’t rely entirely on inflation or speculation, but instead on genuine economic activity. Ones that can work and thrive in any market condition, regardless of direction or short-term price action.

Fintech in the front. DeFi in the back. That was last season.

Simplicity in the front. Sustainability in the back. That’s 2026, the year of Yield 3.0.

And we’re already here. Wield the Yield Mullet. $SEAS the yield.

Join us in transforming global yields with Yield 3.0.

General Resources: 🌐 Website | ✳️ LinkTree | ⚫ Beacons | 📃 Docs

Connect with the Seasons community: X (Twitter) | Telegram | Youtube | LinkedIn | Substack | Medium | Paragraph

Originally published: https://medium.com/seasons-blog/the-yield-mullet-cbb082730827

Coined by Bankless in 2020, the “DeFi Mullet” concept is increasingly becoming a standard business model in crypto. The idea is simple, yet profound.

Give users a clean, familiar fintech experience on the front end, while blockchain-powered primitives and DeFi protocols power everything behind the scenes.

The average user doesn’t need to bother (or even care) about liquidity pools or how smart contracts work. They just need an app or website that works and a few buttons they can click. The ‘infrastructure’ must handle the rest, invisibly.

All that sounds great and is indeed much-needed. But there’s a catch (as well as a solution).

Look at what happened over the past twelve months or so. Coinbase routed over a billion dollars in loans through Morpho, a decentralized lending protocol most of its users haven’t heard of and likely never will. Société Générale, a ‘Global Systematically Important Bank’ (G-SIB), also started using Morpho for institutional lending.

PayPal integrated with Spark Protocol. MetaMask plugged into Li.Fi’s cross-chain infrastructure to abstract away the chaos of 40+ chains, 30+ DEXs, and 18+ bridges.

These are only a few examples, but the pattern is unmistakable. Some of the biggest players in global finance are no longer fighting DeFi. They’re wearing it under the suit instead. And besides other factors, that’s the DeFi Mullet in action.

The fact remains, however, that most existing DeFi Mullet implementations solve for access. They make it easier to lend, borrow, or swap through pretty interfaces. Which is undoubtedly very important, especially considering how UX has been a key obstacle to DeFi’s mass adoption.

But they don’t solve for yield sustainability.

For instance, the lending protocols underlying such integrations still rely on the same mechanics that are subject to chronic compression:

• emission-based rewards that decay,

• liquidity pools that expose users to impermanent loss,

• strategies and frameworks that only work during bull markets.

So, while the front end got a makeover, the back end is still running the same, tired playbook.

That’s a question we asked while building Seasons. Let’s call it the Yield Mullet.

Simple in the front: Hold 10,000+ $SEAS. That’s it. No staking, lock-ups, pool management, rebalancing, or any additional hassle. No claiming even.

Sustainable in the back: The reflexive, Volume x Velocity mechanism captures a 10% fee from every transaction—buys and sells alike—and distributes a portion of it as yield, in the form of diversified alternative assets to nodes (i.e., wallets with 10K+ $SEAS).

In one fell swoop, this system eliminates the five persistent pain points facing global yield seekers: chronic compression from capital dilution, emission decay and ‘death spirals’, forced complexities, impermanent loss, and security risks.

And since its launch in December 2025, Seasons’ end-to-end tokenized mechanism has already distributed $77,122+ in total yield to 276 nodes. All while the rest of crypto bled, suffering some of its worst coordinated, market-wide drawdowns since 2022.

By growing steadily through chaos, Seasons has proven that the Yield Mullet works. Mainly because the yield doesn’t depend on which way the markets move. All that matters is that they move. Up or down, buy or sell, volume is volume. Bull or bear, we don’t care.

Moreover, the $77K+ distributed as yield so far represents real value, generated by real economic activity and transaction fees, not self-defeating inflationary models or mere speculation. And it reached real wallets, without a single user needing to juggle multiple assets or positions across chains and protocols, lock up tokens, claim rewards, or monitor complex strategies.

Hold. Receive. Repeat. That’s the whole user experience.

This mechanism - the Yield Mullet - doesn’t need market euphoria to function. It doesn’t even need new narrative cycles or token pumps. It only needs movement. And in crypto, there’s always movement.

The DeFi Mullet thesis proved a critical point: users don’t need to understand the infrastructure to benefit from it. That unlocked billions in institutional capital while making crypto rails invisible and more accessible to existing and potential users.

But simplifying the interface is only half the job. Making the underlying value-generating mechanisms and yield flows sustainable is the other half. It requires frameworks that don’t rely entirely on inflation or speculation, but instead on genuine economic activity. Ones that can work and thrive in any market condition, regardless of direction or short-term price action.

Fintech in the front. DeFi in the back. That was last season.

Simplicity in the front. Sustainability in the back. That’s 2026, the year of Yield 3.0.

And we’re already here. Wield the Yield Mullet. $SEAS the yield.

Join us in transforming global yields with Yield 3.0.

General Resources: 🌐 Website | ✳️ LinkTree | ⚫ Beacons | 📃 Docs

Connect with the Seasons community: X (Twitter) | Telegram | Youtube | LinkedIn | Substack | Medium | Paragraph

Originally published: https://medium.com/seasons-blog/the-yield-mullet-cbb082730827