What is YaySwap (YAY)?

Decentralized finance (DeFi) was one of the hottest trends in the cryptocurrency space in 2020 and 2021. Unfortunately, DeFi cooled down around 2022 when the cryptocurrency market took a downturn and has not made much of a recovery since. 

This article will focus on a DeFi project called YaySwap (YAY) and what happened to it.

What is/was YaySwap (YAY)?

YaySwap (YAY) is/was a decentralized exchange on the Cardano blockchain. We say is/was because the hosting for the YaySwap website has been suspended, so it’s impossible to access YaySwap on the internet. It’s still possible to access it directly by its smart contract, but that requires a level of expertise that the vast majority of DeFi users do not possess.

You can probably already tell the direction of this article based on this. 

Anyway, from what we can gather online (the website is offline), YaySwap offered a cross-chain bridge right around the time that Cardano launched smart contracts. They were basically riding the hype train that Cardano was around the time that smart contracts launched.

The thing is there were a lot of cross-chain bridges at this time and most of them turned out to be scams. 

Is YaySwap (YAY) a Scam?

Yes, YaySwap is a scam. It’s not even an active project anymore, so it’s more accurate to say that YaySwap was a scam on the Cardano blockchain. There’s plenty of evidence to support this:

• The last tweet from the official YaySwap twitter account was a retweet on January 8, 2022. 
• The website is currently offline due to the hosting account getting suspended. 
• There have been literally no updates from the team in almost a year. 
• The price chart looks like this:

Another big hint that this project was a scam is that the airdrop for the token was a complete disaster. It took three months before anyone received a token. 

That’s a big red flag and indicates either a scam or an incompetent development team – both of which are signs that you should avoid the project. 

Is YaySwap (YAY) a Good Investment?

No, YaySwap (YAY) is a terrible investment. The token is basically worthless and has a 24 hour trading volume of less than $100 with a website that does not even work. 

This is a dead project and not worthy of an investment. 

Spotting Dud Projects Like YaySwap

YaySwap turned out to be a dud project. It’s usually easy enough to spot projects like this, but sometimes a project that looks promising ends up being a dud. Here are some warning signs to look for in a project:

• Anonymous founders.
• The project fails to deliver on early promises (ie. failing to deliver on the airdrop in a timely manner). 
• If the project can’t deliver on early, easy promises, then they probably can’t deliver on the big promises. 
• Lots of FUD surrounding the project.
• Where there’s smoke, there’s fire.
• A project with ambitious goals and no clear path to achieve those goals. 

Those are just some of the major warning signs. Of course, there are other smaller warning signs out there. 

I Lost Money With YaySwap, Can I Get It Back?

No, that money is gone forever. The founders are anonymous, so you cannot even sue them for their incompetence with the project. 

You just have to chalk stuff like getting scammed on the blockchain as a loss. It’s extremely rare, basically unheard of, for victims of scam projects to get their money back. 

Final Thoughts

That covers it for everything you need to know about YaySwap (YAY). It’s a failed project that likely had no intention of actually fulfilling any of the promises they made to lure investors into the project. 

You definitely do not want to invest into this project. Anyone saying that this project is a good investment has a very bad understanding of cryptocurrency markets and is likely trying to scam you.