Yam is an experimental protocol building upon the most exciting innovations in programmable money and governance. Built by a team of DeFi natives, it seeks to create: • 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 • a fair distribution mechanism that incentivizes key community members to actively take the reins of governance At its core, YAM is an elastic supply cryptocurrency, which expands and contracts its supply in response to market conditions, initially targeting 1 USD per YAM. This stability mechanism includes one key addition to existing elastic supply models such as Ampleforth: a portion of each supply expansion is used to buy yCurve (a high-yield USD-denominated stablecoin) and add it to the Yam treasury, which is controlled via Yam community governance. We have built Yam to be a minimally viable monetary experiment, and at launch there will be zero value in the YAM token. After deployment, it is entirely dependent upon YAM holders to determine its value and future development. We have employed a fork of the Compound governance module, which will ensure all updates to the Yam protocol happen entirely on-chain through community voting.