Yield-bearing assets: An overview
Yield-bearing assets are tokens which provide additional gains over holding the ordinary, underlying asset (ETH, SOL, etc). This is done by different protocols utilising these assets through staking or pooling to generate yield and redistributing this to token holders. The two main type of yield-bearing tokens are those that rebase and those that don't:
Rebasing: These are assets that experience balance increases that form the reward distribution or accrued interest, i.e number of tokens you hold increases over time. An example of a rebasing token would be Lido's stETH, as the amount of stETH in your Infinex account will increase daily in line with the oracle reports.
Non-rebasing: Also known as value-accruing assets, these are tokens that increase in value in terms of the underlying asset over time as staking rewards accumulate. An example of a non-rebasing token would be Jito's JitoSOL, as the amount of JitoSOL in your infinex account will remain constant while the amount of SOL it can be swapped for increases over time.
Liquid staking tokens (LSTs) and liquid re-staking tokens (LRTs)
Liquid Staking Tokens (LSTs): these are receipt tokens given out as a result of providing your underlying asset to a protocol participating in staking on a proof of stake network. In return you receive network rewards.
Liquid Re-staking Tokens (LRTs): these are receipt tokens given out as a result of providing your staked asset to a protocol which uses it to secure additional blockchain systems. In return you receive network rewards and additional incentives such as Eigen layer and protocol specific points.