# Communal Harvesting and iFARM ### Protocol Earnings
A key innovation of the `$FARM` token is that it indirectly shares with staked holders a portion of performance fees taken from Harvest's yield farming strategies. While each strategy may farm different assets, each strategy has a performance fee that is used to recover operational expenses for the Harvest treasury. A % of Performance fees are used to buy `$FARM` on the open market, which is then distributed to those who stake `$FARM` in the Communal Harvest pool. To participate in the Communal Harvest, users must first obtain FARM by earning incentives by participating in Harvest's yield farming strategies or simply buying FARM directly on the open market. Then FARM must be sent to the auto-compounding Communal Harvest pool. ### Technical Details The Communal Harvest pool is a modified SNX style staking pool. Once `$FARM` is purchased on the open market it is distributed pro rata to all those staked in the Communal Harvest pool over a duration of 1 day, with each new reward added resetting the duration of the payout. As a result, the instantaneous reward rate for the pool fluctuates over the course of the day. For this reason, a 7-day average of the reward rate is displayed for this pool. The instantaneous rate can always be checked by reading the smart contract directly. ### iFARM iFARM is a receipt token for FARM that is auto-compounding in the Communal Harvest pool. It can be obtained by staking FARM in the iFARM pool on Ethereum mainnet or Arbitrum network, or purchased on the open market. iFARM utilizes the same [vault architecture](/how-it-works/harvest-contracts/vaults.md) as Harvest's other vaults, collecting FARM from users and then putting it in aggregate into the Communal Harvest pool. The advantages of iFARM over FARM include: * Lower gas costs to put FARM into the Communal Harvest pool. * A fungible and transferrable receipt token, allowing compounded allocations to be transferred between addresses without first unstaking the underlying FARM. * Composability of the iFARM token allows compounding allocations to be utilized in external opportunities, such as providing liquidity for iFARM on Matic, or futurization of yield at Spectra.Finance.
### Trading iFARM is available for trading on decentralized exchanges: **Decentralized Exchanges** [ARB - Camelot](https://app.camelot.exchange/), [POLYGON - Quickswap](https://quickswap.exchange/#/swap?swapIndex=0\¤cy0=ETH\¤cy1=0xab0b2ddB9C7e440fAc8E140A89c0dbCBf2d7Bbff), [POLYGON - Uniswap](https://app.uniswap.org/swap?inputCurrency=ETH\&outputCurrency=0xab0b2ddb9c7e440fac8e140a89c0dbcbf2d7bbff\&chain=polygon), [BASE - Uniswap](https://app.uniswap.org/swap?inputCurrency=ETH\&outputCurrency=0xe7798f023fc62146e8aa1b36da45fb70855a77ea\&chain=base) --- # Agent Instructions: Querying This Documentation If you need additional information that is not directly available in this page, you can query the documentation dynamically by asking a question. Perform an HTTP GET request on the current page URL with the `ask` query parameter: ``` GET https://docs.harvest.finance/general-info/what-do-we-do/profit-sharing-pool-ps.md?ask= ``` The question should be specific, self-contained, and written in natural language. The response will contain a direct answer to the question and relevant excerpts and sources from the documentation. Use this mechanism when the answer is not explicitly present in the current page, you need clarification or additional context, or you want to retrieve related documentation sections.