I have to wonder who is really putting him up to this and for what purpose
Yang is literally a rich (but not that rich) dude in his mid-40s who has an interest in various forms of charities/public service/giving/etc. and he entered the campaign way ahead like most "unintentional" candidates simply to get air time to discuss some of his ideas. He then became a meme candidate and that led to what appears to be at least at some level actual support for him. These type of people enter every Presidential campaign, only they don't get polled (see Yang a year ago before they grudgingly agreed to poll him and Marianne) and eventually lose interest or run out of money. Yang's wound up with donations and support and debate stage invites instead.
But he's not really some kind of front candidate, here he is talking to Obama in 2012 or so at some meeting thing:
I'd say Ron Paul similarly had a thing where you had the meme/true believers/curious people help push him up, that led to him getting donations, money bombs, etc. while the GOP and media initially tried to refuse and poll him. His supporters did the same thing of crashing online polls, etc. I remember somebody like NRO did a poll after a debate where Paul kept winning so they'd keep resetting it and he'd win even more, then they reset it without Paul and the Paulites bumped some other candidate like Duncan Hunter, so they reset it and removed Hunter, so then it was like Tommy Thompson or Sam Brownback, with the editors eventually stopping the poll and publishing a "despite what trolls think, Mitt Romney and Rudy won the debate" snark post.
But I think his hypothetical peak is more like 2008 Paul's than 2012 Paul, let alone Trump. His unorthodox campaign and background is the only thing that differs him from the field really, just like all the candidates are struggling to do. He's also an easier candidate to get access to, especially as the big campaigns continue to wall off their candidates. Yang'll get smashed out of the primaries like everyone else under 15% on Super Tuesday then write some book or whatever.
