Products and vaults

Products package assets, financial primitives, strategy rules, accounting, and controls into a user-facing claim.

underlying assets → strategy operations → product net assets
user deposit      → vault or fund      → user share claim
return payers     → strategy income    → NAV after costs and fees
loss events       → product balance sheet → lower share value

Packaging can simplify a user’s operations without removing the underlying dependencies. A single product claim may still depend on borrowers, traders, validators, oracles, keepers, managers, governance, liquidity, and several smart contracts.

Concepts in this family

• Strategy separates an intended financial outcome from the operations, limits, authorities, return path, and loss path used to pursue it.
• Vault packages asset control, accounting, strategies, fees, limits, and exits in an on-chain container.
• Fund describes the broader pooled investment product and its legal, operational, and technical boundaries.
• Vault share is the user’s pooled share, not the underlying asset itself.
• Net asset value values recognized assets minus recognized liabilities at a stated time and unit.
• Fee identifies who pays, who receives, what base is charged, and how assets or shares settle the cost.
• Yield strategy traces named income sources and every accompanying cost and loss path.
• ERC-4626 standardizes a single-asset tokenized-vault interface without standardizing strategy quality or safety.

A reusable product checklist

For any vault, fund, or tokenized strategy, record:

1. the contributed asset, product-controlled assets, underlying claims, debts, and pending obligations;
2. the strategy operations, integrations, leverage, limits, rebalancing, and emergency exit;
3. the return payer for every income component and the loss absorber for every failure path;
4. the NAV unit, time, prices, recognized assets, liabilities, impairment, and executable-liquidity boundary;
5. the share mint, burn, fee, rounding, dilution, transfer, queue, and redemption rules;
6. the manager, keeper, oracle, governance, guardian, upgrade, custody, and legal authorities; and
7. whether a standard interface, token, or contract actually confers any legal, liquidity, solvency, or security assurance.

Do not compare product APYs until their principal, income sources, incentives, fees, leverage, valuation, liquidity, and maximum loss paths use comparable definitions.