When you put money into a savings product and it earns more than a bank account, a reasonable question is: who's paying?
With a traditional bank, the answer is vague — the bank lends to businesses, other banks, mortgage holders, car loans, whoever. You never see the details. You just get your 1–2%.
Vault is different. Here's who's actually on the other side of your earnings.
The borrowers: institutions, not individuals
Vault deploys into lending markets where the participants are institutional — funds, market makers, trading firms, and financial institutions that need short-term capital to run their operations.
These are not retail borrowers. They're not people taking out personal loans. They're sophisticated counterparties who borrow capital as part of how they operate: to manage liquidity, to take advantage of short-term market opportunities, to smooth operational cash flow.
Why does that matter? Because institutional borrowers:
- Have more to lose if they default
- Are subject to tighter scrutiny from the market infrastructure around them
- Operate at scale, which means the lending markets monitoring them have real data
Collateral requirements
The markets Vault uses are over-collateralised. That means borrowers must pledge more value in collateral than the amount they're borrowing.
For example: to borrow $100, a borrower might need to lock up $130 in collateral. If they fail to repay or their collateral value drops below required thresholds, the market automatically liquidates the collateral to recover the loan.
This mechanism is what allows variable rates without a fund manager making discretionary credit decisions. The market manages risk through collateral thresholds, not through someone's judgment about whether a borrower is trustworthy.
The market we primarily use
Vault's primary lending market manages over $2 billion in institutional capital. It has been independently audited by security firms who review collateral mechanisms, liquidation logic, and technical infrastructure.
The market isn't controlled by Vault, and that's the point. It's a third-party institutional market with its own governance and security structure. Vault routes your deposits into it — we don't hold your money or manage the borrower relationships directly.
What "variable rate" actually means
Your earnings rate isn't arbitrary. It's set by real-time borrowing demand: when more institutions want to borrow capital, fees go up. When demand drops, they come down.
The ~5.4% current rate reflects the actual fees borrowers are paying today. It's not subsidised, not promotional, and not manufactured by Vault. It moves because markets move.
This is different from a promotional savings rate that a bank sets as a marketing tactic and then cuts after a few months. It's also different from the 0% a savings account pays on idle balances in a mobile app.
What Vault doesn't do
We don't lend to individuals. We don't extend credit based on someone's promise to pay. We don't take custody of your principal.
Your money is deployed into established lending markets. Vault manages the deployment and gives you access to your balance. But your funds aren't sitting in a Vault account — they're working in the market, with collateral protecting them.
The honest caveat
No structure is zero-risk. Markets can experience stress, collateral can be hard to liquidate in fast-moving conditions, and rates can fall sharply. That's why we're transparent about what the structure is — so you can make an informed decision.
What we can tell you is that the infrastructure is vetted, the markets have track records, and the collateral requirements exist precisely to protect against borrower default. That's the structural protection that a savings account at a bank doesn't have.
Join the waitlist at vlt.money
Vault earnings are fees paid by borrowers for access to capital — not guaranteed returns. Rates vary with market conditions. Vault is operated by Prometheus Labs, pursuing ADGM regulatory approval.
