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BTC
The world's first decentralized digital currency and the largest crypto asset by market cap.
Vaults are becoming the infrastructure layer for onchain yield. The important question is not just which vault pays the most, but what strategy, asset exposure, and risk path creates that yield.
Across the Castle Labs vault taxonomy
Around the October 2025 market peak
During the stress window when most categories drew down
Vault TVL overlaps because assets can be reused across protocols
For this guide, a vault is an instrument through which users access an active yield-generating strategy. That definition is useful because it separates strategy products from simple tokenized claims on offchain assets.
By that lens, Lido stETH can qualify because users deposit ETH and receive staking yield through a liquid staking token. Centrifuge JAAA can qualify because users access credit yield through a tokenized wrapper. BlackRock's BUIDL, by contrast, is better viewed as direct tokenized issuance because it represents a 1:1 claim on an offchain Treasury fund.
This page uses Castle Labs' vault taxonomy as a research baseline and adapts it for people comparing crypto yield products. The full Castle Labs report is available through their Vaultification of Finance report.
Vaults should not be treated as one market. Each category has a different yield source, risk vector, liquidity profile, and response to stress.
Morpho, Aave, Spark, Fluid, Kamino
Lido stETH, Binance Staked ETH, Rocket Pool, cbETH
EigenCloud, EtherFi, Kelp DAO, Renzo
Sentora, Steakhouse, Gauntlet, KPK
Veda, Upshift, Fluid Lite Vault, IPOR Fusion, Gearbox
Centrifuge, Anemoy, Re, Upshift USDC
Jupiter JLP, Hyperliquid HLP, Drift, GMX, Ostium
Derive, Rysk
The same APY can mean very different things depending on the strategy. Start with the user intent, then work backward to the risk path.
| Vault type | Common use | What to check | Primary risk |
|---|---|---|---|
| Stablecoin lending vault | Earn yield on USDC or USDT | Borrower quality, utilization, collateral mix, curator, withdrawal liquidity | Credit and liquidation risk |
| ETH liquid staking vault | Keep ETH liquid while earning staking yield | Validator set, token liquidity, slashing record, DeFi collateral exposure | Peg and concentration risk |
| RWA credit vault | Access yield less correlated to crypto prices | Redemption window, borrower disclosures, KYC rules, secondary liquidity | Counterparty and liquidity risk |
| Perp LP vault | Earn exchange or market-making yield | Trader PnL history, leverage caps, loss events, vault drawdowns | Tail market risk |
| Options vault | Earn option premium from structured strategies | Strike/expiry design, execution method, liquidity, max loss scenarios | Volatility and execution risk |
A vault page should not rank products only by the highest APY. Better vault comparison starts by identifying the moving parts that can break during stress.
RWA vaults were the standout category in Castle Labs' stress-window analysis, largely because their underlying exposure is not always tied to crypto asset prices. Centrifuge, Anemoy, Re, Upshift, and similar products connect onchain depositors to credit, treasury-linked, reinsurance, or institutional lending strategies.
That does not make RWA vaults risk-free. They replace some onchain volatility with counterparty, compliance, redemption, and liquidity questions. Some assets settle on TradFi timelines such as T+1 or T+5, which creates friction for DeFi users who expect instant exits and atomic liquidations.
Vaults are the next layer of the crypto yield market: users still care about APY, but they also need a plain-English explanation of the strategy creating the APY. A useful vault comparison should combine rate data with category, asset exposure, liquidity, manager, permissioning, and risk notes.
USDC 
USDT 
Bitcoin 
Ethereum 
