A vault is not an account you own
Deposit into a strategy, or keep the assets and grant a bounded permission. Both are called non-custodial. Only one leaves you holding the position.
There are two ways to have software manage a DeFi position for you, and they look almost identical from the outside. Both are usually described as non-custodial, and in the sense that matters to a lawyer, both often are.
They are not the same thing, and the difference shows up on the day you want out.
The two shapes
You send assets to a vault. The vault runs a strategy and issues you a share. The position belongs to the strategy; you hold a claim on it.
Assets stay in an account you own. You grant a bounded permission to act on it. The position is yours the whole time.
Both can be built entirely from on-chain contracts with no third-party custodian. The first is still a different arrangement, because what you hold is a share of a pool rather than the position itself.
A concrete example of the first shape
Instadapp’s Fluid Lite is a good one to look at, because its documentation is clear about the structure rather than hiding it.
- What it is
- An all-in-one yield platform: leveraged staking, automated yield optimisation, cross-protocol routing, from one interface
- Who owns the position
- Strategy contracts own and manage the DeFi Smart Accounts. Each DSA represents one position
- Custody
- All fund operations execute in on-chain smart contracts, with no third-party custody
- Chains
- Strategies run across Ethereum, Arbitrum and Plasma
- Fees
- 20% performance fee on profits, a 0.05% exit fee to the DAO, and a 5bps withdrawal fee
Note the second row, because it is the whole point of this page and it is stated plainly in their own docs: the strategy contract owns the smart account. That is not a criticism — it is the correct design for a vault, and it is what lets one strategy manage many depositors efficiently.
It does mean the thing you own is a share, not the position.
What the difference actually changes
Four things, and only some of them will matter to you.
- Getting out
- A vault exit is a redemption: subject to the strategy’s liquidity, its exit fee, and whatever it has to unwind. Your own account is a transfer you sign
- What you hold
- A share whose value depends on the pool, against a position you can inspect, adjust or close directly at the protocol
- Who else is in it
- A vault is shared. Another depositor’s behaviour and the pool’s composition affect you. An account you own has one participant
- Fee shape
- Performance fees scale with profit and are charged on the pool. A per-action fee is charged on the action you asked for
- Reporting
- A share in a pooled strategy classifies differently from positions held in your own name, which matters to some desks and not at all to others
Which one you want
This is genuinely a preference, and the honest answer depends on something only you know.
- Take the vault if you want the outcome, not the position
You want yield, you do not want to think about which pool or when to rebalance, and you are content to hold a claim. Most people are, and there is nothing naive about it.
- Take the vault if the strategy is better than yours
A team running one strategy full time will usually beat you at that strategy. Paying 20% of profits for that is a normal trade.
- Take your own account if the position must be yours
Because you need to inspect it, unwind it on your own schedule, report it as held directly, or because a redemption queue on a bad day is not acceptable to you.
- Take your own account if the strategy is the point
If you have a view and want it executed exactly, a vault is the wrong container — you would be buying someone else’s view instead.
The test that tells them apart
Marketing will not, because both say non-custodial and both mean it. Ask this instead:
If I stop, what do I hold — the position, or a claim on a pool that holds it?
And then the follow-up, which is the one that actually bites: what has to happen before I have my assets back? A transfer you sign needs nothing from anyone. A redemption needs the strategy to have liquidity, needs whatever it holds to be unwindable, and happens on terms the strategy sets.
Neither answer is wrong. But they are different answers, and a page that calls both “non-custodial” and leaves it there has not told you the thing you needed.