Frequently Asked Questions about Aera Finance
Everything you need to know about Aera Finance treasury vaults, onchain strategies, supported networks, and how to get started managing your protocol's treasury.
General Questions
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Aera Finance is a decentralized onchain treasury management protocol that allows DAOs, protocols, and organizations to automate and optimize how they manage their treasury assets. Through Aera Finance Treasury Vaults, teams can define objectives — such as maximizing yield, automating operational payments, growing liquidity, or rebalancing portfolios — and the protocol executes these strategies autonomously.
At its core, Aera Finance works by letting vault owners set parameters and rules. A network of trusted managers and automated systems then executes trades, deposits, and rebalances within those rules. The vault owner always retains full custody and the ability to withdraw assets at any time.
This "set and forget" approach means treasury teams spend less time on manual operations and more time on building their protocols.
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Aera Finance currently supports multiple EVM-compatible networks, with vaults deployed across:
- Ethereum — The primary network where most Aera Finance vaults hold significant TVL, including flagship vaults like Compound Reserves and Uniswap Incentives.
- Base — Coinbase's L2 network, with growing Aera Finance vault deployments for protocols operating in the Base ecosystem.
- Arbitrum — Arbitrum One is supported, enabling lower-cost vault operations for protocols building on Arbitrum.
- Polygon — Polygon PoS chain vaults are available for protocols in the Polygon ecosystem.
The Aera Finance team continues to evaluate new network deployments based on ecosystem demand and security considerations. Check the main dashboard for the latest list of supported chains.
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Security is central to the Aera Finance architecture. Several layers of protection are built into every vault:
- Non-custodial design: Aera Finance never takes custody of your assets. The vault owner always controls the assets and can withdraw at any time without permission from anyone.
- Allowlist-based execution: Managers can only execute pre-approved actions. Any interaction with a protocol or token that is not explicitly allowlisted is rejected by the smart contracts.
- Guardian mechanism: Each vault has a Guardian — typically a multisig or security council — that can pause or cancel manager actions if something suspicious is detected.
- Formal audits: Aera Finance smart contracts have been audited by leading blockchain security firms. Audit reports are publicly available.
- On-chain enforceability: All rules and constraints are enforced by immutable smart contract logic, not by off-chain promises.
This layered approach means that even if a manager key were compromised, the attacker would be limited to only the pre-approved set of actions defined in the vault's policy.
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Aera Finance supports a wide range of treasury strategies, making it one of the most versatile onchain treasury management protocols available. Common use cases include:
- Yield optimization: Automatically deposit idle treasury assets into lending protocols, liquidity pools, or yield vaults to earn passive returns without manual intervention.
- Protocol-owned liquidity (POL): Manage and grow protocol-owned liquidity positions in DEXs like Uniswap, with automated rebalancing as market conditions change.
- Operational payments: Automate recurring payments to contributors, vendors, or service providers from dedicated vaults with predefined limits.
- Diversification: Gradually diversify a treasury from a single native token into a basket of stablecoins and blue-chip assets according to a defined schedule.
- Incentive distribution: Automate the distribution of rewards and incentives to ecosystem participants on a programmatic basis.
- Stablecoin management: Maintain target allocations between different stablecoins and yield-bearing stablecoin products.
Organizations like Compound, Uniswap, Swell, Puffer, and Morpho have already deployed Aera Finance vaults to automate their treasury operations.
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Getting started with Aera Finance involves a few key steps:
- Define your objective: Decide what you want to achieve — yield maximization, liquidity management, payment automation, diversification, or a combination.
- Connect your wallet: Use the Connect Wallet button on the Aera Finance app to connect your multisig or governance wallet.
- Configure vault parameters: Set the asset types, allowed protocols, manager addresses, Guardian address, and any other policy constraints for your vault.
- Deploy and fund: Deploy the vault smart contract on your chosen network and deposit your initial treasury assets.
- Monitor and govern: Use the Aera Finance dashboard to monitor vault performance, review manager activity, and update policies as needed via governance.
For larger protocols or complex strategies, the Aera Finance team offers onboarding support. You can reach out via the official Aera Finance documentation or community channels to get started.
The entire process is transparent and on-chain — your governance token holders can review and approve the vault configuration before any assets are deposited.
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Aera Finance currently manages over $38 million in total value locked (TVL) across more than 50 active vaults on Ethereum, Base, Arbitrum, and Polygon.
The largest individual vaults include:
- Compound Reserves — $28.3M on Ethereum
- Uniswap Incentives — $9.5M on Ethereum
- Swell rswETH Rewards and other reward distribution vaults
- Morpho Association POL Base and other POL management vaults
TVL is updated in real time on the Aera Finance dashboard. As more protocols onboard and existing vaults grow, this figure continues to increase. You can view a full breakdown of all vault balances and their associated protocols on the main Aera Finance application.
Live TVL data is always visible on the Aera Finance home page.
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Yes. One of the core design principles of Aera Finance is that vault owners always retain full control over their assets. The vault owner — typically a DAO multisig or governance contract — can initiate a full or partial withdrawal of assets at any time without needing approval from managers or the Aera Finance protocol.
This non-custodial guarantee is enforced at the smart contract level, meaning it cannot be overridden by any party including the Aera Finance team.
In addition, the Guardian role in each vault can pause manager activity if suspicious behavior is detected, further protecting vault assets while the owner retains the ability to withdraw at any time.
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Aera Finance operates with a transparent, performance-based fee model. Fee structures are disclosed at the time of vault deployment and vary depending on the complexity of the strategy and the services provided.
Typical components of the Aera Finance fee model include:
- Management fees: A small ongoing fee based on assets under management, typically annualized.
- Performance fees: An optional fee on returns generated above a benchmark, aligning incentives between Aera Finance managers and vault owners.
- Gas costs: On-chain transaction costs are paid by the vault or the manager depending on the vault configuration.
All fees are clearly defined in the vault policy smart contract before deployment. There are no hidden fees — everything is verifiable on-chain. Contact the Aera Finance team for detailed pricing for your specific use case.
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Managers in the Aera Finance system are permissioned entities — either automated algorithms, professional asset management teams, or specialized bots — that are authorized by the vault owner to execute pre-approved strategies.
Key characteristics of Aera Finance managers:
- They operate within strict constraints defined in the vault's policy contract
- They can only interact with allowlisted protocols and tokens
- They cannot withdraw assets to arbitrary addresses
- Their activity is fully transparent and auditable on-chain
- They can be added or removed by the vault owner at any time through the governance process
Aera Finance works with a growing network of qualified managers, including the Aera Finance team's own automated strategies and third-party DeFi asset managers. The vault owner chooses which managers to authorize based on their specific objectives and risk tolerance.
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The Aera Finance team provides comprehensive documentation and resources for developers, protocols, and researchers:
- Technical documentation: Full smart contract documentation, integration guides, and API references are available in the official Aera Finance docs.
- Audit reports: Security audit reports from third-party auditors are publicly available and linked from the official Aera Finance website.
- GitHub: Open-source smart contract code and tooling are available on the Aera Finance GitHub organization.
- Community channels: Join the Aera Finance Discord or Telegram for developer support, governance discussions, and protocol updates.
- Blog and research: The Aera Finance team publishes research, case studies, and protocol updates on the official blog.
For enterprise inquiries, integration support, or to discuss deploying a vault for your protocol, you can reach out directly to the Aera Finance team through the official website at aerafinance.net.