How Aurum works

The short version

1. Pick a vaultEach vault earns from trading in one market, such as NVDA against USDG.
2. DepositPay with any token in your wallet. You get vault shares in return.
3. Let the agent workIt chooses the vault's range, decides when to move it and when to wait, and adds what the vault earns back in.
4. Withdraw when you likeTake out part or all of it, at any time. There's no lock-up.

Where the earnings come from

Tokens are traded on onchain exchanges, and each market on an exchange is called a pool. Every trade in a pool pays a small fee. Those fees go to whoever supplies the tokens being traded.

A vault supplies tokens to one pool. The fees it collects are what you earn.

A vault only earns while the price stays inside a band, called its range. The agent chooses that range: where it sits and how wide it is. A narrow range earns more from each trade, but the price leaves it sooner. A wide range keeps earning longer, at a lower rate.

If the price moves outside the range, the vault stops earning. It starts again when the price comes back, or when the range is moved.

Some vaults earn a reward token instead of trading fees. The agent sells the rewards and adds the proceeds to the vault, so you don't have to do anything with them.

What happens when you deposit

Sign in with email, a social account or your own wallet. Then pick a vault and choose what to pay with. You can use any token you hold on Robinhood Chain. If it isn't one of the vault's two tokens, it's swapped first.

Your deposit joins the vault, and you get vault shares in return. Your shares are your slice of everything the vault holds, including what it earns from then on.

The shares stay in your own wallet. Only you can move them or cash them in: not Aurum, and not the agent.

What the agent does

The agent checks every vault every ten minutes. It has three jobs.

• Choose the range. It tests different widths against recent trading and picks the one it expects to earn the most after costs. It goes narrower when trading is steady and prices are calm, and wider when prices trend or trading slows down.
• Decide what to do when the price leaves the range. Moving a range costs money, and prices often come back. So the agent looks at how the price left. After a sudden spike, or when the price keeps crossing the edge, it usually waits. If the price has clearly moved on, it moves the range, and may pick a new width. When it waits, it sets itself a deadline and notes why. You can read that on the vault's page.
• Collect the earnings. It collects the fees and adds them to the vault, so your earnings start earning too. This is called compounding. It waits until there's enough to be worth collecting: at least ten times the network fee for doing it.

While the price is inside the range, the agent leaves it alone: the vault is earning, and moving it would only cost money. Most checks end with nothing to do.

Every time it moves a range, the agent writes down what it expects: how long the new range should stay in range, and what it should earn. Those forecasts are checked afterwards, so you can see how well its judgment holds up.

What the agent can't do

The agent can collect earnings and move a vault's range. That's all it can do. It can't withdraw anything, from a vault or from your wallet.

Each vault's contract also sets limits the agent can't get around. Today, every vault lets it move the range at most once an hour. Every move is checked against a recent price, so a sudden manipulated price can't be used against the vault.

The agent also can't wait forever. Once a vault has been out of range for three days, anyone can move its range, whether or not the agent is still waiting, or still working at all.

Following your money

Your portfolio shows what your deposits are worth now, what you've earned in fees, and how that compares with what you put in. Activity lists everything that happened to your money, from your own deposits to each step the agent took and why.

Taking your money out

You can withdraw at any time, all of it or part. Choose to receive one of the vault's tokens, or both. There's no lock-up, and Aurum charges nothing to withdraw.

What it costs

• 10% of what your vault earns. You keep the other 90% of the fees and rewards. The fee is taken from earnings only, never from the money you put in.
• 0.25% on a swap into the vault, but only when you pay with a token the vault doesn't hold.
• The pool's trading fee on swaps inside the pool. Joining a vault means splitting your money into its two tokens, and taking it out as one token means the reverse. Part of it is swapped in the pool, at that pool's usual fee. Each vault shows it as its fee tier.
• Network fees. Every transaction on Robinhood Chain costs a little ETH, usually well under a dollar.

Fees has the details.

What can go wrong

Aurum is not a savings account. The value of your deposit goes up and down with the prices of the vault's tokens, and it can end up worth less than you put in.

• Prices move. When one token's price falls, the vault ends up holding more of it. This is called impermanent loss.
• Out of range means no earnings. While the price is outside the range, the vault earns nothing, including while the agent waits for the price to come back.
• Software can fail. The contracts have been reviewed for security, but no review can promise there are no bugs.
• Tokens can be paused. The issuer of a stock token, or of USDG, can pause it or block an address. A withdrawal that includes that token then waits until it can be sent.

Read Risks before you deposit, and only put in money you can afford to see go down.

Next steps

• Quickstart: from signing in to your first deposit.
• Vaults: everything about vaults on one page.