Vaults

A Vault is an isolated staking pool — a

smart contract

that processes ETH and GNO deposits, distributes rewards, and handles withdrawals in a trustless, non-custodial manner. Vaults do not socialize risk: each deposit can only fund that Vault's validators, and any rewards or penalties are contained within it.

Anyone — from solo stakers to DAOs and institutions — can create a Vault and run it on their own terms: bespoke fee, MEV strategy, and an optional ERC-20 Vault token. MetaMask ↗, Chorus One ↗, and NodeSet ↗ use the same infrastructure to power their staking products.

Every Vault lets depositors mint osETH against their staked position as collateral. osETH is an overcollateralized, liquid token that unlocks DeFi yield opportunities while continuing to earn staking rewards.

Beyond base staking rewards, most Vaults with osETH minting enabled also include Boost, a built-in one-click strategy that uses osETH as collateral to borrow ETH on Aave and restake it in the Vault, leading to more rewards.

The pages that follow cover this in depth: how Vaults work step by step, the different Vault types, how to configure a Vault, how performance is measured, the Boost strategy, and the underlying technical architecture.