Vault (DeFi)
An automated strategy contract that takes your deposit and farms yield on your behalf, rebalancing so you don't have to.
A DeFi vault is a smart contract that automates a yield strategy: deposit an asset and the vault handles the fiddly work — supplying to lending markets, managing liquidity ranges, harvesting and compounding rewards. Yearn popularized the model; vaults now underpin much of “passive” DeFi yield.
The appeal is convenience and gas savings (one contract batches actions for many depositors). The catch is compounded risk: a vault stacks its own contract on top of every protocol it touches, so an exploit anywhere in the chain of strategies can drain it. A vault’s yield should always be read alongside how many other contracts it depends on.