Vault APY (Yield Aggregator)

It depends entirely on what the curator is doing. A passive vault that just deposits into Aave and autocompounds should charge under 10% of yield — you could do it yourself in a few clicks. An active multi-strategy vault that rebalances across chains, manages liquidation risk, and rotates between protocols can reasonably charge 20–40%. Anything above 50% deserves real scrutiny: at that point the curator is taking more of the yield than you are, and you need a very clear reason why. The best practice is to compare fee ratio to gross yield: a 33% ratio on a 15% gross vault is very different from a 33% ratio on a 3% stablecoin vault, because the absolute dollar amount the curator earns differs hugely.

Yes, and it is important to understand when. Net APY goes negative when total fees exceed gross yield. This happens in two scenarios. First, when the strategy loses money — gross yield is negative — and a management fee is still charged, making the net loss worse. Second, when the strategy earns very little but the vault still charges its management fee, which can exceed the tiny yield. A 2% management fee on a vault that earns 1% gross produces a −1% net. This is why many modern vaults have eliminated management fees: they cannot go negative on a passive depositor simply because the vault existed. Vaults with performance-fee-only structures can never produce a negative net from fees alone, because 100% of zero gross is still zero fees.

The mechanism differs by vault design but the economics are the same. In a share-based vault (like Yearn v2), the vault mintsinternal shares and periodically issues new shares to the fee recipient, diluting depositors slightly. In a harvest-based vault (like Beefy), each time the strategy compounds, a portion of the harvested yield is sent to the fee recipient before the rest is reinvested. In a smart-contract vault with explicit fee parameters, the contract calculates the fee at each harvest and transfers it. In every case, the depositor's balance grows more slowly than the raw strategy yield, and the difference is the fee. The APY you see quoted should already be net of these fees — verify that, because some vaults quote gross and let you figure it out.

Always on net APY, but understand what is inside it. Two vaults advertising the same net APY might have very different gross yields and fee structures — one might be a low-fee passive strategy, the other a high-fee active strategy with the same net. The active strategy carries more risk for the same reward, because the fee is compensation for work that could fail. The passive strategy is more predictable. Where possible, compare on all three numbers: gross, fees and net. The combination tells you far more about the vault than the headline alone.

Fees are charged on the growing balance, so they compound too. A 5-point fee drag on a $10,000 deposit costs you $500 in year one. In year two, if the deposit has grown to $11,000 at gross yield, the fee drag is 5% of $11,000 = $550 — you pay more in absolute dollars because there is more to charge. Over long horizons this compounding of the fee makes a bigger difference than most depositors expect. A 5-point drag over 10 years at 15% gross leaves you with roughly $34,300 on a $10,000 deposit, versus $40,500 with no fees — a gap of about $6,200, or 15% of the no-fee outcome. The Advanced mode shows this over your chosen horizon.

In a well-run vault, fees fund the curator's operations: strategy research, risk monitoring, gas costs for rebalancing, keeper automation, smart contract audits, insurance, and a team of developers and analysts. In some vaults, fees also fund the protocol treasury and buy back the native token. The question to ask is not just "how much is the fee" but "what does the fee buy" — a 30% performance fee that funds an active, well-audited, risk-managed strategy is very different from a 30% performance fee that mostly flows to a token. Governance forums, treasury dashboards and vault documentation are where to look for this, though disclosure is uneven across the space.

Yes. Stablecoin vaults typically have lower fee ratios because the gross yield is lower and depositors are more sensitive to basis points — a 1-point fee on a 5% yield is 20% of the outcome, which feels expensive. Volatile asset vaults often have higher performance fees because the strategies are more complex and the depositors are less sensitive to the fee percentage when the underlying return is large. Chain matters too: Ethereum vaults tend to have higher gas costs and therefore higher fee levels, while cheaper chains allow more frequent compounding at lower cost. Institutional custody vaults usually charge both a management fee and a performance fee, but include services — reporting, audit, insurance — that retail vaults do not provide.