ERC-4626
The Ethereum tokenized vault standard: deposit an asset, receive ERC-20 shares whose redemption value grows as the vault earns yield.
ERC-4626 is the Ethereum standard for tokenized vaults: contracts where you deposit an underlying asset and receive shares, themselves ERC-20 tokens, that represent your claim on the vault's balance. As the vault earns yield, each share becomes redeemable for more of the underlying asset, so a rising share price is how returns typically show up.
The standard defines a common interface: deposit and mint to enter, withdraw and redeem to exit, plus view functions that report how many assets a given number of shares is worth. Before ERC-4626, every yield vault had its own bespoke interface, and every integration had to be hand-built. Standardization turned vault shares into composable building blocks that wallets, aggregators, and other protocols can support once and reuse everywhere.
Adoption is broad. Yearn, Beefy, Morpho, Moonwell, and Euler all issue ERC-4626 vaults, and Aave exposes its aTokens through a wrapped static ERC-4626 version. This composability is why platforms can treat yield-bearing positions like any other token: Tessera, for instance, routes trades across DEXs and ERC-4626 vaults in a single transaction, so a basket can hold yield-bearing shares directly.
The standard describes the interface, not the safety of what sits behind it. An ERC-4626 vault is only as sound as its underlying strategy, and yields are never guaranteed. Check what a vault actually does with deposits before treating its shares as conservative collateral.