Share Price / NAV
The value of one basket or vault share, calculated from the market value of the assets backing it divided by the number of shares outstanding.
Share price, or net asset value (NAV) per share, is the value of a single basket or vault share based on what actually backs it: the market value of the underlying assets divided by the number of shares outstanding. In traditional finance this is how mutual funds and ETFs are valued. Onchain, the same math applies to index tokens and vault shares.
For an onchain basket, NAV is transparent and verifiable. The vault's token balances sit onchain for anyone to inspect, those holdings can be priced at current market rates, and dividing by total share supply yields the value of one share. ERC-4626 vaults standardize this accounting with functions like convertToAssets, which is part of why the standard is used by protocols such as Yearn, Beefy, and Morpho. On Tessera, each index token is a single ERC-20 backed in-kind by 2 to 30 assets held in an immutable vault, so a share's value derives directly from holdings anyone can verify.
A share's market price can drift from its NAV. If a basket token trades on a DEX above the value of its backing, arbitrageurs can mint new shares by depositing the underlying assets and sell them; if it trades below, they can buy shares and redeem them for the assets. This mint-and-redeem loop tends to pull price back toward NAV, although thin liquidity or paused redemptions can let gaps persist.
NAV measures backing, not future performance. The underlying assets can lose value, pricing errors can misstate what a share is worth, and a correct NAV offers no protection against smart-contract failure. Before relying on a NAV figure, check how the product computes it and whether the backing can be verified onchain.