Create a Vault
⏱️ 3 min read
DeFindex Vaults let wallet builders design yield products tailored to their users. With a vault, you choose the assets, strategies, allocation, and fees—and you can rebalance positions or rescue funds at any time. From the end-user's perspective, it's just deposit and withdraw.
Vault Creation Requirements
Before you deploy a vault, make sure you meet the following requirements. These details are often the source of confusion for new builders.
Network
DeFindex operates on Stellar Mainnet and Stellar Testnet. The two networks are completely independent and use different contract addresses and token types.
Network Passphrase
Test SDF Network ; September 2015
Public Global Stellar Network ; September 2015
RPC URL
https://soroban-testnet.stellar.org
https://soroban.stellar.org or another provider
Horizon URL
https://horizon-testnet.stellar.org
https://horizon.stellar.org
Tokens
On Testnet, DeFindex strategies use a test USDC issued by the Blend Capital testnet deployment — referred to here as BlendUSDC. This is not Soroswap or regular USDC; it is a separate test token you must obtain from testnet.blend.capital.
On Mainnet, strategies use real USDC (Circle) and other well-known tokens.
Token addresses
XLM (native SAC)
Testnet & Mainnet
CDLZFC3SYJYDZT7K67VZ75HPJVIEUVNIXF47ZG2FB2RMQQVU2HHGCYSC
BlendUSDC
Testnet only
CAQCFVLOBK5GIULPNZRGATJJMIZL5BSP7X5YJVMGCPTUEPFM4AVSRCJU
USDC (Circle)
Mainnet only
CCW67TSZV3SSS2HXMBQ5JFGCKJNXKZM7UQUWUZPUTHXSTZLEO7SJMI75
CETES
Testnet
CC72F57YTPX76HAA64JQOEGHQAPSADQWSY5DWVBR66JINPFDLNCQYHIC
For a full list of deployed strategy contract addresses, see the Contract Deployments section.
Getting Testnet Tokens
You need testnet tokens to deploy and interact with a vault on testnet:
XLM (for fees): Use Friendbot to fund your testnet account.
BlendUSDC (required for USDC vaults on testnet):
Go to testnet.blend.capital.
Connect your Freighter wallet (switch to Testnet in wallet settings first).
Click "Faucet" or use the asset menu to add a BlendUSDC trustline and receive test tokens.
CETES (required for CETES vaults on testnet):
Contact Etherfuse team to get the official test CETES
Why BlendUSDC? On testnet, DeFindex strategies are deployed against the Blend Capital testnet pools, which use their own test USDC. Real Circle USDC does not support large amounts minting on Stellar Testnet.
Funding Requirements
A minimum first deposit of 1001 units (in the asset's smallest denomination — stroops) of your vault's underlying asset is required immediately after deployment.
On the first deposit, the vault locks 1000 shares as an inflation-attack defense mechanism.
Example: For a USDC vault (7 decimals), 1001 stroops = 0.0001001 USDC — practically free.
Example: For an XLM vault (7 decimals), 1001 stroops = 0.0001001 XLM — also negligible.
This is required to prevent the ERC-4626 inflation attack (the same class of attack applies to Soroban vaults).
Funds are not automatically invested on deposit. After the first deposit you must perform a first rebalance to allocate funds across strategies.
A first deposit of 20 USDC prevents historical APY endpoint from having approximation errors
Step 1: Assign Vault Roles, Fees, and Upgradability
Before deployment, you must configure the following roles (each tied to an address):
Manager – primary owner, manages settings, upgrades, and other roles (use a secure wallet, ex. multisig, cold or MPC)
Emergency Manager – rescues funds and pauses risky strategies (use a hot wallet with fast access or automate it for faster response)
Rebalance Manager – allocates funds across strategies (use a hot wallet or it can be managed by a third party)
Fee Receiver – collects performance fees (use a secure, dedicated wallet)
All four roles must be assigned. You may use the same address for multiple roles, but this is not recommended for production.
Fees
Fees are expressed in basis points (1 bp = 0.01%).
The Vault Fee is applied to strategy earnings and assigned to the Fee Receiver.
Maximum allowed fee: 10,000 bps (100%) — in practice, keep this well below 100%.
Upgradability
Choose whether this vault can be upgraded after deployment.
If enabled, you can migrate to a new vault version in the future.
Your users' funds and positions remain unaffected — no action required on their end.
Step 2: Select Assets and Strategies
DeFindex offers curated and audited strategies, currently live for:
Blend Autocompound – Fixed Pool: USDC, EURC, XLM
Blend Autocompound – YieldBlox Pool: USDC, EURC, XLM, CETES, USTRY, AQUA
Blend Autocompound – Orbit Pool: XLM, CETES, USTRY, oUSD
Each vault supports one or more assets, and each asset can be backed by one or more strategies.
Need support for additional pools? Just ping us on Discord.
Step 3: Deploy the Vault
You can deploy your Vault in two ways:
Using GUI (Basic) Skip next steps if using the GUI
Step 4: Do a First Deposit (Skip if using the GUI)
A minimum first deposit of 1001 units of your supported asset is required.
Why?
1001 units will be permanently locked in the Vault for security.
Example: If you are depositing USDC, this equals just 0.0001001 USDC — practically nothing!
This is because these vaults are protected from something called "inflation attacks" you can read more about this kind of attacks on OpenZeppelin blog
Step 5: First Rebalance (Skip if using the GUI)
After deployment, perform the first rebalance to define allocations across chosen strategies. This may be a bit confusing right? but How the vault is going to know how to distribute the funds across the different strategies? This step only need to be done once.
You have 3 ways to make the first rebalance: using API, using a script (discussed here) or using stellar-cli
Using API
Make sure you have an API_KEY to call the API. And then, call the rebalance function
Where VAULT_ADDRESS is the address of the recently deployed vault, JWT_TOKEN is the API key, the MANAGER_OR_REBALANCE_MANAGER is what you defined when creating the vault. The strategy address is the one you want to invest on. For a list of all the addresses you can check -> here.
This will return you an unsigned XDR, that can be signed using your preferred method of signing. One simple method could be using Stellar Laboratory. Simply copy and paste the unsigned XDR and sign it.
Using stellar-cli
First, you need to setup your keys, make sure the rebalancer manager role defined previously is the one you are going to setup. For example, you can set it up using secret key by:
then, you will be prompted to write your secret key.
Next, let's make the rebalance using testnet as example. You can do that by:
you can find the strategy addresses on ~/public/<network>.contracts.json.
And that's all!
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