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Roles are unique identifiers that assign specific responsibilities within the vault and are the only entities with privileges to perform critical actions. Each role is associated with an Address that represents the entity responsible for that function. None of these roles can withdraw funds from the users. Since each role is just an Address, any role can be assigned to a smart contract instead of a regular wallet. This enables policy-based or role-access control patterns — for example, a contract acting as the Manager could define its own internal rules, conditions, or sub-roles to govern who is allowed to trigger actions on behalf of that role. Also, when deploying a vault, the deploying address can be any address — it doesn’t need to be tied to the Manager or any other role. In other words, a vault can be set up on behalf of someone else. The roles are:
  • Vault Manager (Manager)
    • Primary owner of the vault
    • Controls vault settings, role assignments, and contract upgrades
    • Is included in the authorization check for every role-restricted function — can perform any action that Emergency Manager, Rebalance Manager, or Fee Receiver can perform, without needing to hold those roles
    • The only role that can manually lock fees (lock_fees) or release fees (release_fees). Note that fee locking also happens automatically on every deposit and withdraw — lock_fees is for triggering it manually
    • The only role that can upgrade the contract code (only if the vault was deployed as upgradable)
    • The only role that can change the vault’s performance fee (the new rate is supplied as the optional new_fee_bps argument when calling lock_fees)
    • Can update any role address, including its own
    • Recommendation: Use a multisig wallet or a policy-based smart contract.
  • Rebalance Manager (RebalanceManager)
    • Executes rebalancing instructions that move funds across strategies
    • Recommendation: Use a multisig wallet or a policy-based smart contract.
  • Fee Receiver (VaultFeeReceiver)
    • Receives fees collected by the vault
    • Triggers distribution of already-locked fees to vault and protocol receivers by calling distribute_fees
    • Can also update the fee receiver address (shared with Manager)
    • Cannot lock or release fees, nor change the performance fee — those are Manager-only
    • Recommendation: Use a dedicated wallet, and make sure it has trustlines set up for the vault’s underlying assets so fee distributions don’t fail
  • Emergency Manager (EmergencyManager)
    • Can unwind all funds from a specific Strategy and store them as idle funds in the Vault,
      automatically pausing that Strategy (rescue).
    • Can pause a specific strategy, blocking deposits to it
    • Can unpause a specific strategy
    • Cannot access the vault balance or withdraw user funds directly
    • Recommendation: Implement as an automated bot or delegate it

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Role Permissions

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Protocol Fee Receiver

In addition to the vault roles above, each vault also stores a DeFindex Protocol Fee Receiver (DeFindexProtocolFeeReceiver). This is not a vault role — it cannot call any function on the vault. It is a passive recipient address set at vault initialization that automatically receives a portion of the fees whenever distribute_fees is called. The split between the Protocol Fee Receiver and the Vault Fee Receiver is determined by the DeFindexProtocolFeeRate (in basis points), also set at initialization and fixed thereafter.

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Role Assignment and Updates

Roles are set at deployment and can be updated afterward by calling the corresponding setter function. Only the Manager can change most roles — the Fee Receiver address is the only one that either the Manager or the current Fee Receiver can update.

Assign roles in the Console

Roles are set when you create the vault at console.defindex.io, and the vault’s Roles tab is where you rotate them later.