Earn: deposit into the Earn vault
Earn is one vault for all of Amoeba’s RAMX and NANDX capped futures markets. You deposit USDC into it and receive shares: your shares are your part of everything Earn holds. The vault funds the treasury maker, which offers to buy and sell every one-point piece of the index range in every market, so traders can open and close any range at any leverage. What the maker earns and loses, in every market, is shared between depositors by their shares.
You do not pick markets, prices, ranges or sizes. The maker does that. Your result depends on its trading and on where the indexes settle.
At a glance
Section titled “At a glance”| Question | Answer |
|---|---|
| What do I put in? | USDC, from a signed-in wallet, into the Earn vault. There is one vault, not one per market. |
| What do I get? | Shares. Your shares divided by all shares is your part of Earn. |
| What does the vault do with it? | Funds the treasury maker in every market. Every quote the maker posts is paid for in full from the vault’s cash. |
| How much can I lose? | Up to your whole deposit, if the pieces the vault holds pay out less than it paid for them. |
| What can I make? | Your share of the maker’s spread in every market, plus or minus what its held pieces pay at settlement. No return is promised and Earn shows no APY. |
| When can I get money out? | At any time. A withdrawal is paid to your wallet at once, from the vault’s idle cash and then its cash in its markets. |
| What does it cost? | Nothing in USDC. There are no trading fees and no funding. Amoeba pays the network fee. |
Where your money goes
Section titled “Where your money goes”Your USDC goes into the vault, an account of the futures program. The maker is run by Amoeba as the vault’s operator. The operator can:
- post, change and cancel the vault’s quotes and orders in every market it is in;
- move the vault’s cash between its idle balance and its markets, for example out of a market that has settled and into the next month’s.
It cannot withdraw the vault’s cash or move its positions to another account: money leaves the vault only when depositors withdraw their shares. Depositors do not choose or vote on how the maker quotes or which markets it funds.
Every quote is fully paid for when it is posted, and every position in a market is backed in full until settlement. The vault can never owe more than the cash it has. See Providing liquidity.
How the vault earns and loses
Section titled “How the vault earns and loses”The How It Earns tab on the Earn page lists the money that moves in and out of the vault:
| Source | In / Out | When | What happens |
|---|---|---|---|
| Spread | In | Every trade with the maker | The maker buys each one-point piece of a range a little below where it sells it. The gap stays in the vault. |
| Settlement | Out | At each market’s settlement | Pieces the vault still holds pay out by where the index settles, which can be less than the vault paid for them. |
| Fees and funding | None | — | There are no trading fees and no funding: the vault earns only the maker’s spread. |
A piece the maker sold and later buys back cancels out, and the cash behind it returns to the vault at once. When a market settles, what the vault’s pieces there pay becomes cash again, and the maker moves it into the next months’ markets: settled cash rolls over, and your shares stay invested until you withdraw.
How shares are priced
Section titled “How shares are priced”The vault’s value is its cash plus what the pieces it holds in every market will pay. That last part depends on where the indexes settle, so the vault has a lowest and a highest value over every possible settlement. The Earn page values your shares at the lowest: what withdrawing them pays now.
| Step | How it is priced |
|---|---|
| Deposit | Buys shares at the vault’s highest possible value. |
| Withdraw | Pays your shares at the vault’s lowest possible value, at once. |
| The gap | The range of the vault’s open positions. When a market settles, its part of the gap closes. |
| Your earnings | Your shares’ value less what you put in (deposits less withdrawals). |
Pricing this way means no deposit or withdrawal can take value from the other depositors. It has a cost: if you deposit and withdraw again while the vault holds open positions, you get back less than you put in, and the difference stays with the other depositors. The formulas are in the Math appendix.
Deposit
Section titled “Deposit”- Open Earn and select Deposit.
- Enter an amount in USDC. The dialog reminds you that deposits buy at the vault’s highest value and withdrawals pay its lowest, and that the gap closes as positions settle.
- Select Deposit and approve the transaction in your wallet.
Your deposit joins the vault straight away. The first deposit into an empty vault gets one share per USDC. Shares are shown with six decimals, like USDC.
What the Earn page shows
Section titled “What the Earn page shows”| Field | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Your Deposit | What withdrawing all your shares pays now: your part of the vault at its lowest value. |
| Your Pool Share | Your shares as a part of all shares: your part of Earn. |
| Your Earnings | Your Deposit less what you put in (deposits less withdrawals). It can be negative. |
The Pool tab has one row, for USDC: the Asset, what it Earns From, Your Deposit, Your Earnings, Total Deposited (the whole vault’s value at its lowest) and the Deposit and Withdraw actions. A failed read shows Unavailable, never zero. The Earn Activity tab lists your Earn deposits and withdrawals.
Withdraw
Section titled “Withdraw”- Open Earn and select Withdraw.
- Enter an amount in USDC, or select Withdraw all.
- Select Withdraw and approve the transaction in your wallet.
The USDC arrives in your wallet in the same transaction. It is paid from the vault’s idle cash first, then from its cash in its markets. Where a market’s free cash is short, the withdrawal takes down the vault’s quotes there to release the cash they hold, and the maker quotes again on its next pass. So the maker’s quotes never hold up a withdrawal: you can withdraw up to what your shares pay now. The one exception is the vault’s last shares, which wait while it still holds open positions: withdrawing them would leave those positions to nobody. They can leave once the positions settle, and the app says how much can be withdrawn now.
What Earn does not do
Section titled “What Earn does not do”- It does not promise a return or show an APY.
- It does not let you choose markets, prices or ranges: one deposit backs the maker in every market.
- It does not give you control over the maker’s quotes, risk settings or which markets it funds. A badly quoting maker can lose the vault’s money.
- It is not insured or guaranteed by Amoeba.
To provide liquidity with your own orders instead, see Providing liquidity. For what happens at expiry, see Earn settlement.