Skip to main content

How It Works

Orion provides the infrastructure for creating, managing, and investing in onchain portfolios.

Here’s how the pieces fit together:

Vaults - The Core Building Block

At the heart of Orion are permissionless, yield-bearing vaults. Each vault holds one or more assets and follows a strategy defined by a curator.

  • Vaults are ERC-4626 compliant for compatibility with other DeFi protocols.
  • They can be single-asset or multi-asset with automated rebalancing.
  • Strategies can be transparent or privacy-preserving.

Curators - Portfolio Managers

Curators design and manage the strategies behind vaults:

  • Define asset allocation, risk parameters, and rebalancing logic.
  • Use Orion’s SDK and familiar development tools to deploy strategies onchain.
  • Choose between transparent vaults with visible asset allocation, or private vaults with confidential asset allocation.
  • Set your performance and management fees.

Users - Portfolio Investors

Users can browse available vaults and choose ones that match their goals:

  • Deposit USDC into vaults and receive vault tokens representing their share.
  • Track performance through Orion’s interface.
  • Withdraw at any time, subject to the asynchronous execution.

Asynchronous Execution - Privacy & Efficiency by Design

In Orion, actions are processed asynchronously to enable both privacy and cost optimization.

  • Curators submit intents that define their desired portfolio allocation (transparent or private).
  • Users submit intents to deposit into or withdraw from vaults.
  • The protocol rebalances all vaults at a set rebalancing frequency.

This asynchronous execution engine allows Orion to:

  • Protect Privacy - Conceal strategy details between rebalancing cycles.
  • Reduce Costs - Bundle, batch, and net transactions across multiple vaults and participants.
  • Optimize Execution - Minimize unnecessary trades and gas usage.

Interoperability - Built for Composability

Orion vaults follow common DeFi standards, therefore, they can integrate with:

  • Aggregators;
  • Lending protocols;
  • Other DeFi infrastructure;

This composability allows vaults to plug into the wider ecosystem and expand their reach.


TL;DR

  1. Curators design strategies and launch vaults.
  2. Users deposit into vaults that match their goals.
  3. Both submit intents rather than instant trades.
  4. The protocol rebalances vaults on a set schedule for privacy and efficiency.
  5. Everyone benefits from a permissionless, scalable portfolio management system.