Hafas

Vaults didn’t become the standard in DeFi by accident.
They became the standard because DeFi needed them—and because ERC-4626 finally gave vaults a shared foundation.
Today, when users think about earning yield in DeFi, they don’t think about manually farming, rebalancing liquidity, or tracking dozens of reward tokens. They think about vaults. Simple deposits. Clear ownership. Automated strategies.
But this wasn’t always the case.
Before ERC-4626, vaults were powerful but chaotic. After ERC-4626, vaults became infrastructure. And platforms like Concrete exist today precisely because that transformation happened.
This is why ERC-4626 didn’t just improve DeFi—it changed it forever.
The World Before ERC-4626: When Every Vault Was an Experiment
In early DeFi, vaults emerged organically as protocols tried to simplify yield generation. Each team buil their own version of a vault, solving the same problems in different ways.
The result?
Every protocol had custom vault logicDeposits and withdrawals behaved differently everywhereShare accounting varied wildlyIntegrations were brittle and often brokeUser experience was inconsistentMore bespoke code meant more bugs, more audits, and more risk
From a user’s perspective, interacting with vaults felt unpredictable. From a developer’s perspective, integrating vaults was painful. From an auditor’s perspective, every vault was a new surface area for risk.
ERC-4626 Explained Simply: A Standard for Tokenized Vaults
ERC-4626 is a standard for tokenized vaults that makes earning yield through vaults consistent, safer, and easier to integrate across DeFi.
At its core, ERC-4626 defines:
How users deposit assets into a vaultHow they withdraw assetsHow vault shares are minted and burnedHow those shares represent ownership and yield
In other words, ERC-4626 standardizes the relationship between:
Assets inShares issuedYield generatedAssets out
This may sound technical, but the impact is simple:
Vaults now behave in predictable, composable ways—no matter who builds them.
Why ERC-4626 Was a Turning Point for Vaults
ERC-4626 didn’t invent vaults.
It professionalized them.
Once vaults shared a common interface:
Developers could build vaults faster and saferWallets and aggregators could integrate vaults once and support manyUsers could trust consistent behaviorProtocols could stack vaults together like Lego bricks
Most importantly, vaults stopped being isolated products and became core infrastructure.
This is what enabled the Vault Era of DeFi:
Yield abstractionStrategy automationCapital efficiency at scaleManaged DeFi experiences
ERC-4626 turned vaults from “advanced tools” into “default entry points” for yield.
ERC-4626 as the Foundation of Concrete Vaults
Concrete is a direct product of this shift.
Concrete vaults are built on ERC-4626 from the ground up, using the standard as the backbone for managed, institutional-grade DeFi.
Because Concrete vaults follow the ERC-4626 vault standard, they provide:
A consistent and intuitive deposit/withdraw experienceTransparent, on-chain accounting of vault sharesEasier auditing and monitoringNative interoperability across DeFi protocolsSafer strategy upgrades and transitions
Instead of reinventing vault mechanics, Concrete focuses on what matters:
Strategy designRisk managementExecution qualityUser simplicity
ERC-4626 handles the plumbing. Concrete builds the system on top.
One-Click DeFi: Made Possible by ERC-4626
Concrete’s product philosophy is clear:
Abstract complexity without sacrificing transparency.
ERC-4626 makes this possible by enabling:
Standardized vault behaviorClean separation between strategy logic and user interactionA single deposit instead of many fragmented positionsAutomated compounding and rebalancing
Instead of:
Managing LP tokensClaiming rewardsReinvesting manuallyMonitoring multiple protocols
Users interact with one vault.
This is one-click DeFi—not because complexity disappears, but because it’s handled by standardized, auditable infrastructure.
ERC-4626 is what allows Concrete to offer managed DeFi instead of manual farming.
Why ERC-4626 Makes Concrete Institutional-Grade
Institutions don’t just care about yield.
They care about structure, predictability, and risk control.
ERC-4626 speaks their language.
For institutions, ERC-4626 provides:
Predictable vault interfacesClear accounting and reportingEasier risk assessmentLower operational complexityFamiliar, fund-like mechanics on-chain
When combined with Concrete’s strategy design and risk framework, ERC-4626 enables vaults that behave more like on-chain funds than experimental DeFi products.
This is institutional DeFi—not by copying TradFi, but by using standards to reduce uncertainty.
Why ERC-4626 Changed DeFi Forever
ERC-4626 didn’t just make vaults better.
It made them:
TrustworthyComposableScalableProfessional
It enabled:
Tokenized vaults as first-class primitivesManaged DeFi at scaleInstitutional participation without sacrificing decentralizationPlatforms like Concrete to exist at all
DeFi didn’t need more complexity.
It needed standards.
ERC-4626 delivered that—and Concrete builds on it every day.
🔗 Learn more about Concrete vaults and one-click managed DeFi at https://concrete.xyz.