Vault Managers

Vaults are delegated trading pools: depositors provide capital, and a manager/delegate trades with that capital under strict withdrawal rules (redeem period, share accounting). Vault execution still happens through Drift accounts, so vault behavior mirrors standard Drift margin + order flows.

This guide focuses on the lifecycle and decisions a manager needs to make. For full CLI flags and details, see the vaults CLI reference in the drift-vaults repo.

Step 1: Understand roles and lifecycle

• Manager/delegate: trades for the vault, can update some params.
• Depositor: deposits, requests withdrawals, and completes withdrawals after redeem period.

Lifecycle: create → deposit → trade → request withdraw → wait → withdraw.

Step 2: Decide vault parameters

• market-index / spotMarketIndex: deposit token (commonly 0 = USDC)
• redeem-period: withdrawal cooldown (often 3–7 days)
• max-tokens: capacity / risk control
• management-fee: annualized fee
• profit-share: charged on realized gains
• permissioned + min-deposit-amount: onboarding controls

Step 3: Initialize the vault (manager)

yarn cli init-vault \
  --name "MyVault" \
  --market-index 0 \
  --redeem-period 604800 \
  --max-tokens 0 \
  --management-fee 200 \
  --profit-share 2000

Step 4: Enable trading + set policies

Optional actions you may take after creation:

• enable margin trading on the vault
• update parameters (redeem period, caps, fees)

yarn cli manager-update-margin-trading-enabled \
  --vault-address <VAULT_ADDRESS> \
  --enabled true

Step 5: Deposits and withdrawals (depositors)

For permissioned vaults, managers must initialize depositors:

yarn cli init-vault-depositor \
  --vault-address <VAULT_ADDRESS> \
  --deposit-authority <AUTHORITY_TO_ALLOW_DEPOSIT>

Deposits are permissioned or permissionless based on vault settings. Withdrawals are two-step:

• request withdrawal
• wait redeem period
• complete withdrawal

Step 6: Manager operations

Common manager actions:

• manager deposit/withdraw
• apply profit share across depositors
• view vault state

See the drift-vaults CLI docs for the full command list and flags.

Step 7: Security

• Managers cannot withdraw user funds directly.
• Withdrawals are governed by redeem period and share accounting.
• Managers can usually decrease (but not increase) the redeem period.