Earning yield

A SAM vault earns in two ways, and both end up in the same place: a higher share price for you.

1. Lending interest

The money SAM deploys is lent out in each market, and borrowers pay interest. That interest accrues continuously into the vault’s position. Nothing to claim; it just makes the pool worth more over time.

2. Bonus reward tokens

On top of interest, some markets hand out reward tokens (like SpringSUI sSUI, BLUE, DEEP, or Volo vSUI) to attract deposits. On their own these would just be odd tokens sitting in another denomination. SAM turns them into yield automatically:

1. Claims the reward tokens from the market.
2. Swaps them back into your vault’s coin (via Cetus; liquid-staking tokens are unwound to SUI first).
3. Compounds the result into the pool, lifting the share price.

You never see, claim, or sell these rewards yourself. See Reward harvesting for the exact route.

How SAM measures yield, with no oracle

To decide where to put money, SAM needs to know how much each market is actually earning. It does not trust an advertised rate or an external price feed. Instead it reads each market’s own price-per-share, which rises as interest accrues, and works out the realized rate directly on-chain. Harvested rewards are folded in the same way, from their real swapped value.

The result is a per-market learned APR: an honest, measured number rather than a promise. This is the figure that drives rebalancing.

Note

Because the learned APR is measured from real returns, a market that advertises a high rate may have a lower learned APR until that yield actually shows up (especially reward-heavy markets, which need a harvest and a little time before the value registers). SAM deliberately allocates by what it has measured, not by what is promised. The exact formulas are in How yield is measured.

Where the fee fits in

When yield is harvested, a 10% performance fee is taken before the rest compounds into the share price. Everything else lifts your shares. The performance fee is the only fee on your yield, and it never touches your principal; the only other charge is a tiny 0.01% fee when you withdraw. See Fees and yield.