Overview

This section explains what SAM is doing under the hood, in plain terms. No formulas here; if you want those, every page links to the matching entry in The math.

The one-paragraph version

A SAM vault is a single shared pool of one coin. Part of the pool is kept idle (liquid, for instant withdrawals) and the rest is deployed across lending markets. The vault tracks the pool’s total value and the number of share tokens in circulation. The price of one share is just the pool value divided by the share count. Depositing mints shares at that price; redeeming burns them at that price; and yield raises the pool value without minting new shares, so every share becomes worth more. That last part is the entire engine.

The lifecycle

1. Deposit. You add SUI or USDC; the vault mints you shares at the current price. See Vaults and share tokens.
2. Deploy. The new funds are spread across the lending markets, keeping a small idle buffer back. See Where your funds go.
3. Earn. Deployed funds accrue interest, and bonus reward tokens are harvested and compounded in. The share price rises. See Earning yield.
4. Rebalance. Anyone can trigger a rebalance; SAM shifts liquidity toward the best measured yield, within safety caps. See Rebalancing.
5. Withdraw. You redeem shares for the underlying, served from the buffer first. See Staying liquid.

The pieces of a vault

Piece	What it is
Pool	The vault’s single balance of the underlying coin, split into idle + deployed.
Share token	Your samSUI / samUSDC. A claim on a pro-rata slice of the pool.
Share price	Pool value ÷ shares. Rises as the vault earns; this is how you profit.
Idle buffer	A fraction (default 5%) kept liquid so withdrawals are instant.
Adapters	The connectors that deploy into and read yield from each lending market.
Learned APR	Each market’s realized yield, measured on-chain, used to decide allocations.

The pages that follow walk through each of these in turn.