Crypto vault deposits top $10B, up from $4B in early 2024

The growth in vault deposits signals that professional capital — fintechs, treasury managers and hedge funds — is increasingly comfortable with delegated on-chain credit strategies, not just passive DeFi exposure. That matters because vault managers now sit between depositors and lending markets, concentrating strategy and risk-limit decisions in a few hands. The wide yield spread, from 3% to over 20%, suggests depositors are being sorted by risk appetite rather than a single market clearing rate. Whether the manager layer improves risk discipline or simply concentrates it is the open question worth watching.