FAQ

Purpose: Answer the most common questions developers and integrators have about Octant v2 architecture, concepts, and deployment patterns. Audience: Developers evaluating or implementing Octant, integrators building custom strategies, and capital providers deploying funding vaults. Level: Beginner Source of truth: The integration guides, smart contract reference pages, and pinned core code version in these docs. Use this page when: You have a conceptual or practical question about how a component works, which vault type to choose, or how to withdraw funds. Do not use this page for: Exact smart contract API details (use the Smart Contract Reference section instead) or real-time information about deployed addresses and governance.

1. What is Octant v2?

Octant v2 is a modular onchain funding stack. It lets organizations create recurring funding flows from capital they already hold, then route that funding through configurable allocation mechanisms such as token-weighted voting or quadratic funding.

2. What problem does Octant v2 solve?

It helps communities fund work without treating fundraising as a one-off event. Instead of distributing principal directly, Octant can route yield or scheduled token flows to funding recipients over time.

3. What are Funding Vaults?

In these docs, Funding Vault is an umbrella term for Octant’s vault-based funding setups. It is not the name of one concrete contract class.

In practice, a funding-vault setup is implemented either as:

• a standalone strategy vault, or
• a multistrategy vault such as MultistrategyVault or MultistrategyLockedVault.

→ See also: Core Concepts

4. What is the difference between Yield Donating and Yield Skimming strategy vaults?

A Yield Donating Strategy vault is designed for assets that generate discrete profit when deployed into an external yield source such as Aave or Sky. When profit is reported, the strategy mints new shares to the beneficiary address instead of increasing depositor PPS.

A Yield Skimming Strategy vault is designed for appreciating assets such as wstETH or rETH, where value accrues through exchange-rate appreciation. Instead of passing that appreciation through to depositors, the strategy captures it and routes it to the configured beneficiary.

→ Deep dives: Yield Donating Strategy, Yield Skimming Strategy

5. Are Funding Vaults risk-free?

No. Octant is designed around principal preservation, but that is a design goal, not a guarantee. Vault-based Octant setups still inherit risks from smart contracts, integrations, liquidity conditions, oracle assumptions, validator behavior, and the underlying protocols they use. Strategy losses that exceed the donation buffer will reduce user principal.

→ See also: Disclaimer

6. What is a Capital Provider?

A Capital Provider is the actor that supplies capital to an Octant funding setup. In older documentation and some contract-level names, you may still see the legacy term Dragon. In current developer docs, Capital Provider is the preferred term.

7. What are the vault models, and how do I choose between them?

Octant v2 provides two main deployable vault layers:

Strategy vault — the standalone single-strategy ERC-4626 deposit surface. Use this when you want users to deposit directly into one strategy.

MultistrategyVault / MultistrategyLockedVault — separate ERC-4626 allocator vaults that sit above several strategies. Use these when you want one deposit surface to allocate capital across multiple strategies.

Choose MultistrategyLockedVault when depositors need a transfer-restricted, cooldown-based exit path for selected shares. Choose MultistrategyVault when standard multistrategy ERC-4626 behavior is enough.

→ Smart contract references: MultistrategyVault, MultistrategyLockedVault, BaseStrategy

8. What is the difference between the two funding models?

In the allowance-based model (historically called “Direct Funding Contribution”), funds stay in the user's Safe and the Safe Linear Allowance module streams tokens to a beneficiary over time.

In the vault-based model (historically called “Regenerative Funding Contribution”), assets are deposited into a strategy vault or a multistrategy vault so that funding comes from generated yield rather than from a direct token-transfer schedule.

9. What is the Payment Splitter?

The Payment Splitter is the routing layer that distributes incoming funding across predefined recipients. Typical recipients include allocation mechanisms, operational-cost addresses, or staking-related contracts. It uses a pull-based model, which means recipients claim their share rather than receiving it automatically in the same transaction.

→ Practical guide: Payment Splitter Patterns → Smart contract reference: PaymentSplitter

10. What are Allocation Mechanisms?

Allocation Mechanisms are smart contracts that decide how routed funding is distributed. Octant supports multiple designs, including token-weighted voting, quadratic funding, and custom mechanisms built on the same framework.

→ Deep dive: Tokenized Allocation Mechanisms

11. What is a Tokenized Allocation Mechanism (TAM)?

A Tokenized Allocation Mechanism is Octant’s modular framework for building allocation systems. It uses the same delegatecall proxy pattern as strategies: you implement a set of hooks, and the shared TokenizedAllocationMechanism implementation handles the round lifecycle. This separates reusable contract machinery from policy logic, making it straightforward to create new funding mechanisms without rewriting the entire stack.

→ Architecture and implementation guide: TAM section → Smart contract references: BaseAllocationMechanism, TokenizedAllocationMechanism

12. How does Community Staking work?

Community Staking lets participants lock a community token to earn rewards and, when configured by the Capital Provider, gain influence over how funding is allocated. The Capital Provider can stream a portion of generated yield into the staking contract. Stakers can donate those rewards to projects or withdraw them. The exact participation rules depend on the chosen staking contract and allocation mechanism.

→ Smart contract references: RegenStaker, RegenStakerBase

13. What is Regen Staker?

Regen Staker is Octant’s staking system for token-gated participation. It supports staking, delegated participation through surrogates, configurable reward distribution, and access control through allowset or blockset logic, depending on how the deployment is configured. Two variants exist: RegenStaker and RegenStakerWithoutDelegateSurrogateVotes.

→ Smart contract references: RegenStaker, RegenStakerWithoutDelegateSurrogateVotes, RegenEarningPowerCalculator

14. What are Yield Skimming Strategies, in practical terms?

They are strategy vaults for appreciating assets such as wrapped staking derivatives. Instead of sending those assets into another yield source, the strategy tracks appreciation in the asset’s exchange rate and redirects that newly created value to the beneficiary side of the system.

→ Implementation guide: Writing a YSS Strategy

15. How can I withdraw my deposited principal?

It depends on the vault type.

Strategy vault — standard ERC-4626 withdrawal from the strategy contract you deposited into. The exact path depends on the strategy’s liquidity and accounting state.

MultistrategyVault — standard ERC-4626 withdrawal. Call withdraw(assets, receiver, owner) or redeem(shares, receiver, owner). Withdrawals are subject to available liquidity, idle assets in the vault plus what strategies can free. If a strategy cannot free the requested amount, the shortfall is recorded as a realized loss against that withdrawal.

MultistrategyLockedVault — withdrawals and redemptions are gated by custody. In practice, you first call initiateRageQuit(shares) for the shares you want to exit. After the cooldown expires, you can withdraw or redeem up to the remaining custodied amount. Without active custody, maxWithdraw() and maxRedeem() are zero.

→ Smart contract references: MultistrategyVault, MultistrategyLockedVault

16. What is ragequit?

Ragequit is the custody-based exit flow in MultistrategyLockedVault. It is defined in terms of shares and cooldown, not in terms of a snapshotted donation address or strategy queue.

The flow works like this:

1. Initiate custody — the depositor calls initiateRageQuit(shares) for a specific number of shares. Those shares become non-transferable, and the contract records an unlockTime based on the current rageQuitCooldownPeriod. Only one active custody entry is allowed per user.
2. Wait and exit — after the cooldown elapses, the depositor can withdraw or redeem up to the remaining custodied amount. Partial withdrawals are allowed. Custody is cleared once all locked shares have been exited.

The contract also lets a user call cancelRageQuit() before exit, which removes the custody entry and makes the shares transferable again. The separate two-step governance process in this contract applies to changes in rageQuitCooldownPeriod: if a user initiates rage quit before a proposed cooldown change is finalized, that custody entry keeps the old cooldown. Custody entries created after finalization use the new cooldown.

→ Smart contract reference: MultistrategyLockedVault

17. What are operational costs (OpEx)?

OpEx is the portion of routed value that a Capital Provider reserves for running and maintaining its funding program. The exact split is configured in the Payment Splitter.

→ Practical guide: Payment Splitter Patterns → Smart contract reference: PaymentSplitter

18. Where should developers start?

If you want to build a strategy vault, the fastest path is the Hello World Strategy tutorial. It takes you from zero to a fork-tested sDAI strategy with exact commands.

For a broader orientation, start with the Developer Orientation to find the learning track that matches your use case, then follow it page by page. Use tutorial pages to understand the workflow, and use the Smart Contract Reference pages as the source of truth for exact interfaces and behavior.