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What is an Advanced Strategy

This is where most asset managers start. An Advanced Strategy is a standalone strategy container that gives full protocol execution flexibility — lend, borrow, swaps, bridges, perpetual futures, RWA operations — while standardizing the three things that are otherwise left to bespoke, risky setups: standard contarct interface, on-chain guardrails, and accounting. Each Advanced Strategy is composed of:
  • A 7540 Vault where the strategy funds are held and the operations are executed — no third party can recover your keys
  • An on-chain policy engine governing exactly which contracts, functions, and parameters the asset manager can use and defined by the quorum of the strategy smart contract
  • Standardized NAV reporting so share pricing is accurate and auditable
You interact with any supported DeFi protocol directly. There are no adapters to build, no railnet adapter to wait for. If the protocol has a smart contract, railnet will whitelist required operations in the strategy’s policy engine.

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Why Specialized Vehicles exist

Today, traditional asset managers who need to operate beyond simple allocation strategy currently use their existing wallet infrastructure like Fireblocks or ForDeFi for custody & execution with web2 co-signer services for policy enforcement, and ad-hoc setups for NAV computation. This approach has fundamental problems:
  • Strategy is not truly non-custodial — owners of the wallet infrastructure providers can recover private keys, creating a trust dependency that undermines the premise of on-chain asset management
  • Policy engines are black boxes — web2 co-signer and policy services are partial not publicly auditable, not verifiable on-chain, and not standardized accross asset managers
  • NAV computation is ad-hoc and error-prone — incorrect NAV means incorrect share pricing, which means loss of funds for depositors. In fund-of-funds structures, NAV errors chain across layers — a bad Advanced Strategy NAV cascades into every Allocation Strategy that holds it
  • Every strategy is bespoke — each deployment requires custom integration work for custody, policy, and reporting, with no standardized framework
Specialized Vehicles solve these problems by standardizing three pillars that every advanced strategy needs.

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The three pillars

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Strategy

A multi-EVM-chain programmable set of smart contract (Safe + Guards + Policy Engine) deployed per strategy. The smart contract is fully non-custodial and can’t execute asset management opeartions on it’s own or via the admin quorum — no workspace owner, no infrastructure provider, and no third party can recover the private keys. The strategy owners define the policy engine, changes in the policy can only be done with a delay timelock. The asset manager operate strategy with it’s own logic, quorum and signing process on the attached policy engine, and the smart contract architecture ensures that all operations follow the on-chain guardrails or rejest the operation.

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Policy

A custom on-chain policy engine is deployed matching your strategy requirements relying on Zodiac Roles Modifier v2 that governs what the asset manager can do:
  • Contract whitelists — which contracts can be called
  • Function-level permissions — which functions on those contracts are allowed
  • Granular and on-chain parameter checks — which parameter values are accepted (recipient addresses, spending limits, slippage bounds)
  • Guardian governance — oversight roles with timelock enforcement for policy changes
Every rule is transparent, auditable, and verifiable on-chain. No depenendy on 3rd party back-end and co-signer. What get executed on the strategy is only what was agreed in the strategy definition. Platforms and depositors can inspect the exact constraints governing a strategy before allocating capital. There are no off-chain co-signers, no black boxes, and no trust assumptions beyond the smart contracts themselves. For a deep dive, see Policy engine.

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Accounting

If you are use to price your strategy you will publish the total asset held in the strategy to update the share price and valuation of the strategy onchain, alternatively we provide this service part partners. Accurate NAV is critical — it determines share pricing for every depositor and, when a Specialized Vehicle is held inside an Allocation Strategy (MultiVehicle), incorrect NAV cascades through the fund-of-funds accounting. The valuation process and format is standardized across all Advanced Strategies, making it possible for platforms and risk managers to compare strategies on equal terms.

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Supported protocols

The policy engine can whitelist any smart contract, but these protocols ship with pre-built permission sets — ready to use in your strategy with prebuilt constraints, spending limits, and risk classifications.
CategoryProtocolChainsDescription
LendingAave V3ETH, ARB, OPT, BASESupply, borrow, and manage collateral across the largest lending market
LendingCompound V3ETH, ARB, BASESingle-asset lending markets with isolated risk
LendingMorpho BlueETH, ARB, BASEIsolated lending markets with permissionless market creation
LendingSparkETHLending and savings products in the Sky (Maker) ecosystem
DEX / SwapsUniswap V3ETH, ARB, OPT, BASEConcentrated liquidity swaps and LP positions
DEX / SwapsCoW SwapETH, ARB, BASEMEV-protected batch auction swaps via pre-signing
DEX / SwapsBalancer V2ETH, ARB, OPT, BASEWeighted pool swaps and liquidity provisioning
Staking / YieldLidoETHLiquid staking (stETH/wstETH) with withdrawal queue support
Staking / YieldPendleETH, ARBYield tokenization — trade fixed and variable yield separately
SavingsSky DSRETHDAI Savings Rate — earn yield on idle DAI
This list is growing. If a protocol you need is not listed, you can whitelist its contracts manually through the policy engine. Any EVM smart contract can be scoped with custom permissions.

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Use cases

  • Custom RWA looping strategy with instant redeem liquidity — recursive deposit/borrow against tokenized real-world assets, with a liquid reserve to serve immediate redemptions
  • Multi-perps yield strategy — allocate across perpetual futures protocols to capture funding rate yield, with on-chain policy constraints on position sizing and protocol exposure
  • Cross-chain yield farming — deploy treasury wallets on multiple EVM chains and allocate capital to yield sources across networks, with unified accounting and NAV reporting
  • Custom protocol interactions — any strategy requiring contract calls not yet available as standard Railnet Vehicles. The policy engine lets you whitelist exactly the contracts and functions you need

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Custom Vehicle patterns

Looping (recursive deposit/borrow to amplify yield), leverage, and cross-chain bridging are patterns you build using the Specialized Vehicle’s on-chain policy engine. For each pattern, you whitelist the specific contracts and functions your strategy needs:
  • A looping strategy whitelists a lending protocol’s deposit and borrow functions, allowing recursive calls within the policy engine’s constraints
  • A leverage strategy whitelists borrowing and swap contracts, with calldata-level checks constraining leverage ratios
  • A bridging strategy whitelists bridge contracts and destination-chain treasury wallets, enabling cross-chain capital movement under on-chain governance
These are not built-in protocol features — they are custom patterns enabled by the policy engine’s flexibility. The on-chain nature of the policy means every constraint is visible to depositors and auditors.

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How it connects to Railnet

A yield source wraps the 7540 vault interface of this Advanced Strategy with Railnet’s standard Vehicle adapter. This makes it fully composable with the Railnet stack:
  • Distributed directly via a Conduit — wrap the Specialized Vehicle with a Conduit to offer it to end users, with your own fees, compliance rules, and branded shares
  • Used as a sub-vehicle in an Allocation Strategy — a MultiVehicle can hold a Specialized Vehicle alongside standard Vehicles, creating a fund-of-funds model where managed allocation and custom execution coexist
  • Fees managed at the Railnet Vehicle level — the standard fee framework applies, including detailed per-fee-type accounting, multi-recipient support, and flexible revenue distribution
From the perspective of a Conduit or an Allocation Strategy, a Specialized Vehicle behaves like any other Vehicle — deposits, redemptions, and NAV reporting follow the same STEAM interface.

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Fund of funds

An Allocation Strategy (MultiVehicle) can include Specialized Vehicles as sub-vehicles alongside standard Vehicles. The MultiVehicle’s sector-based accounting tracks the Specialized Vehicle’s NAV just like any other sub-vehicle — each sub-vehicle occupies a sector, and the Allocation Strategy computes its aggregate NAV from all sectors. This enables portfolio construction where some allocation goes to established yield sources (via standard Vehicles) and some goes to custom strategies (via Specialized Vehicles), all managed through a single Allocation Strategy with unified accounting, fee collection, and distribution.

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Get started

Deploy an Advanced Strategy through the Railnet app. The guided wizard walks you through selecting your chain, picking supported protocols, configuring permissions, and deploying the Strategy + Policy Engine + Railnet wrapper.

Launch the Strategy Builder

Deploy your Advanced Strategy through the guided wizard — select chain, protocols, and permissions.

Policy engine

How the Policy Engine enforces on-chain permissions, spending limits, and guardian governance.

Operate an Advanced Strategy

Day-to-day operations — execute transactions, manage spending limits, update permissions.

Allocation Strategies

Compose multiple yield sources and Advanced Strategies into a managed portfolio with automated queues.

Risk management

Guardrails, allocation caps, and risk frameworks for strategy operations.