How Exa Uses Gauntlet Vaults to Power Its Institutional Yield Products

Key takeaways

• Two Exa-branded vaults built on Gauntlet’s Aera vault infrastructure, exaUSD and exaETH, offered exclusively to Exa's institutional clients.
• Both vaults draw their yield from overcollateralized lending onchain on protocols such as Morpho, with Gauntlet's risk optimization engine setting exposure caps, monitoring positions and liquidity continuously, and rebalancing as conditions change.
• Exa enables financial institutions to access these vaults through one SDK, handling integration, onboarding, monitoring, reporting and reconciliation.
• Exa published a comparison of the leading vault infrastructures before the partnership, and Aera ranked highest overall, with its strongest marks in security and risk management.

How the partnership works

Exa builds technology that neobanks, investment firms, and other institutional allocators need to interact with tokenized assets and onchain financial products. Gauntlet designs and risk-manages the strategies those allocators want exposure to. The partnership puts the two together: Gauntlet as strategy provider and risk curator, ExaGroup as commercialization and integration partner.

We’re proud to announce two Exa-branded vaults built on Aera, exaUSD and exaETH, offered exclusively to Exa’s institutional clients. Exa enables financial institutions to access and offer onchain financial products through one SDK, handling integration, onboarding, monitoring, reporting and reconciliation. Gauntlet deploys and maintains Exa’s vault infrastructure, runs the underlying strategy, and oversees risk management. 

How the strategies work

exaUSD is a conservative yield strategy for clients holding USDC, built for capital preservation and liquidity targeting 100-150 bps above FED rate. exaETH is a long-only, ETH-denominated yield strategy for institutions and long-term holders looking to earn on strategic ETH exposure.

Both draw their yield from overcollateralized lending onchain on protocols such as Morpho. Gauntlet’s risk optimization engine sets exposure caps, monitors positions and liquidity continuously, and rebalances as conditions change. 

Powered by Aera & Gauntlet

Exa’s choice of infrastructure came out of its own research. In July 2025, before the partnership, Exa published a comparison of the leading vault infrastructures, scoring Aera against alternatives. Aera ranked highest overall, with its strongest marks in security and risk management.

Aera also makes a partner-branded product practical. Fees are configured at the vault level, so Exa sets its own economics on top of the strategy it selects, and each vault is isolated, keeping parameters and reporting specific to Exa’s clients.

Behind the vault sits Gauntlet’s strategy universe: lending aggregation, fixed-income exposure, basis trades, and auto-compounding across chains and protocols. As that set grows, Exa can point a new branded vault at a new strategy without rebuilding the integration. Aera’s guardian handles allocation and execution, and produces the NAV precision Exa’s reporting and settlement workflows require.

“We reviewed the main vault infrastructures in depth before committing to one. Aera came out on top of our analysis, particularly on security and risk management, and pairing that with Gauntlet’s strategy and risk work is what let us put an institutional product in front of our clients under our own brand.”

Andrea Armanni, Co-Founder at ExaGroup

The products discussed above do not consist of registered securities and have not been reviewed or approved by any regulator. They are not offered as registered futures, swap, or other derivatives offerings, and nothing here should be read as an offer to sell or a solicitation to buy any security or provide any form of advisory services. These services are offered through non-custodial vaults on decentralized finance platforms — users retain full control of their private keys and wallets at all times. Nothing in this marketing material constitutes investment, legal, or tax advice. These products are not deposit instruments and carry no depository or other insurance. Any discussion of yield or performance is prospective and abstract, not guaranteed, and may go to zero — past results don't predict future ones. Users should only participate with full understanding of the risks involved.