How Manifold works

Overview

Manifold deploys your capital as concentrated liquidity on Aerodrome (Base) and manages it continuously: choosing pools, setting price ranges, rebalancing when price leaves them, claiming emissions, and — if you enable compounding — folding those emissions back into positions.

Your funds live in your own vault contract, deployed by you, owned by you. Manifold's operator wallet is authorized to manage positions inside it but can never withdraw to anywhere except the vault itself. You can revoke the operator or withdraw everything at any time, with one signature.

Building a mesh

A mesh (or topology) is simply the set of pools your vault farms, drawn as a graph. Each token is a node; each pool you add is an edge connecting the two tokens it pairs. Capital flows along the edges — that's what the moving particles represent. Building a mesh just means choosing which edges (pools) you want.

The builder lives on the Build tab. Two ways to add pools, both showing the same live numbers:

• On the graph — dashed lines are suggestions: the best moves available right now. Tap the ⊕ on a dashed line to add that pool. Tap a token node to focus it and see only the pools that pair with it. Tap a solid (committed) line to remove that pool.
• In the ranked list below the graph — every scoreable pool, sorted by what it would add. Tap a row (or its +) to add it; hover to preview its edge on the graph before committing.

Reading the numbers. The +$/d on each pool is its marginal value — what adding that pool changes about the whole mesh's projected daily rate, at your plan size. It is not the pool's standalone yield: a pool can read negative if it dilutes a stronger pool or raises risk more than it earns. The big PROJECTED figure is the mesh's combined daily rate — a projection from live gauge rates, not a promise. The RISK gauge shows blended volatility (σ) on a calm→spicy track, with a ghost marker previewing where a hovered pool would move it.

Plan size. The PLAN FOR $X control at the top is a what-if knob, not a deposit — every projected figure scales to it. Set it near what you intend to put in so the numbers reflect your situation. Nothing moves and no wallet is touched until you deploy.

A mesh is capped at 8 pools: in a small vault, slices thinner than that can't earn enough to cover their own rebalancing costs. When the mesh looks right, carry it into a new vault (Deploy) or your existing vault's strategy — the pools you see are exactly the ones that get deployed.

Architecture

Three parts, with a deliberate trust split:

• Vault (on-chain) — a per-user contract holding all assets and LP positions. Custody lives here and only here. The owner (you) can deposit, withdraw, and set the operator. The operator can only manage positions — every token transfer path leads back to the vault.
• Manager (off-chain) — the agent. Watches pool ticks over websocket, scores the pool universe, decides ranges, queues rebalances, claims and sells emissions, records every event. It signs with the operator key, so the worst it could ever do is manage badly — it cannot take funds.
• App (this site)— a read-only window plus a wallet. All data comes from the manager's indexer; all transactions are signed by your wallet in your browser. The app never holds keys and never calls the chain directly for data.

Everything you see on the dashboard — P&L, positions, the topology mesh — is computed by the manager from chain events it witnessed, not estimated client-side.

The strategy

Aerodrome pays AERO emissions to concentrated-liquidity positions that are staked in a pool's gauge and in range. Emissions scale with how concentrated your liquidity is: a tight range earns a larger share of the gauge while price stays inside it.

That creates the core trade-off Manifold manages. Tighter ranges earn more per hour but fall out of range sooner, and every rebalance pays real costs: swap fees, slippage, and the structural cost described in the gamma section below. The manager's job is to keep emissions earned > costs paid, per position, measured — not assumed. That ratio is the EM/LVR figure on your positions table.

Pool selection works the same way: the manager screens the Aerodrome universe continuously for pools where the emission rate justifies the volatility, sizes positions to pool depth, and refuses pools where its position would be large enough to move the pool against itself.

Deposit & withdraw

You deposit USDC. The first deposit takes two signatures — one to approve the token, one to move it into the vault — and after that, if the approval still covers the amount, it's a single signature. Once the USDC lands, the agent deploys it into your chosen pools automatically; positions usually appear on the dashboard within a few minutes. Depositing and deploying are separate steps, so if a deploy ever fails your USDC simply sits safely in the vault with a retry — you never "deposit again".

Small deposits are allowed but less efficient. A deposit fans out across several pools and two token legs each, so amounts under about $50 can leave slices below the manager's swap minimums — part of the deposit ends up parked as small idle balances (dust) instead of earning until the next sweep folds it in. The deposit screen warns you when this applies; nothing is at risk, it's just less of your capital working.

Withdraw is always everything, in two signatures. The first unwinds every position back into the vault; the app then converts the assets to USDC inside the vault (this step runs automatically and is usually under a minute); the second signature sends the USDC — plus any claimable AERO — to your wallet. You see the expected USDC and the estimated conversion cost before you sign anything. Conversions abort automatically above a set price-impact cap, so a thin market can't quietly dump your assets at a bad price — those tokens stay in the vault to withdraw as-is or retry later.

Emissions & compounding

AERO is Aerodrome's reward token. Your in-range positions earn it continuously; the manager claims it on a schedule and records every claim in your activity feed. Emissions are the engine of the strategy — they're what pays for the rebalancing costs described below and, ideally, leaves a surplus.

The Compound emissions toggle in Settings decides what happens to claimed AERO. On(the default): claimed AERO is sold into your portfolio's base asset and folded back into active positions, so rewards start earning rewards. Off: emissions simply accumulate in the vault as claimable AERO, which is swept out to your wallet whenever you withdraw. Either way the AERO is yours; the toggle only changes whether it's put back to work or left to pile up.

Fees

Manifold takes no fee today.There's no management fee, no performance fee, and no deposit or withdrawal fee on our end — the accounting you see on the dashboard is your raw vault performance. If that ever changes, it will be stated plainly here and in on-chain-verifiable statements before it applies.

The only costs your vault pays are on-chain operating costs: gas for each rebalance and claim, plus the swap fees and slippage of any conversion. These go to the network and to Aerodrome, not to Manifold. Every one is itemized on your positions table (GAS) and in the full breakdown, so nothing is hidden — and the manager only rebalances when the emissions earned are expected to clear those costs, which is exactly what the EM/LVR figure tracks.

Delta — price exposure

Delta is how much your portfolio value moves when prices move. Holding 1 ETH is +1 ETH of delta: ETH goes up 5%, you're up 5%.

An LP position in a volatile pair (say WETH/USDC) holds both assets, so it has roughly half the delta of holding the volatile asset outright — but with a twist: as price rises, the position automatically sells WETH for USDC, and as price falls it buys WETH. Your delta shrinks as price rises and grows as it falls. You are always slightly behind a pure hold in whichever direction price ran. That structural lag is why an LP curve sits under the hold line:

Manifold reports this split honestly on your dashboard: market is what price moves did to the assets you hold; strategy is what the system earned on top (emissions minus all costs). Stable-stable pools (like EURC/USDC) carry almost no delta — that's why they screen differently.

The delta hedge (see the Hedge tab) offsets the volatile leg with a perp short, isolating the strategy return from market direction entirely.

Gamma — rebalancing cost

Gamma is the rate your delta changes as price moves. A concentrated LP position has negative gamma: it buys the falling asset and sells the rising one, continuously, by construction. That's the opposite side of the trade from a market maker's dream — you're structurally selling winners and buying losers inside your range.

The cost of this shows up when price crosses your range edge and the position must be rebalanced: the position has drifted entirely into the worse-performing asset, and re-centering means realizing that drift. In the literature this is LVR — loss-versus-rebalancing. It is not a fee anyone charges you; it is the price of holding negative gamma in a moving market.

Emissions are the compensation. A pool is only worth farming when the emission rate exceeds the expected LVR for the volatility you're experiencing — that threshold is the σ-critfigure in Explore. The manager measures live volatility per pool from its own tick stream, compares it to that critical level, and sizes ranges so the expected emission income clears the expected rebalancing cost. When a pool's volatility regime makes that impossible, it exits rather than farm at a structural loss.

The delta hedge

Everything above earns yield but keeps your market exposure: if your vault holds volatile assets and ETH falls, the vault falls with it, emissions or not. The optional delta hedge cancels that price swing by opening an offsetting perp short on Hyperliquid, sized to your vault's volatile exposure. The result is steadier value — the fees keep earning while the directional risk is neutralized.

It is a regime bet, not a free lunch. In chop or a downturn the hedge protects you; in a sustained rally it gives up the upside the un-hedged vault would have captured. That's why it's opt-in and off by default. When you enable it you bridge USDC to your own Hyperliquid account (via Across, seconds), grant a trade-only key that can place and cancel orders but never withdraw, and activate. The margin is yours — the agent trades it, never moves it out.

The hedge is live. The Hedge tab walks you through funding, the regime trade-off, and live margin and funding figures; Settings shows its current status for your vault.

Risks

• Market risk — your assets keep their market exposure (see delta). If ETH halves, an unhedged WETH/USDC vault loses substantially, emissions or not. Manifold does not protect you from price direction today.
• Strategy risk— sustained volatility above a pool's critical level means rebalancing costs can exceed emissions. The manager exits such regimes, but exits also cost; a violent enough move is a realized loss.
• Emission risk— AERO emissions are voted weekly and can drop or move to other pools. The universe screen re-scores continuously, but yesterday's rate is not a promise of tomorrow's.
• Contract risk— vault, Aerodrome, and token contracts are code. Manifold's vault is deliberately small and simple, but no contract is risk-free.
• Operator risk— bounded by design: the operator can manage badly but cannot withdraw your funds. You can revoke it on-chain at any time without Manifold's cooperation.