How Does an OPAL Vault Work?

OPAL vaults manage a live balance sheet of asset and liability positions across multiple protocol integrations. This page explains the core mechanics: the adapter layer, the allocation engine, atomic rebalances, and vault share behaviour.

The Adapter Layer

What Is an Adapter?

An adapter is a dedicated smart contract deployment that encapsulates one specific position in one external protocol. Each adapter exposes a standardised interface to the vault manager (OpalManager) for reading its state and executing operations.

Adapters are not routing contracts or general-purpose integrations. Each adapter is scoped to a single position with a fixed token configuration.

Adapter Types

A single OPAL vault can register multiple adapters of different types simultaneously.

Live Health Metrics

Every adapter continuously exposes three health metrics to OpalManager:

• currentLtv() : the current Loan-to-Value ratio of the position

• liquidationLtv() : the LTV threshold at which the position becomes subject to liquidation

• healthFactor() : the ratio of liquidation LTV to current LTV

These are live reads from the underlying protocol, not cached or periodic snapshots. OpalManager uses these metrics to detect when a position is approaching unsafe territory and to trigger corrective action via a managed rebalance.

Immutable Configuration

Adapter configuration is encoded as immutable arguments in the contract bytecode at deployment, read at runtime via ClonesImmutableReader. The following parameters are fixed permanently at deployment:

• The OpalManager instance the adapter belongs to

• The protocol integration target (Aave V3 pool, Morpho market, etc.)

• The token configuration (collateral tokens, debt tokens, aToken pairs)

• Protocol-specific parameters (market ID, oracle address, interest rate model)

The following parameters are governance-adjustable by Elevated Access:

• EMODE category settings (Aave V3)

• maxSafeLtv (Morpho): the conservative LTV ceiling below liquidation LTV

• Max loan utilisation ratio on join operations

• Collateral usage flags (Aave V3)

If a position's token composition needs to change e.g., to accommodate a new PT market or to include a new money market pool, a new adapter is deployed with updated immutable arguments, capital is migrated atomically, and the old adapter is deprecated. A history of all active and deprecated vault adapters for a given OPAL vault can be viewed on-chain.

Every adapter's complete configuration is permanently readable from its deployed bytecode. Auditors and integrating protocols can verify any adapter's parameters by inspecting the bytecode directly.