What Is Mellow Finance? Restaking Vaults, Core Vaults and Lido Earn

Every Mellow product follows the same split of roles:

• Depositors put in assets and receive vault shares.
• Curators (asset managers, market makers, staking operators or DeFi teams) decide where the money goes ².
• The vault contract sets which protocols, tokens and actions the curator may use. Its verifier modules check each action before it runs ¹³.

The point of the design is that a curator cannot move funds anywhere it likes. It can only act within rules set when the vault was configured ³. The rules can still allow risky strategies, though. Read a vault's stated strategy and limits before depositing.

In June 2024, Mellow and Lido introduced vaults that let stETH holders restake through Symbiotic, a then-new restaking protocol ¹¹¹². Each vault issued its own LRT and had a named curator. Steakhouse, P2P, Re7 Labs and MEV Capital were among the first ¹¹. Restaking means the staked ETH also backs other networks' security. That earns extra rewards but adds the risk of being slashed (penalized) if an operator misbehaves.

Mellow built several versions of these vaults: Multivault, Interoperable Vaults and Simple LRT. It also built DVstETH, a vault tied to distributed validator technology ². Mellow now calls them historical architectures. Some remain live and are documented for existing holders, but new products launch on Core Vaults ²⁴. DefiLlama tracks this restaking business as "Mellow Restaking," with about $24 million locked on October 22, 2026, almost all on Ethereum ¹⁰.

Core Vaults is Mellow's current system. Banks, exchanges, wallets and other partners use it to run "Earn" products under their own brand ¹.

The best-known example is Lido Earn, which has two vaults ⁶⁷:

• earnETH takes ETH, WETH, stETH or wstETH. It spreads funds across lending, leveraged looping, liquidity provision and structured positions. Mellow provides the curation.
• earnUSD does the same with USD stablecoins.

Lido sets the fees and runs an interface at stake.lido.fi/earn. Mellow runs its own interface at app.mellow.finance. The Lido DAO put in $5 million as first-loss capital: $3 million in wstETH for earnETH and $2 million in USDC for earnUSD ⁶. That money absorbs losses before other depositors take any.

Mellow's older strETH vault, which aimed to boost staking rewards through DeFi, is closed to new deposits. Holders can still withdraw ⁸.

Mellow has no single fee. Each vault sets its own, and fees are taken in shares, so your token count stays the same while its value reflects the charge ⁶⁸. Two documented examples:

Withdrawal requests on these vaults cannot be cancelled once made ⁶⁸. Deposits also queue: they are processed after the next oracle price report ⁶. Gas fees on Ethereum come on top.

Mellow lists audits of Core Vaults by Nethermind (several from August 2025 to June 2026), a Sherlock public contest (August 2025) and MixBytes (July 2026). Older vault types were reviewed by StateMind, ChainSecurity, Nethermind, Decurity, MixBytes and Sherlock ⁵. The security page does not mention a bug bounty ⁵. DefiLlama lists no hacks for Mellow Restaking ¹⁰.

Risks to weigh:

• Curator risk. Returns and losses depend on the curator's choices within the vault's limits.
• Layered protocol risk. Funds may sit in Symbiotic, EigenLayer, lending markets or DEXs. Each adds its own smart-contract risk ².
• Slashing risk in restaking vaults.
• Liquidity and timing. Withdrawals take days and cannot be reversed.
• Legacy vaults. Older architectures are maintained but no longer the focus of development ².