For Investors

This guide explains how investors participate in Trilobyte to earn yield from real-world lending, in one of two risk tranches.

How Investing Works

Investors earn yield by funding loans through Trilobyte Vaults, choosing to fund the senior or junior tranche of a given vault (see Tranches and the Waterfall). When you deposit funds, you receive SEP-41 debt tokens representing your position in that tranche. As the borrower makes repayments, you can claim your proportional share of your tranche's yield.

Choosing a Tranche

	Senior	Junior
Paid	First, every period	Last, every period
Loses	Last, and only once junior is wiped out	First
Yield	Lower, steadier	Higher — earns a spread taken from senior's interest
Opens	Only after the manager calls lock_junior	First — alongside the manager's own collateral
Who typically funds it	Wallet users, external liquidity providers	The manager's collateral, plus junior investors

An investor may hold a position in both tranches of the same vault — each is tracked as a separate position.

Depositing

1. Find a Vault

Browse available vaults in the RaisingFunds phase. Each vault displays its terms:

• Principal — Total loan amount being raised

• Interest rate — Annual rate the borrower pays

• Loan term — Duration in months

• Leverage ratio — Senior capital as a multiple of junior — determines each tranche's size and risk

• Junior spread / reserve fee — What junior earns from senior, and what the protocol takes from interest before either tranche

• Pool Manager — Who underwrote the deal

• Related party — Whether the deal is flagged as related-party

• Funding deadline — When funding must be completed (if set)

• Permissioned — Whether the vault requires allowlisting

2. Deposit Funds

Call deposit(investor, amount, tranche) to fund the vault in your chosen tranche:

• Senior deposits are only accepted after the manager has called lock_junior

• A 0.5% protocol fee is deducted from your deposit

• You receive debt tokens (tVLT) 1:1 with the net amount — so a 10,000 USDC deposit mints 9,950 tVLT

• Your deposit must meet the vault's minimum investment floor (default 100 USDC) — a dust deposit is rejected

• Your deposit is tracked individually, per tranche, in the vault

The protocol reserve fee on repayments is charged before either tranche is paid — it does not come out of your yield after the fact. See Fees.

For permissioned vaults, you must be on the Pool Manager's allowlist before you can deposit. If the protocol has a compliance gate configured, that check applies too — contact the manager to request access.

3. Withdraw Before Funding Completes

If the vault hasn't been fully funded yet, you can withdraw your deposit:

• Call withdraw(investor, amount, tranche) to get your funds back

• Senior withdrawals are allowed at any point during RaisingFunds

• Junior withdrawals are only allowed before the manager calls lock_junior — once locked, junior capital cannot be withdrawn (deposits can still be added, just not withdrawn)

• Your debt tokens are burned proportionally

Once the vault is fully funded and transitions to AwaitingApproval, you can no longer withdraw. Your funds are committed. If the vault instead misses its funding or approval deadline, it moves to Cancelled and you pull your own refund with claim_refund — see Cancelled.

Debt Tokens (tVLT)

When you deposit, you receive Trilobyte Vault Tokens (tVLT) — SEP-41 compliant fungible tokens:

Property	Value
Name	Trilobyte Vault Token
Symbol	tVLT
Decimals	7
Standard	SEP-41 (Stellar fungible token)
Cap	Equal to the vault's principal
Transferable	No — tVLT is non-transferable (it represents your own position; transfer/approve are disabled)

Debt tokens are minted 1:1 regardless of tranche — your tranche identity lives in your InvestorPosition, not in the token itself, so your balance alone doesn't tell you which tranche you're in.

Debt tokens are non-transferable. You cannot transfer, sell, or delegate your debt tokens to another address. The transfer, transfer_from, and approve functions are disabled. This ensures that yield claims remain tied to the original depositor.

Earning Yield

How Yield Accumulates

As the borrower makes repayments, each period's interest and principal are allocated through the six-bucket waterfall. Senior's pool fills from buckets 2–3, junior's from buckets 4–5 — see Payments & the Waterfall.

Claiming Yield

Call claim_yield(investor, tranche) to claim your share of your own tranche's pool:

$$\text{claimable} = \frac{\text{your deposit in tranche}}{\text{tranche total raised}} \times \text{tranche pool} - \text{already claimed}$$

• You can claim at any time during the Active or FullyRepaid phases

• Claims are cumulative — you receive the difference between your total entitlement and what you've already claimed

• You don't need to claim after every payment — yield accumulates

• A senior position never draws from junior's pool, or vice versa

If the loan defaults

Recoveries pay out senior first: senior principal, then senior's unpaid interest, then junior principal, then junior's unpaid interest, then any residual. Call claim_recovery(investor, tranche) once the manager or anyone has called distribute_recovery(). Junior recovers nothing until senior is fully covered. See Default & Risk Management.

Monitoring Your Investment

Track your vault's performance using query functions:

Function	What It Shows
get_config()	Vault terms and current phase, including leverage ratio and related-party flag
get_position(investor, tranche)	Your deposit, claimed interest, and claimed principal in that tranche
get_claimable(investor, tranche)	Available yield to claim in that tranche
balance(account)	Your total debt token balance (across both tranches)
get_payments_made()	How many periods the borrower has fully paid
get_outstanding_senior() / get_outstanding_junior()	Remaining principal per tranche
get_arrears()	Any carried shortfall, per bucket
get_next_due()	Next payment due date
get_missed_payments()	Consecutive missed payments
get_senior_nav() / get_junior_nav()	NAV after any write-down — an early warning signal
get_covenant_status()	Whether the borrower is current and reporting is up to date
get_late_fees()	Accumulated late fees

Risk Awareness

What Protects You

• Manager collateral — anchors the junior tranche and is slashed first on default

• The junior tranche itself — senior only loses once junior is exhausted

• Optional borrower collateral — seized ahead of manager collateral in the recovery order

• Exposure caps and the related-party rule — cap concentration and prevent a manager from being their own borrower

• Delinquency tracking — Managers with defaults are blocked from new vaults

• Credit limits — Cap each manager's total exposure

• Grace period and NAV write-down — Time buffer and an early-warning signal before formal default

• Permissionless default trigger — Anyone can trigger default, preventing collusion

• Funding/approval deadlines — Prevent indefinite capital lock-up, with self-service refunds

What to Watch For

• Missed payments — Check get_missed_payments() and get_covenant_status() regularly

• NAV write-down — A non-zero write-down on get_senior_nav()/get_junior_nav() signals distress before formal default

• Late fees — Rising late fees signal borrower distress

• Phase changes — Monitor for transitions to Renegotiation or Defaulted

Lending carries risk. If the borrower defaults, junior absorbs the first loss and manager (then borrower) collateral provides further recovery — but senior may still not recover its full deposit, and junior may recover very little or nothing. Evaluate each vault's leverage ratio, terms, and Pool Manager track record carefully before investing.

As of September 2026.