Conduits

A Conduit is the user-facing layer of Railnet. It wraps a single STEAM Vehicle in an ERC20 share token, so depositors get the DeFi interactions they already know — deposit, withdraw, hold, transfer — while the Vehicle underneath handles whatever protocol-specific complexity the strategy requires.

• Vehicle — the engine. Executes protocol logic: Aave supplies, ERC-4626 deposits, ERC-7540 redeem requests.
• Conduit — the dashboard. ERC20 shares, fees, access control, a two-call API.

Users interact with Conduits. Conduits interact with Vehicles on their behalf.

Why wrap a Vehicle at all?

A Vehicle on its own is usable, but it is a protocol primitive rather than a product. Talking to one directly means managing STEAM queries by hand, tracking their state across the lifecycle, and doing your own accounting — with no share token to hand a user, no fee plumbing, and no way to say who is allowed in.

A Conduit adds exactly those four things and nothing else:

1. A share token. Depositors hold a normal ERC20 whose value rises as the Vehicle earns. They never touch Vehicle shares.
2. A two-call API. create() to enter or exit, process() to advance. On a synchronous Vehicle, create() finishes the job in one transaction.
3. Fees. Management, performance, deposit and redeem — captured at query creation so in-flight queries settle under the schedule they were created under.
4. Access control. An optional allow/block list with sanctions screening, plus a switch governing whether shares can move between users at all.

When to reach for which

The three are not alternatives so much as layers. A Conduit wraps any single Vehicle — and since a MultiVehicle is itself a Vehicle, the common production shape is a Conduit over a MultiVehicle: one ERC20 for users, many protocols underneath.

Where to go next