# Automated Staking (Vaults)

## What is a Vault?

Vaults are investment instruments that employ a specific set of strategies for yield farming. They make use of automation to continually invest and reinvest deposited funds, which helps to achieve high levels of compound interest. By using our vault to compound your gains, you save thousands of transactions with their associated gas costs and precious personal time. Instead of manually harvesting and selling rewards, buying more tokens, and reinvesting that continuously, a vault does all that automatically at a high frequency.

**Despite what the name 'Vault' suggests, user funds are never locked in any vault**. One could always withdraw from a vault at any moment in time. X3DEFI also does not own user funds staked in vaults. However, it is generally best to view vaults as investment tools to store funds for the medium to long term in order to have the effects of compounding really kick in.

When browsing the vaults on the platform, you will see the annual percentage yield (APY), which takes the frequent compounding into consideration, compared to the annual percentage rate (APR), which does not. You will also see daily interest percentages and the total amount invested in a vault by all users (TVL).

Summarizing, vaults can:

* Efficiently execute yield farming strategies.
* Compound rewards into the initially deposited token amount.
* Reinvest earned profits.

Users can sit back and relax, and watch their investment grow!

### Next Steps

-> Check out our Vault space on our website: [http://xfactory.darkx.money/#/vaults<br>](<http://xfactory.darkx.money/#/vaults&#xA;>)-> Check the underlying [contracts](/main/links/smart-contracts.md).


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