Automated USDC rebalancing every 5 minutes
How Earn scores vaults and decides when to move your capital.
Earn's Auto-Pilot checks eligible vaults every five minutes and moves your capital toward the highest APY.
The scoring rule
Auto-Pilot ranks every eligible vault by share-price APY, averaged over the strategy's APY smoothing window (6 hours by default). You set that window, the Rebalance gap, and the Cross-network gap when you create the strategy, and you can change them later. See Creating a strategy. Token rewards do not count toward the score. See Rewards.
Vaults on different chains compete on the same score. The chain changes only the bar the score has to beat: a candidate on another network is judged against your Cross-network gap, because moving there pays for a bridge.
What triggers a move
A candidate has to clear these gates:
- APY gap. Its improvement over your lowest-APY held vault must meet your Rebalance gap, or your Cross-network gap if it is on another network.
- Confirmation window. The same move (same from-vault, same to-vault) must stay qualified on consecutive five-minute checks for your full window. If the edge disappears on any check, including a dip in the candidate's liquidity below your Minimum liquidity to enter, the counter resets to zero.
- Cooldown. A move that fails to execute, whether the transaction reverted or a fee check skipped it, sits out one check. Then its confirmation window starts again from zero. A forced exit retries on the check after that.
- No pending bridge. A position waits while a transfer of that same position is in flight. The strategy's other positions stay eligible.
- Principal-erosion guard. Auto-Pilot skips a move whose fee would push net value below the capital you have put in. Forced exits are the exception. See Principal-erosion guard.
At most one move executes per strategy per check. When a same-network and a cross-network move qualify on the same check, the cross-network move goes first and the same-network one waits. Otherwise the worst-APY position moves first. A new strategy also gets a grace period of one confirmation window after its first deposit, during which only a forced exit can fire.
Forced exits
Three events exit a vault on the next check, regardless of the APY gap and the confirmation window:
- You hide a vault the strategy holds, for this strategy or for all your strategies.
- A held vault's withdrawable liquidity drops below your Minimum withdrawable liquidity.
- A held vault's TVL drops below your Auto-exit vault size.
Funds go to the best eligible vault, even if it yields less than the vault being exited. Set Minimum liquidity to enter above Minimum withdrawable liquidity, and Minimum vault size (TVL) above Auto-exit vault size, so a forced exit lands in a vault that is not near its own floor. A floor exit is labeled Minimum Liquidity Auto-Exit or Minimum TVL Auto-Exit in history and notifications. A hidden-vault exit keeps the generic Force Rebalance label, or Force Crosschain Rebalance when the replacement is on another network.
If no eligible replacement is approved, the strategy shows Action needed, the position stays put, and the exit retries every check.
When a vault can't be exited (Holding)
If a vault's withdrawable liquidity cannot cover your position right now, Earn cannot redeem it. The position is tagged Holding: it stays in place, keeps earning yield, and is left out of every move, Reduce, and close. Auto-Pilot rebalances your next-lowest vault instead. The tag clears on its own once liquidity returns.
Why a rebalance you expected didn't happen
- The strategy is Paused.
- The candidate did not clear the gap, or it is on another network, where your Cross-network gap applies.
- The candidate did not hold the gap for the full confirmation window. A failing check resets the counter to zero, so the progress bar starts again.
- The winning vault is not approved by your wallet yet. The strategy page shows an Approval needed badge with an Approve on Vaults link when this is the only blocker. See Approvals and signatures.
- The strategy is still in its post-deposit grace period.
- A bridge from an earlier move is still in flight.
- The principal-erosion guard skipped the move. This is common on a young strategy, where accumulated yield is small.
Auto-Pilot revisits on the next check. There is no manual nudge.
What you see
The Auto-Pilot Status card on the strategy page shows the current state. A gauge runs from your lowest held APY to the trigger APY, with the best candidate marked. Once confirmation starts, a progress bar counts the five-minute checks.
While a same-chain move executes, a "Rebalance in progress" banner tracks the transaction. A cross-chain move shows a Bridging card instead. See Cross-chain bridging. Afterward, history shows the from-vault, to-vault, amount, and fee.