After playing DeFi for so long, I gradually understand a principle: in the financial markets, time is not just a backdrop; it is an asset that can be priced. Want to earn a little more yield? Essentially, you're spending money to buy others' patience—letting others bear the agony of waiting for you. Traditional finance hides this cost in complex product designs, but blockchain is different; all the rules must be clearly written in code, leaving no room for concealment.

Recently, I saw some projects implementing dual-token enhanced yield mechanisms, which are quite interesting. Simply put: they design two token systems. One is a synthetic asset version, which you can hold and transfer freely without issues; the other is an upgraded version that yields returns. You deposit synthetic assets into a vault, and according to the current exchange rate, you can exchange for yield-bearing tokens.

This vault uses the ERC-4626 standard—a common tokenized vault scheme in the Ethereum ecosystem. It standardizes how the vault collects funds, distributes shares, and most importantly—how shares automatically appreciate to reflect yields. This is clever. Instead of airdropping a bunch of reward tokens into your wallet daily (which costs gas and is troublesome), the yield is directly reflected in the exchange rate rising. Although the number of shares you hold remains unchanged, the underlying assets you can redeem increase over time. It’s simple and cost-effective.

This design essentially spreads out the "time cost"—yield is no longer a promise in a black box but an observable change in the exchange rate. This is what makes on-chain finance most interesting compared to traditional finance.