Katana Explains Vol. 1 - Vault Bridge
What is Vault Bridge?
Vault Bridge makes bridged assets productive.
Unlike standard bridges where deposited assets sit idle in a smart contract on L1, Vault Bridge puts capital to work immediately by deploying certain bridged assets into low-risk yield strategies on Ethereum.
Think of traditional bridges as holding a full 1:1 idle reserve on the source chain. Vault Bridge, however, operates on a model that puts those assets to work from the start. When certain assets are bridged (USDC, USDT, WETH, WBTC), they are deployed into low-risk yield-generating strategies in Morpho vaults on Ethereum. This generates revenue from the underlying assets, transforming them into "productive TVL."
Importantly, Vault Bridge is a separate protocol built by Polygon Labs’s AggLayer team, distinct from Katana itself. Katana simply integrates with Vault Bridge and utilizes it, but Vault Bridge can be used by any chain to generate revenue.