# FAQ

#### Aera smart contracts vs. the Aera Product

The Aera smart contracts may fit into a broader offering that includes some of the following:

* On-boarding support (including discussion on objective function and asset selection)
* The Aera front-end (the primary interface for accessing Aera)
* Selection and recruitment of one or several vault guardians
* Additional back-end services like arbitrage agents, options brokers, etc.
* Client-specific economic simulations of the Aera platform.

Within that broader system, the goals of Aera V2 smart contracts are to:

* Provide a means of custody for client treasury funds
* Expose an interface for vault guardians to suggest operations
* Offer control over the whitelisted set of assets and their configuration
* Protect the vault from short term loss due to guardian error and prevent unauthorized cals
* Be compatible with a wide-array of objective functions and assets.

#### Differences between Version 2 and Version 1

The high-level differences (to be described below) between V2 and V1 include:

* An independent vault (custody) contract
  * Enabling direct deposits / withdrawals without an oracle price-check
* Execution moves off chain
  * Instead of submitting parameters, guardians now submit operations which are executed in sequence and checked
* A hooks module
  * Introduced to constrain execution but also can support additional event-based actions on vaults
* An independent asset registry
  * Allowing asset types to be added/removed after vault creation
  * Allowing price oracles to be configured for each asset independent of custody
* No more withdrawal validator contract
* Simplified finalization


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