What is self-custodial social investing?
Self-custodial social investing is investing alongside a community of on-chain strategy creators, following or funding their strategies, while your funds stay in your own wallet until they enter a strategy contract.
A different meaning of "social investing"
Most search results for social investing are about ESG and socially-responsible investing, a different topic entirely. This page is about the social layer of DeFi: a community where you can browse strategies, follow the creators behind them, fund the ones you believe in, and grow portfolios together. The word social describes the people and strategies you follow, not an impact mandate.
Why "self-custodial" is the key word
The difference from a typical copy-trading app is custody. Custodial platforms hold your funds and usually require KYC, which means a third party can freeze a withdrawal or fail. In self-custody, your assets stay in your wallet until they enter a strategy contract, so there is no counterparty holding them and no one who can freeze a withdrawal.
How creators and followers fit together
Strategy creators publish on-chain strategies, often built on liquidity provision and automated liquidity management. Followers can allocate to the strategies they trust. Creators earn a performance fee when they perform, aligning both sides, and because everything settles on-chain, the results are verifiable rather than claimed.
How Pool Party puts it together
Pool Party is self-custodial social investing on Base: follow and fund on-chain strategy creators, keep custody of your funds until they enter a strategy contract, and let automation handle the liquidity management. Launch the app.
Go deeper
- DeFi copy trading vs CEX and the custody difference.
- Is copy trading legit? an honest, risk-first answer.
- Automated liquidity provision
Frequently asked questions
- What is self-custodial social investing?
- It is investing alongside a community of on-chain strategy creators, following or funding their strategies, while your funds stay in your own wallet until they enter a strategy contract. It is the DeFi sense of social investing, not the ESG or socially-responsible sense.
- How is it different from a copy-trading app?
- Most copy-trading apps are custodial: the platform holds your funds and usually requires KYC. Self-custodial social investing keeps custody with you. Smart contracts execute the strategy on-chain, so there is no third party holding your assets and the track record is verifiable.
- Do I keep custody of my funds?
- Yes. Your assets stay in your wallet until you deposit them into a strategy contract, and you can withdraw according to the contract. No platform takes custody of your funds along the way.
- Is social investing the same as ESG or socially-responsible investing?
- No. Those terms are about environmental and social impact. Here, social investing means the social layer of DeFi: browsing strategies, following creators and growing portfolios together, on-chain and self-custodial.