Gold has been humanity’s favorite store of value for roughly 5,000 years. What it has not been, in all that time, is a source of regular income. A new on-chain structured product from Enhanced is trying to change that, applying a well-worn options strategy to tokenized gold and packaging it in a way that makes Warren Buffett’s old complaint about the yellow metal (“it just sits there”) a little less valid.
The product is called the PAXG Volatility Income/Yield Vault, and it launched in early August 2026 as the first entry in Enhanced’s “Thesis Vaults” series. The pitch: deposit your PAXG, a gold-backed token issued by Paxos, and the vault sells covered-call options against it, collecting premiums that get distributed to depositors in stablecoins like USDC every two weeks.
How the vault actually works
Covered calls are one of the most conservative options strategies in existence. You own an asset, you sell someone the right to buy it at a higher price, and you pocket the premium regardless of what happens next. If the price stays flat or dips, you keep the asset and the premium. If it rallies past the strike price, you miss the upside beyond that point but still collect the premium.
Enhanced’s vault automates this process on-chain. It sells bi-weekly European-style out-of-the-money call options on deposited PAXG, with strike prices dynamically set at 3-7% above the current spot price. The options are sold through a competitive request-for-quote auction to institutional market makers, which helps ensure depositors get fair pricing on the premiums.
