ERC-8161 has reached Final status as an Ethereum standard for transferable tokenized vault requests. Co-authored by Cain O’Sullivan and Centrifuge contributor Jeroen Offerijns, the specification extends ERC-7540 by allowing vaults to make pending deposit and redemption requests transferable between controllers.
The standard targets vault positions that remain unsettled for extended periods, a common feature of private credit and other real-world asset strategies. Instead of canceling a queued request and submitting a replacement, a holder can transfer control of the pending position to another address before settlement.
Pending Vault Claims Gain a Transfer Layer
ERC-8161 introduces separate interfaces for deposit and redemption request transfers. A vault can support either function, both functions or neither, allowing implementations to adjust transferability according to their accounting model, security requirements and underlying assets.
Each transfer moves the entire pending request balance from one controller to another for a specified request ID. Only the pending balance can move; amounts that have already become claimable are excluded because their settlement value is known and they can already be collected by the controller.
The distinction is important for asynchronous vaults that separate submission from settlement. In Centrifuge’s ERC-7540-based model, investors first submit a deposit or redemption request, wait for the pool issuer to approve, price and fulfill it, and then complete a separate claim transaction.
ERC-8161 does not accelerate the underlying subscription or redemption cycle. An RWA vault can still settle according to weekly, monthly or product-specific operational schedules; the standard only changes who controls the queued request during the waiting period.
Secondary Markets Still Need Pricing Infrastructure
Transferable requests could support secondary trading in pending private credit and RWA positions. A holder needing liquidity before settlement could transfer the queued claim to another participant rather than waiting for the vault’s next processing window.
The standard does not provide a canonical price for pending requests. Unlike issued vault shares, queued positions have no built-in conversion rate because the final exchange rate remains unknown until fulfillment, leaving secondary venues responsible for valuation, discounts and settlement terms.
Implementations must also account for operator-permission risk. A controller-approved operator can transfer pending requests to another address, effectively moving control over locked assets or shares, so users must limit those permissions to trusted contracts and counterparties.
The standard remains fully backward compatible with ERC-7540 vaults. Existing implementations can continue operating without transferability, while wallets, exchanges and protocols can detect support through ERC-165 before offering request-transfer functionality.
ERC-8161 establishes a composability primitive for slow-settling tokenized assets rather than a functioning secondary market by itself. The next important developments will be production vault implementations, wallet support, compliant trading venues and pricing systems capable of valuing pending claims before final settlement.