> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.dionysus.finance/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# High-water mark

> Profit is taxed once. Never twice.

Your vault keeps three running totals, all valued at the time each event happened:

* **Contributed** — everything you have ever deposited
* **Withdrawn** — everything you have ever taken out
* **Taxed** — profit that has already been charged a fee

From these, your **high-water mark** is `contributed + taxed`: the cumulative amount you can withdraw before any *new* fee applies. The app shows this as **fee headroom** — "withdraw up to \$X with no fee."

## The rules it enforces

<Steps>
  <Step title="Principal first, always">
    Withdrawals count against your contributions before anything is considered profit. You can take out everything you put in without paying a cent.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Profit is taxed exactly once">
    Once a slice of profit has been charged, it joins the taxed total — which raises the mark. Withdrawing, redepositing, and withdrawing again cannot make the same profit chargeable twice.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Losses are never charged">
    If your vault is below its mark, exits are simply free until performance recovers past it. There is no clawback, but there is also no fee on the way down.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Top-ups raise the mark">
    New deposits increase your contributed total at the price on arrival — new capital is never mistaken for performance.
  </Step>
</Steps>

## Why event-time valuation

Everything is valued **when it happens**, at oracle prices, and written to the vault's own storage. Your fee accounting is on-chain state you can audit — not a spreadsheet we keep about you. See the [worked examples](/fees/worked-examples) for the arithmetic in action.