Design philosophy
Core principles
- Permissionless market creation — No asset-listing committee, no governance approval, no centralized underwriting. The market creator (LP) owns the parameters they configure.
- Isolated markets — Each market has its own liquidity, collateral, risk parameters, and liquidation mechanism. A failure in one market cannot cascade into another.
- Non-custodial — OpenAsset Market never takes discretionary control of user assets. Collateral is locked according to predefined, transparent smart contract rules.
- Open asset support — Crypto, NFTs, gaming assets, tokenized equities, RWAs, and asset classes that don’t exist yet should be supportable without redesigning the core engine.
- Infrastructure, not underwriting — The protocol does not decide which assets deserve financial utility. Market creators decide.
The adapter principle
Every time a new asset class needed an if/else branch inside a monolithic LendingMarket, the whole protocol’s audit surface grew. That doesn’t scale past a handful of types, and it means the contract holding collateral gets modified — and needs re-auditing — every time you want to support something new.
Instead, the core engine knows exactly four verbs:
| Verb | Adapter |
|---|---|
| Escrow / release collateral | Asset Adapter |
| Price collateral | Oracle Adapter |
| Check eligibility | Compliance Adapter (optional) |
| Resolve default | Liquidation Adapter |
| Represent the loan | Position Adapter |
New asset classes, oracle sources, compliance regimes, and liquidation mechanisms are added by writing and registering an adapter, not by touching the engine.
A bug in an adapter is contained to markets that chose it. The engine’s safety guarantees — circuit breaker, gradual liquidation shape, reentrancy protection, defensive output checks — stay stable and centrally audited.
Non-negotiable core vs pluggable
Always in the core engine (regardless of adapters):
- Circuit breaker logic
- Requirement that liquidation returns surplus to the collateral holder
- Reentrancy protection and Checks-Effects-Interactions on every external call (including adapters)
- Defensive verification of adapter outputs (trust model)
- Loan state machine
Pluggable per market (chosen by LP at creation):
- How collateral is held and released
- Where price comes from
- Who’s eligible to borrow or hold a position
- How liquidation is executed
- How the loan position is represented