Scope and risks

OpenAsset is permissionless lending infrastructure, not an underwriting service. Anyone can create a market, but market creators choose the parameters and LPs carry the market’s economic risk. Read these boundaries before you deploy a market or deposit collateral.

v1 scope

See Lending asset scope, Multi-chain architecture, and Deferred / out of scope for details.

Permissionless does not mean risk-free

Permissionless creation removes an asset-listing committee and governance approval step. It does not remove the need to inspect the market’s configuration, adapters, oracle, liquidation path, or legal obligations.

Before using a market, review its:

• Collateral asset and transfer restrictions.
• LTV, APR, duration, grace period, and health-factor settings.
• Oracle type, trust status, staleness behavior, and price coverage.
• Liquidation mechanism and whether settlement is synchronous or asynchronous.
• Position representation and current holder rules.
• Adapter verification and deprecation status.

Adapter trust boundary

Anyone can register an adapter. The registry attaches trust metadata, but the engine calls Verified and Unverified adapters through the same external-call boundary and verifies their outputs in both cases.

A Verified status is a process control: it records that OpenAsset’s review process or audit sign-off has been completed. It is not a guarantee that the adapter is free of bugs. Unverified adapters require explicit risk acknowledgment, and Deprecated adapters cannot be selected for new markets.

Read the adapter trust model and adapter registry.

Compliance boundary

A Compliance Adapter performs point-in-time checks at defined protocol actions:

• Loan origination.
• Position transfer when the position is transferable.

It does not continuously monitor real-world eligibility during a loan. It does not define the issuer’s KYC, AML, jurisdiction, or eligible-investor rules. If a participant’s status changes mid-loan, ongoing enforcement depends on the underlying token issuer’s own controls.

Read Compliance responsibility boundary before launching a permissioned market.

RWA and tokenized-equity risk

A tokenized equity or RWA token is a claim on an issuer. If the issuer becomes insolvent, halts redemptions, or is shut down by a regulator, the token can freeze or go to zero independently of the underlying asset’s price and independently of OpenAsset’s liquidation mechanics.

This is an uninsured, total-loss-possible risk category. It is not something a smart contract, adapter, or circuit breaker can remove. RWA markets also require issuer-specific oracle and compliance decisions, an asynchronous redemption path where applicable, and securities or RWA counsel review before real-user launch.

Read RWA and tokenized equity support and Launch an RWA market.

Liquidation boundaries

All liquidation adapters must account for both sides of the result: value recovered for the LP and surplus returned to the current position holder.

For synchronous liquidations, such as a DEX swap or NFT auction, resolution usually completes in one transaction. For issuer redemption, the holder can repay during LIQUIDATION_CURE. Once the cure window expires and the loan enters LIQUIDATION_SETTLING, the redemption is in flight and repayment is no longer possible.

Read Liquidations and Async liquidation flow.

What is deferred

The v1 architecture deliberately leaves several capabilities out of scope:

• Reputation-based lending tiers.
• Agentic borrowers.
• Non-stablecoin lending assets such as ETH or BTC.
• Solana or other non-EVM deployments.
• Unified cross-chain liquidity and position portability.
• Autonomous adapter verification.

Read Deferred / out of scope for the reasons behind each decision.

Next step

If these boundaries fit your use case, choose a workflow from Choose your path. If you are reviewing protocol risk, continue to the security model.