DeFi & governance
Contagion: one asset, several dependent products
Protocols can inherit risk through collateral, liquidity and shared counterparties.
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In this article
A token can serve as collateral in a lender, backing for another asset and liquidity in a trading pool. If its value or redeemability fails, several products can be affected even when their own contracts behave as designed.
Draw the financial dependencies
List the claims and obligations in each direction. A receipt token may represent a deposit elsewhere; a yield token may depend on that receipt; a leveraged position may depend on both. Counting each layer as independent value can overstate the capital in the system.
Also identify common infrastructure and counterparties. Separate protocols can rely on the same issuer, custodian, oracle or administrator. A review of each component in isolation can miss that concentration.
The useful stress question is what happens if one dependency becomes illiquid, stops redeeming or provides an unusable price. Explain the failure path without assuming every loss is a hack. Stablecoin backing, price feeds and bridges provide common starting points.
Sources
- MASTR: Crypto Survival Guide, four original panels
- MASTR Research: From Decentralisation to Attention Capture, July 2026
Research checked 5 September 2026. Historical cases retain the date and legal status of the cited record.