Guided learning paths
One connected system · three ways through it
Choose a lens. Keep the dependencies.
Web3 Academy turns the seed’s six learning stages into audience-aware routes through one validated concept graph. Each route adds every prerequisite before the concept that needs it; none is a disconnected reading list.
The source begins with finance and later introduces blockchains. These paths retain all six source lenses but move ledger mechanics ahead of on-chain dependencies. The complete order below is generated from the same prerequisite data used by the concept map.
Reusable field guides
Turn the path into an analysis habit
Use these static worksheets with any protocol, position, or case study. They keep the same asset, claim, return, control, and loss vocabulary used throughout the paths.
Path 01 · Beginner
See the system before the jargon
Build a durable mental model of assets, claims, transformations, returns, controls, and losses through a compact set of connected concepts.
- Route length
- 36 concepts
- Structure
- 6 source lenses
- Delivery
- Static HTML
What you should be able to do
- Classify a token as an asset, claim, share, debt, derivative, or control right.
- Trace capital, claim, return, and risk flows through a simple DeFi position.
- Explain who pays a return and who absorbs a loss without relying on protocol slogans.
Path step 01Source lens 1
Finance intuition
Separate resources from promises, then identify the assets, claims, cash flows, and balance-sheet sides in a position.
Beginner lensAsk what is owned directly, what is only a claim, and who owes each promise.
- Asset01
An asset is an economic resource or enforceable right that someone controls and expects to preserve, exchange, or use for value.
Prerequisites: Start here
- Claim02
A claim is a right held by one party to receive assets, income, redemption, control, or another specified benefit from a system or obligor.
Prerequisites: Asset
- Token03
A token is a programmable ledger entry that represents units a blockchain system can track and transfer.
Prerequisites: Asset · Claim
The asset-versus-claim distinction asks whether a token is the resource itself or a right whose value depends on another asset or obligor.
Prerequisites: Asset · Claim · Token
A claim token records a transferable or account-bound entitlement to assets, income, redemption, governance, or another protocol-defined benefit.
Prerequisites: Token · Asset versus claim
A stablecoin is a token designed to track a reference value, usually a currency, through reserves, collateral, redemption, or market incentives.
Prerequisites: Token · Asset versus claim
Path step 02Source lens 5
Blockchain and smart contracts
Learn how keys authorize transactions, ledgers settle state, and contracts make financial rules executable.
Beginner lensExplain who can authorize a state change and what makes that change final enough to rely on.
A blockchain is a replicated ledger and state-transition system whose participants use a consensus protocol to agree on an ordered history.
Prerequisites: Start here
A wallet helps a person or system manage accounts and authorize actions, while cryptographic keys provide the signing authority behind those actions.
Prerequisites: Blockchain
A transaction is an authorized request to change blockchain state, and gas meters the computation and storage resources that executing it consumes.
Prerequisites: Blockchain · Wallets and keys
A smart contract is deployed code and persistent state that applies deterministic rules when a blockchain transaction or another contract calls it.
Prerequisites: Blockchain · Transactions and gas
Settlement records a state change, while finality describes the confidence that the accepted history will not later be replaced under the network's consensus rules.
Prerequisites: Blockchain · Transactions and gas
Path step 03Source lens 2
Money, banking, and lending
Follow deposits, debt, collateral, rates, solvency, and the conditions that move a loan toward liquidation.
Beginner lensFollow the lender, borrower, collateral, debt claim, interest payer, and first loss absorber.
Collateral is an asset or claim pledged under rules that let a creditor restrict, seize, or sell it when an obligation becomes unsafe or unpaid.
Prerequisites: Asset · Asset versus claim
A lending pool aggregates supplied assets, issues supplier claims, and makes available liquidity borrowable under interest and risk rules.
Prerequisites: Claim token · Asset versus claim
Loan-to-value is the ratio of debt value to collateral value under a stated price, eligibility, and aggregation model.
Prerequisites: Collateral · Lending pool
A health factor is a protocol-defined ratio or score that summarizes how much liquidation-adjusted collateral supports a borrower's debt.
Prerequisites: Loan-to-value
Path step 04Source lens 3
Exchanges and liquidity
Trace inventory, quotes, execution, arbitrage, and the costs borne by traders and liquidity providers.
Beginner lensFollow the tokens through one trade and name why the quote can move before execution finishes.
A decentralized exchange is a protocol that coordinates token trades through blockchain transactions rather than a single custodial exchange ledger.
Prerequisites: Token · Asset versus claim
A liquidity pool holds assets under shared accounting and trading rules so participants can exchange against available reserves.
Prerequisites: Token · Asset versus claim
- Swap18
A swap exchanges a specified amount of one asset for another under a quoted route, price rule, fee, and settlement condition.
Prerequisites: Token · Decentralized exchange
An automated market maker is a trading mechanism that accepts or rejects exchanges according to a programmed rule over market state and liquidity.
Prerequisites: Decentralized exchange · Liquidity pool
Path step 05Source lens 4
Derivatives and hedging
Read payoff claims, leverage, margin, funding, and liquidation as explicit transfers of exposure and loss.
Beginner lensIdentify the exposure being transferred and what adverse price move creates a loss.
A perpetual future is a margined derivative that gives long or short price exposure without transferring the underlying asset or having a fixed expiry.
Prerequisites: Asset versus claim · Decentralized exchange
Path step 06Source lens 6
DeFi systems and protocol security
Compose primitives into staking, vaults, governance, oracle, bridge, and risk systems without hiding trust boundaries.
Beginner lensConnect the claims in a product back to their return source, controls, and failure paths.
Net asset value is the value of a product's recognized assets minus its recognized liabilities at a stated valuation time and in a stated reporting unit.
Prerequisites: Asset versus claim
- Strategy22
A strategy is an ordered set of financial operations, controls, and rebalancing rules intended to produce a stated outcome from underlying assets and primitives.
Prerequisites: Asset versus claim
- Bridge23
A bridge carries messages or asset representations between blockchains by verifying a source-chain event and authorizing a corresponding destination-chain action.
Prerequisites: Blockchain · Smart contract · Settlement and finality
Integration risk is the possibility that individually functioning components interact through incompatible assumptions, interfaces, units, callbacks, or lifecycle rules.
Prerequisites: Strategy
Lending liquidation repays or assumes unsafe debt and transfers or sells collateral under protocol rules to restore solvency or limit further loss.
Prerequisites: Health factor · Decentralized exchange
- Bad debt26
Bad debt is borrower debt that remains after recoverable collateral and ordinary repayment sources are insufficient or unavailable.
Prerequisites: Lending liquidation · Lending pool
Market information is the set of prices, volumes, rates, liquidity observations, timestamps, and reference data used to value or control financial positions.
Prerequisites: Blockchain
Multisignature control requires a configured threshold of authorized signers to approve an account action before that action can execute.
Prerequisites: Wallets and keys · Smart contract
Governance is the set of decision and execution rules that determines who can change protocol parameters, code, assets, fees, treasury use, or emergency state.
Prerequisites: Smart contract · Multisignature control
- Oracle30
An oracle turns selected off-chain or cross-system observations into an on-chain value that smart contracts can read under explicit update and trust rules.
Prerequisites: Smart contract · Market information
Proof of stake selects and disciplines consensus participants using assets placed at risk under a network's validation rules.
Prerequisites: Asset
Solvency risk is the possibility that a system's realizable assets and loss-absorbing resources are insufficient to satisfy its recognized liabilities and claims.
Prerequisites: Claim · Bad debt
A validator is a bonded consensus participant that performs protocol duties with signing keys while stake and rewards remain subject to network rules.
Prerequisites: Proof of stake
Staking return compensates validation and capital-at-risk through protocol issuance, transaction fees, service payments, or incentives minus costs and losses.
Prerequisites: Validator
Liquid staking pools or delegates staked assets and issues a transferable claim whose value reflects the protocol's controlled stake, rewards, fees, and losses.
Prerequisites: Staking return · Claim token
A vault share is a proportional claim whose asset value depends on the vault's recognized net assets, eligible share supply, fees, rounding, and redemption rules.
Prerequisites: Claim token · Net asset value
Path 02 · Practitioner
Operate through parameters and scenarios
Connect market and protocol parameters to balance sheets, edge cases, liquidity constraints, and concrete loss-allocation scenarios.
- Route length
- 62 concepts
- Structure
- 6 source lenses
- Delivery
- Static HTML
What you should be able to do
- Reconcile position value, leverage, fees, rates, and ownership before and after an action.
- Stress a composition across price, liquidity, oracle, funding, and governance scenarios.
- Distinguish productive return from transfers, issuance, leverage, and temporary subsidy.
Path step 01Source lens 1
Finance intuition
Separate resources from promises, then identify the assets, claims, cash flows, and balance-sheet sides in a position.
Practitioner lensReconcile units, valuation inputs, liabilities, NAV, fee bases, and the before/after balance sheet.
- Asset01
An asset is an economic resource or enforceable right that someone controls and expects to preserve, exchange, or use for value.
Prerequisites: Start here
- Claim02
A claim is a right held by one party to receive assets, income, redemption, control, or another specified benefit from a system or obligor.
Prerequisites: Asset
- Token03
A token is a programmable ledger entry that represents units a blockchain system can track and transfer.
Prerequisites: Asset · Claim
The asset-versus-claim distinction asks whether a token is the resource itself or a right whose value depends on another asset or obligor.
Prerequisites: Asset · Claim · Token
A claim token records a transferable or account-bound entitlement to assets, income, redemption, governance, or another protocol-defined benefit.
Prerequisites: Token · Asset versus claim
A real-world asset in DeFi is a token or position linked to an off-chain asset, payment stream, legal right, or regulated financial instrument.
Prerequisites: Token · Asset versus claim
A wrapped asset is a token representation designed to make another asset usable through a different token interface, contract, or blockchain.
Prerequisites: Token · Asset versus claim
- Fee08
A fee transfers assets, shares, or economic value from users or a product to a named recipient under an explicit charging base, rate, time rule, and settlement method.
Prerequisites: Asset versus claim
Path step 02Source lens 5
Blockchain and smart contracts
Learn how keys authorize transactions, ledgers settle state, and contracts make financial rules executable.
Practitioner lensMap operational permissions, settlement assumptions, transaction ordering, and recovery authority.
A blockchain is a replicated ledger and state-transition system whose participants use a consensus protocol to agree on an ordered history.
Prerequisites: Start here
A wallet helps a person or system manage accounts and authorize actions, while cryptographic keys provide the signing authority behind those actions.
Prerequisites: Blockchain
A transaction is an authorized request to change blockchain state, and gas meters the computation and storage resources that executing it consumes.
Prerequisites: Blockchain · Wallets and keys
A smart contract is deployed code and persistent state that applies deterministic rules when a blockchain transaction or another contract calls it.
Prerequisites: Blockchain · Transactions and gas
Settlement records a state change, while finality describes the confidence that the accepted history will not later be replaced under the network's consensus rules.
Prerequisites: Blockchain · Transactions and gas
Path step 03Source lens 2
Money, banking, and lending
Follow deposits, debt, collateral, rates, solvency, and the conditions that move a loan toward liquidation.
Practitioner lensStress LTV, utilization, interest, liquidation incentives, liquidity, and bad-debt allocation.
Collateral is an asset or claim pledged under rules that let a creditor restrict, seize, or sell it when an obligation becomes unsafe or unpaid.
Prerequisites: Asset · Asset versus claim
A lending pool aggregates supplied assets, issues supplier claims, and makes available liquidity borrowable under interest and risk rules.
Prerequisites: Claim token · Asset versus claim
Loan-to-value is the ratio of debt value to collateral value under a stated price, eligibility, and aggregation model.
Prerequisites: Collateral · Lending pool
A health factor is a protocol-defined ratio or score that summarizes how much liquidation-adjusted collateral supports a borrower's debt.
Prerequisites: Loan-to-value
Utilization compares borrowed liquidity with supplied liquidity, while a rate model maps pool state and parameters to borrower and supplier interest.
Prerequisites: Lending pool
Path step 04Source lens 3
Exchanges and liquidity
Trace inventory, quotes, execution, arbitrage, and the costs borne by traders and liquidity providers.
Practitioner lensCompare quoted and executed prices, inventory risk, depth, fees, slippage, and arbitrage paths.
A decentralized exchange is a protocol that coordinates token trades through blockchain transactions rather than a single custodial exchange ledger.
Prerequisites: Token · Asset versus claim
A liquidity pool holds assets under shared accounting and trading rules so participants can exchange against available reserves.
Prerequisites: Token · Asset versus claim
A liquidity provider commits assets to a market-making system and receives a position whose value changes with inventory, fees, prices, and accounting rules.
Prerequisites: Liquidity pool · Asset versus claim
- Swap22
A swap exchanges a specified amount of one asset for another under a quoted route, price rule, fee, and settlement condition.
Prerequisites: Token · Decentralized exchange
An automated market maker is a trading mechanism that accepts or rejects exchanges according to a programmed rule over market state and liquidity.
Prerequisites: Decentralized exchange · Liquidity pool
- Slippage24
Slippage is the difference between a reference or expected trade price and the price at which the trade actually settles.
Prerequisites: Swap
Price impact is the change in a venue's quoted or marginal price caused by the trade itself relative to the venue's available depth.
Prerequisites: Swap · Automated market maker
Arbitrage trades related markets when their executable prices differ enough to cover fees, gas, latency, financing, and execution risk.
Prerequisites: Decentralized exchange · Price impact
Impermanent loss is the value difference between an AMM liquidity position and a stated hold benchmark after relative asset prices change.
Prerequisites: Liquidity provider · Automated market maker · Arbitrage
Path step 05Source lens 4
Derivatives and hedging
Read payoff claims, leverage, margin, funding, and liquidation as explicit transfers of exposure and loss.
Practitioner lensTrace margin, mark-to-market exposure, funding transfers, hedge error, and liquidation thresholds.
A perpetual future is a margined derivative that gives long or short price exposure without transferring the underlying asset or having a fixed expiry.
Prerequisites: Asset versus claim · Decentralized exchange
A funding rate determines periodic transfers between long and short perpetual positions under a venue-specific price-alignment or skew rule.
Prerequisites: Perpetual future
- Option30
An option gives its holder a contingent payoff or exercise right linked to an underlying price, strike, direction, size, and expiry.
Prerequisites: Asset versus claim · Decentralized exchange
- Hedging31
Hedging adds an offsetting position intended to reduce a specified risk while introducing basis, cost, execution, counterparty, and management risks.
Prerequisites: Perpetual future · Option · Swap
Path step 06Source lens 6
DeFi systems and protocol security
Compose primitives into staking, vaults, governance, oracle, bridge, and risk systems without hiding trust boundaries.
Practitioner lensTest a composed product under oracle, governance, accounting, bridge, and integration failures.
Net asset value is the value of a product's recognized assets minus its recognized liabilities at a stated valuation time and in a stated reporting unit.
Prerequisites: Asset versus claim
- Strategy33
A strategy is an ordered set of financial operations, controls, and rebalancing rules intended to produce a stated outcome from underlying assets and primitives.
Prerequisites: Asset versus claim
Accounting risk is the possibility that balances, shares, debts, fees, profits, losses, or valuations no longer represent the system's actual assets and obligations.
Prerequisites: Net asset value
- Bridge35
A bridge carries messages or asset representations between blockchains by verifying a source-chain event and authorizing a corresponding destination-chain action.
Prerequisites: Blockchain · Smart contract · Settlement and finality
Bridge risk is the possibility that cross-chain messages or asset representations become unauthorized, duplicated, delayed, censored, or no longer backed.
Prerequisites: Wrapped asset
A flash loan gives a contract temporary control of assets that must be returned with any fee before the same transaction can succeed.
Prerequisites: Lending pool · Swap
- Fund38
A fund is a pooled investment product defined by an objective, eligible assets, management and control rules, valuation, fees, redemptions, and profit-and-loss allocation.
Prerequisites: Strategy · Net asset value · Fee
Lending liquidation repays or assumes unsafe debt and transfers or sells collateral under protocol rules to restore solvency or limit further loss.
Prerequisites: Health factor · Decentralized exchange
- Bad debt40
Bad debt is borrower debt that remains after recoverable collateral and ordinary repayment sources are insufficient or unavailable.
Prerequisites: Lending liquidation · Lending pool
Liquidity risk is the possibility that an asset or claim cannot be traded, redeemed, borrowed, or withdrawn in the needed size and time without unacceptable loss.
Prerequisites: Liquidity pool
Market information is the set of prices, volumes, rates, liquidity observations, timestamps, and reference data used to value or control financial positions.
Prerequisites: Blockchain
- MEV risk43
MEV risk is the possibility that transaction inclusion, exclusion, or ordering transfers value away from users or changes whether their intended state transition succeeds.
Prerequisites: Swap · Arbitrage
Multisignature control requires a configured threshold of authorized signers to approve an account action before that action can execute.
Prerequisites: Wallets and keys · Smart contract
Governance is the set of decision and execution rules that determines who can change protocol parameters, code, assets, fees, treasury use, or emergency state.
Prerequisites: Smart contract · Multisignature control
DeFi insurance or cover exchanges a premium for a conditional payout claim tied to specified loss events, exclusions, limits, assessment, and available capital.
Prerequisites: Asset versus claim · Governance
- Oracle47
An oracle turns selected off-chain or cross-system observations into an on-chain value that smart contracts can read under explicit update and trust rules.
Prerequisites: Smart contract · Market information
Oracle risk is the possibility that a protocol acts on a price or external fact that is stale, manipulated, mis-scaled, unavailable, or inappropriate for that decision.
Prerequisites: Collateral · Net asset value
Proof of stake selects and disciplines consensus participants using assets placed at risk under a network's validation rules.
Prerequisites: Asset
A protocol treasury is a governed pool of assets used for operations, development, incentives, risk backstops, grants, or other collective purposes.
Prerequisites: Governance · Multisignature control
Solvency risk is the possibility that a system's realizable assets and loss-absorbing resources are insufficient to satisfy its recognized liabilities and claims.
Prerequisites: Claim · Bad debt
Tokenomics describes how a token's issuance, distribution, supply changes, utility, control rights, and sinks shape economic behavior over time.
Prerequisites: Token · Governance
An incentive is a payment, fee rule, discount, penalty, or token allocation designed to make a participant choose behavior the system needs.
Prerequisites: Tokenomics
A validator is a bonded consensus participant that performs protocol duties with signing keys while stake and rewards remain subject to network rules.
Prerequisites: Proof of stake
- Slashing55
Slashing destroys or confiscates stake and can force validator exit when provable behavior violates a proof-of-stake network's severe-fault rules.
Prerequisites: Validator
Restaking subjects staked or staking-derived assets to additional service commitments in exchange for possible payments and additional loss conditions.
Prerequisites: Validator · Slashing
Staking return compensates validation and capital-at-risk through protocol issuance, transaction fees, service payments, or incentives minus costs and losses.
Prerequisites: Validator
Liquid staking pools or delegates staked assets and issues a transferable claim whose value reflects the protocol's controlled stake, rewards, fees, and losses.
Prerequisites: Staking return · Claim token
- Vault59
A vault is an on-chain asset container that accepts or controls assets, applies accounting and access rules, and may deploy capital through one or more strategies.
Prerequisites: Strategy · Net asset value · Fee
A vault share is a proportional claim whose asset value depends on the vault's recognized net assets, eligible share supply, fees, rounding, and redemption rules.
Prerequisites: Claim token · Net asset value
ERC-4626 standardizes an ERC-20 share interface for vaults that accept one underlying ERC-20 asset, while leaving strategy, valuation, controls, and safety to each implementation.
Prerequisites: Vault · Vault share
A yield strategy deploys assets through one or more financial primitives to seek named cash flows or asset growth while accepting explicit costs and loss paths.
Prerequisites: Strategy
Path 03 · Engineer or auditor
Reason from state transitions and trust
Turn financial intent into state machines, invariants, external assumptions, privilege boundaries, and cross-protocol attack traces.
- Route length
- 52 concepts
- Structure
- 6 source lenses
- Delivery
- Static HTML
What you should be able to do
- Translate an economic rule into explicit state transitions, units, rounding, and invariants.
- Map authorization, oracle, callback, upgrade, bridge, and integration trust boundaries.
- Trace how a local accounting or control failure can propagate through composed claims.
Path step 01Source lens 1
Finance intuition
Separate resources from promises, then identify the assets, claims, cash flows, and balance-sheet sides in a position.
Engineer or auditor lensTurn each asset and claim into typed state with explicit units, conservation rules, and rounding policy.
- Asset01
An asset is an economic resource or enforceable right that someone controls and expects to preserve, exchange, or use for value.
Prerequisites: Start here
- Claim02
A claim is a right held by one party to receive assets, income, redemption, control, or another specified benefit from a system or obligor.
Prerequisites: Asset
- Token03
A token is a programmable ledger entry that represents units a blockchain system can track and transfer.
Prerequisites: Asset · Claim
The asset-versus-claim distinction asks whether a token is the resource itself or a right whose value depends on another asset or obligor.
Prerequisites: Asset · Claim · Token
A claim token records a transferable or account-bound entitlement to assets, income, redemption, governance, or another protocol-defined benefit.
Prerequisites: Token · Asset versus claim
A wrapped asset is a token representation designed to make another asset usable through a different token interface, contract, or blockchain.
Prerequisites: Token · Asset versus claim
- Fee07
A fee transfers assets, shares, or economic value from users or a product to a named recipient under an explicit charging base, rate, time rule, and settlement method.
Prerequisites: Asset versus claim
Path step 02Source lens 5
Blockchain and smart contracts
Learn how keys authorize transactions, ledgers settle state, and contracts make financial rules executable.
Engineer or auditor lensInspect authorization, state-transition preconditions, ordering, finality, upgrades, and key compromise.
A blockchain is a replicated ledger and state-transition system whose participants use a consensus protocol to agree on an ordered history.
Prerequisites: Start here
A wallet helps a person or system manage accounts and authorize actions, while cryptographic keys provide the signing authority behind those actions.
Prerequisites: Blockchain
A transaction is an authorized request to change blockchain state, and gas meters the computation and storage resources that executing it consumes.
Prerequisites: Blockchain · Wallets and keys
A smart contract is deployed code and persistent state that applies deterministic rules when a blockchain transaction or another contract calls it.
Prerequisites: Blockchain · Transactions and gas
Settlement records a state change, while finality describes the confidence that the accepted history will not later be replaced under the network's consensus rules.
Prerequisites: Blockchain · Transactions and gas
Path step 03Source lens 2
Money, banking, and lending
Follow deposits, debt, collateral, rates, solvency, and the conditions that move a loan toward liquidation.
Engineer or auditor lensSpecify debt monotonicity, collateral bounds, oracle assumptions, liquidation caps, and insolvency states.
Collateral is an asset or claim pledged under rules that let a creditor restrict, seize, or sell it when an obligation becomes unsafe or unpaid.
Prerequisites: Asset · Asset versus claim
A lending pool aggregates supplied assets, issues supplier claims, and makes available liquidity borrowable under interest and risk rules.
Prerequisites: Claim token · Asset versus claim
Loan-to-value is the ratio of debt value to collateral value under a stated price, eligibility, and aggregation model.
Prerequisites: Collateral · Lending pool
A health factor is a protocol-defined ratio or score that summarizes how much liquidation-adjusted collateral supports a borrower's debt.
Prerequisites: Loan-to-value
Path step 04Source lens 3
Exchanges and liquidity
Trace inventory, quotes, execution, arbitrage, and the costs borne by traders and liquidity providers.
Engineer or auditor lensSpecify reserve invariants, minimum output, callback trust, price manipulation windows, and MEV exposure.
A decentralized exchange is a protocol that coordinates token trades through blockchain transactions rather than a single custodial exchange ledger.
Prerequisites: Token · Asset versus claim
A liquidity pool holds assets under shared accounting and trading rules so participants can exchange against available reserves.
Prerequisites: Token · Asset versus claim
- Swap19
A swap exchanges a specified amount of one asset for another under a quoted route, price rule, fee, and settlement condition.
Prerequisites: Token · Decentralized exchange
An automated market maker is a trading mechanism that accepts or rejects exchanges according to a programmed rule over market state and liquidity.
Prerequisites: Decentralized exchange · Liquidity pool
Price impact is the change in a venue's quoted or marginal price caused by the trade itself relative to the venue's available depth.
Prerequisites: Swap · Automated market maker
Arbitrage trades related markets when their executable prices differ enough to cover fees, gas, latency, financing, and execution risk.
Prerequisites: Decentralized exchange · Price impact
Path step 05Source lens 4
Derivatives and hedging
Read payoff claims, leverage, margin, funding, and liquidation as explicit transfers of exposure and loss.
Engineer or auditor lensSpecify margin transitions, funding settlement, payoff accounting, liquidation ordering, and loss bounds.
A perpetual future is a margined derivative that gives long or short price exposure without transferring the underlying asset or having a fixed expiry.
Prerequisites: Asset versus claim · Decentralized exchange
Derivatives margin is collateral assigned to support open positions, absorb losses, and satisfy initial and maintenance requirements.
Prerequisites: Collateral · Perpetual future
Derivatives liquidation reduces, closes, or transfers positions when account equity no longer satisfies maintenance-margin rules.
Prerequisites: Derivatives margin · Decentralized exchange
Path step 06Source lens 6
DeFi systems and protocol security
Compose primitives into staking, vaults, governance, oracle, bridge, and risk systems without hiding trust boundaries.
Engineer or auditor lensTrace cross-contract calls, privileged control, external data, claim accounting, and propagating attack paths.
Net asset value is the value of a product's recognized assets minus its recognized liabilities at a stated valuation time and in a stated reporting unit.
Prerequisites: Asset versus claim
- Strategy27
A strategy is an ordered set of financial operations, controls, and rebalancing rules intended to produce a stated outcome from underlying assets and primitives.
Prerequisites: Asset versus claim
Accounting risk is the possibility that balances, shares, debts, fees, profits, losses, or valuations no longer represent the system's actual assets and obligations.
Prerequisites: Net asset value
- Bridge29
A bridge carries messages or asset representations between blockchains by verifying a source-chain event and authorizing a corresponding destination-chain action.
Prerequisites: Blockchain · Smart contract · Settlement and finality
Bridge risk is the possibility that cross-chain messages or asset representations become unauthorized, duplicated, delayed, censored, or no longer backed.
Prerequisites: Wrapped asset
A flash loan gives a contract temporary control of assets that must be returned with any fee before the same transaction can succeed.
Prerequisites: Lending pool · Swap
Governance risk is the possibility that decision rights, privileged roles, voting, delegation, or emergency powers change a protocol against users' expected rules.
Prerequisites: Start here
Integration risk is the possibility that individually functioning components interact through incompatible assumptions, interfaces, units, callbacks, or lifecycle rules.
Prerequisites: Strategy
Lending liquidation repays or assumes unsafe debt and transfers or sells collateral under protocol rules to restore solvency or limit further loss.
Prerequisites: Health factor · Decentralized exchange
- Bad debt35
Bad debt is borrower debt that remains after recoverable collateral and ordinary repayment sources are insufficient or unavailable.
Prerequisites: Lending liquidation · Lending pool
Liquidity risk is the possibility that an asset or claim cannot be traded, redeemed, borrowed, or withdrawn in the needed size and time without unacceptable loss.
Prerequisites: Liquidity pool
Market information is the set of prices, volumes, rates, liquidity observations, timestamps, and reference data used to value or control financial positions.
Prerequisites: Blockchain
- MEV risk38
MEV risk is the possibility that transaction inclusion, exclusion, or ordering transfers value away from users or changes whether their intended state transition succeeds.
Prerequisites: Swap · Arbitrage
Multisignature control requires a configured threshold of authorized signers to approve an account action before that action can execute.
Prerequisites: Wallets and keys · Smart contract
Governance is the set of decision and execution rules that determines who can change protocol parameters, code, assets, fees, treasury use, or emergency state.
Prerequisites: Smart contract · Multisignature control
- Oracle41
An oracle turns selected off-chain or cross-system observations into an on-chain value that smart contracts can read under explicit update and trust rules.
Prerequisites: Smart contract · Market information
Oracle risk is the possibility that a protocol acts on a price or external fact that is stale, manipulated, mis-scaled, unavailable, or inappropriate for that decision.
Prerequisites: Collateral · Net asset value
Proof of stake selects and disciplines consensus participants using assets placed at risk under a network's validation rules.
Prerequisites: Asset
Smart-contract risk is the possibility that deployed code, configuration, or execution behavior violates the financial rules users rely on.
Prerequisites: Start here
Solvency risk is the possibility that a system's realizable assets and loss-absorbing resources are insufficient to satisfy its recognized liabilities and claims.
Prerequisites: Claim · Bad debt
Upgrade risk is the possibility that changing contract logic, storage, configuration, or dependencies corrupts state or changes users' financial rules.
Prerequisites: Smart-contract risk
A validator is a bonded consensus participant that performs protocol duties with signing keys while stake and rewards remain subject to network rules.
Prerequisites: Proof of stake
- Slashing48
Slashing destroys or confiscates stake and can force validator exit when provable behavior violates a proof-of-stake network's severe-fault rules.
Prerequisites: Validator
Restaking subjects staked or staking-derived assets to additional service commitments in exchange for possible payments and additional loss conditions.
Prerequisites: Validator · Slashing
- Vault50
A vault is an on-chain asset container that accepts or controls assets, applies accounting and access rules, and may deploy capital through one or more strategies.
Prerequisites: Strategy · Net asset value · Fee
A vault share is a proportional claim whose asset value depends on the vault's recognized net assets, eligible share supply, fees, rounding, and redemption rules.
Prerequisites: Claim token · Net asset value
ERC-4626 standardizes an ERC-20 share interface for vaults that accept one underlying ERC-20 asset, while leaving strategy, valuation, controls, and safety to each implementation.
Prerequisites: Vault · Vault share
Canonical sequence
The complete prerequisite order
This deterministic order contains all 70 validated concepts exactly once. Editorial stage priorities choose among concepts that are ready; prerequisite edges always win.
Inspect the complete concept sequence
Finance intuition
Blockchain and smart contracts
Money, banking, and lending
Exchanges and liquidity
Derivatives and hedging
DeFi systems and protocol security
- Net asset value
- Strategy
- Accounting risk
- Bridge
- Bridge risk
- Flash loan
- Fund
- Governance risk
- Integration risk
- Lending liquidation
- Bad debt
- Liquidity risk
- Market information
- MEV risk
- Multisignature control
- Governance
- DeFi insurance and cover
- Oracle
- Oracle risk
- Proof of stake
- Protocol treasury
- Smart-contract risk
- Solvency risk
- Tokenomics
- Incentive
- Upgrade risk
- Validator
- Slashing
- Restaking
- Staking return
- Liquid staking
- Vault
- Vault share
- ERC-4626 tokenized vault
- Yield strategy