> For the complete documentation index, see [llms.txt](https://docs.usegimbal.app/llms.txt). Markdown versions of documentation pages are available by appending `.md` to page URLs; this page is available as [Markdown](https://docs.usegimbal.app/orientation/eight-rules.md). # Eight rules the protocol keeps Eight fixed constraints that every contract, service and screen in Gimbal has to satisfy before it ships. Nothing in Gimbal is novel for its own sake. The protocol borrows the pieces of on-chain lending that have survived contact with real money and discards the rest. From Morpho Blue it takes isolated markets, indifference to which oracle is used, and a core kept as small as possible. From Blend and the NFTfi line of designs it takes offers signed off-chain and settled on-chain, and from Blend specifically it takes the auction that rolls a loan into a new term. Those borrowings are held to the eight rules below. When a proposed change breaks one of them, the change is dropped, not the rule. ## 1. Everything is in view State changes emit events, all of them. The book of offers is public too: the signed messages are enough for anyone to rebuild it. Four things are open to any visitor without a sign-in. The loan registry, named the Explorer on the platform. The risk page, named Telemetry, with its live readouts of protocol-wide statistics and of the parameters currently in force. The status of the oracles. And the governance log. The contracts, the relayer, the indexer and the keeper bots are all open source and build reproducibly. [What anyone can check](/transparency/what-you-can-check.md) lists the commitments one by one. ## 2. Risk stays with whoever took it Each lender slice is its own position. Each pairing of a collateral asset with a loan asset is its own market configuration. So when something fails, whether the asset was weak, the borrower was bad, or the lending decision was poor, the loss stays with the party who chose that exposure. Should bad debt ever arise, it lands on whichever lender priced that loan, and it spreads to nobody else. ## 3. Overcollateralised, in escrow, and worth more than the debt Collateral must be liquid. It must have an oracle price. It must be native to the chain, and it must sit in the escrow contract. Nothing else qualifies: no uncollateralised loans, and no collateral that lives off-chain. A failed loan is resolved by a liquidation auction, which any address is free to open. No court has a role in recovery. ## 4. Value the token in escrow, not a proxy for it The only thing the protocol prices is the token it actually holds. Wrappers, derived exchange rates and stand-in assets get no price at all. Edel Finance lost funds in July 2026 when a wrapper's exchange rate was driven to 78 times its underlying, even though the oracle reported correct prices throughout. This one rule would have stopped that loss. ## 5. No custody until origination A signed offer is only a message until it is matched. Funds move at origination, against an approval the party has granted the desk beforehand, and never at any other point. Unmatched lender capital is never held by Gimbal. A lender who wants that capital working can park it in a Morpho vault on the whitelist, under an allowance of the lender's own choosing. ## 6. Prices are negotiated and terms are fixed The protocol has no utilisation curve anywhere. The borrower states the most they will pay, each lender states the least they will accept, and the contract originates a loan wherever those overlap. A term is fixed, from 7 to 90 days, and when it ends a rollover auction runs. A lender therefore knows to the day when their capital comes back, and a borrower is never hit by a sudden change in rate. ## 7. Immutable at the core, adjustable at the edge TermDesk, where loans originate, is a single minimal contract in the mould of Morpho Blue, and it cannot be upgraded. The tunable values live elsewhere: LTV tiers, haircuts, fee rates, the whitelist of vaults and the approved attestation issuers are held by PolicyBoard, a separate contract that a timelocked multisig governs, and every change to it emits an event. The price feed for each token and its staleness bounds are configured on PriceSentinel by the same governance owner. Two things can never be paused: repayment, and the return of collateral once a loan is repaid. ## 8. Built for this chain and no other Robinhood Chain runs a single sequencer, publishes equity prices 24/5 with market-status flags, and issues Stock Tokens that carry no transfer restriction of their own. The protocol is shaped around each of those facts. After a sequencer outage it grants a grace period, and it supports forced inclusion from L1. While the underlying market is closed, it applies haircuts keyed to the market session. And because the tokens carry no allowlist of their own, Gimbal enforces eligibility at its own boundary. --- # Agent Instructions This documentation is published with GitBook. GitBook is the documentation platform designed so that both humans and AI agents can read, navigate, and reason over technical content effectively. Learn more at gitbook.com. ## Querying This Documentation If you need additional information that is not directly available in this page, you can query the documentation dynamically by asking a question. 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