---
title: "Main Risks"
description: "What Overlayer improves over custodial stablecoin usage, and which risks it does not remove: issuer, external venue, smart contract, bridge and systemic risk."
keywords:
  - "risk"
  - "issuer risk"
  - "smart contract risk"
  - "bridge risk"
  - "systemic risk"
canonical_url: https://docs.overlayer.fi/start_here/main_risks
md_url: https://docs.overlayer.fi/start_here/main_risks.md
last_updated: 2026-05-05T15:42:56.000Z
---

# Main Risks

> What Overlayer improves over custodial stablecoin usage, and which risks it does not remove: issuer, external venue, smart contract, bridge and systemic risk.

Using Overlayer still means taking real risks, but the protocol is designed to reduce hidden complexity, isolate failure domains, and mitigate selected risks through deterministic rules, full backing, modular architecture, and constrained control surfaces.

Relative to direct custodial stablecoin usage and more complex yield architectures, Overlayer improves several structural properties of on-chain stable value.

### What Overlayer improves

* On-chain accounting clarity
* Separation of settlement and yield
* No leverage
* Explicit optionality of extensions
* Deterministic protocol-native actions

### What Overlayer does not remove

* Underlying issuer risk
* External venue risk
* Smart contract risk
* Bridge risk
* Systemic risk