When decentralized infrastructure fails, institutions still have obligations.
Clients expect continuity. Counterparties expect clarity. Capital expects stability.
This guide outlines how institutional operators can prepare for outages, exploits, governance breakdowns, or infrastructure failures in protocols they rely on.
A practical framework for institutional continuity when protocol dependencies break:
Risk classification by failure type: bridge downtime, signer loss, governance failure
Internal controls for escalation, fallback execution, and dependency containment
Recovery strategies for custody, infrastructure, and staking integrations
Monitoring and counterparty engagement plans for decentralized systems
Examples of controls institutions can implement to reduce disruption
You don't need to control the system to be exposed to its failure.
When a multisig breaks quorum, or a governance vote stalls, or a bridge fails finality, your organization is impacted — whether or not it had visibility.
This guide helps institutions map that risk and design recovery paths before disruption escalates.
Cantina supports institutions engaging with decentralized systems by delivering structured audits, dependency assessments, and recovery planning frameworks.
We help operational and custody stakeholders prepare for protocol failure — not after it happens, but before it matters.
If your organization is preparing for due diligence, integration, or regulated engagement, we can help apply this framework to your architecture and operations. Cantina scopes institutional reviews that cover both code and resilience.
