As institutional adoption grows and liquidity becomes more selective, risk management increasingly determines which opportunities are scalable and sustainable. 

That shift is driving adoption of vault-based architectures that separate product from policy. The base protocol stays neutral, and independent curators configure the risk profile and strategy that users opt into.

So what does a risk curator actually do?

In practice, curators set and maintain the guardrails that determine whether a vault or market can scale safely. These include collateral selection, LTV and liquidation parameters, oracle and pricing configurations, caps, and operational controls. Depending on the platform, curators may also make strategy-level decisions, such as which markets are enabled and how liquidity is allocated across them.

Crucially, curator models are typically non-custodial. Curators can adjust parameters and allocations, but they cannot withdraw user funds. That shifts the trust surface away from custody and toward decision quality, monitoring discipline, and incentive alignment.