The DeFi Walkaway Test: Can Users Actually Leave?

Duration: NaN:NaN:NaN

Speaker: Diego Siqueira

Type: Talk

Expertise: Some familiarity with the topic

Event: Devcon

Date: Nov 2026

"The contracts still exist" is a weak test. Users must find positions, construct calls, obtain data, and verify exits without the operator. I'm building an exit harness for 15+ major DeFi protocols. Each test starts with a historical position and removes the frontend, company API, hosted indexer, relayer, and default RPC one dependency at a time. Public artifacts must find the position and return its assets. This talk presents the measured results: exit success, recovery time, required infrastructure, and value exposed to each dependency, separating inconvenience from lost agency, and catching immutable contracts that rely on mutable services. I show real failures and the small repairs that fix them: ABIs, deployment records, permissionless automation, local indexes, fallback interfaces. The harness, raw data, and dependency graphs will be public before Devcon. Teams can run the test pre-launch, reviewers can verify claims, and users learn whether self-custody includes an exit.