# Emergency exits

Every strategy deployed within a Shift vault includes a predefined emergency exit plan before any capital is allocated. This plan defines exactly how the system should unwind the position if a serious risk event occurs.

These exits are activated through Shift’s trigger system.

As described in the monitoring section, triggers are automated rules connected to the platform’s monitoring infrastructure. They continuously evaluate key risk indicators — such as liquidity levels, price stability, governance activity, and smart contract behavior — and determine whether predefined risk thresholds have been crossed.

Triggers are categorized into two levels of severity.

Minor triggers signal situations that may increase risk over time. These events typically require human review but do not immediately force a position to close.

Major triggers, on the other hand, indicate conditions that may threaten the safety of the strategy directly. Examples may include:

* confirmed or suspected protocol exploits,
* rapid stablecoin depegging,
* critical liquidity collapse,
* malicious or unexpected governance actions,
* smart contract upgrades that materially alter protocol behavior.

When a major trigger is activated, the system initiates the strategy’s emergency exit procedure automatically.

The goal of an emergency exit is simple: remove exposure to the risk source as quickly as possible. Depending on the strategy, this may involve withdrawing liquidity from a protocol, repaying borrowed assets, converting tokens into more stable assets, or transferring funds back to a vault-level reserve position.

Execution is designed to occur as quickly as the blockchain allows — often within a small number of blocks after the trigger is detected.

To protect execution during volatile situations, transactions may be routed through private relayers rather than the public mempool. This reduces the risk of front-running or MEV (Maximal Extractable Value) attacks that could otherwise worsen exit prices during a market event.

Automation is critical in these scenarios. In decentralized markets, delays of even a few minutes can significantly increase losses. By predefining exit routes and connecting them to automated triggers, Shift reduces reaction time from manual decision-making cycles to blockchain-level execution speed.

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