Defaults and recovery

Defaults happen. Networks fail. People disappear. If your system assumes ideal behavior, it is not a system, it is a demo. Design for continuity: clear state machines, timeouts, replacement flows, dispute resolution, and transparent ledger semantics. Recovery mechanisms should activate automatically. Manual intervention should be the exception, not the rule. Strong systems make failure boring. When a participant defaults, the system moves to the next state without drama. When networks partition, transactions queue and sync when connections restore. When timeouts expire, fallback procedures execute. Users should not feel panic during failures—they should feel procedure. Every state has a defined next action. Every timeout has a consequence. Every default has a recovery path. This is what separates production infrastructure from prototypes. In financial systems, defaults are not edge cases—they are operating conditions. Build systems where defaults are expected, managed, and resolved without destroying trust. That is how you build resilience.