Liquidator Incentive
A liquidator incentive is the profit opportunity offered to market participants to identify and liquidate undercollateralized positions. Because liquidating a position requires capital and carries risk, the protocol must provide a financial reward, usually in the form of a discount on the collateral being seized.
Liquidators are essential for the health of decentralized finance protocols, as they act as a decentralized cleanup crew that keeps the system solvent. They monitor the blockchain for positions that have breached their health factor and execute transactions to close them.
The competition among liquidators ensures that liquidations happen as quickly as possible, minimizing the duration that undercollateralized debt exists within the system.