# What is a liquidation When you borrow on a DeFi platform like [Kashi](https://hackmd.io/@HHK-ETH/HJzfR9vzt), you usually have to put a collateral before being able to take the loan. This collateral has a higher value than the borrowed amount, it is locked in the protocol and assure that your loan can be repayed in any case thanks to this collateral. When the protocol have to sell your collateral to repay your loan, we call this a **liquidation**. It happens when the value of your loan is too high compared to your collateral value and so for security reasons : bots and other users are able to sell a part of your collateral to repay the lender and earn a small fee on top, they are called "liquidator". See this diagram of a classic lending protocol : ![](https://i.imgur.com/hSx8Jbi.png)