Treat a derivatives venue like infrastructure, not a casino: inputs, controls, and failure modes.
The mechanism: Liquidation is a path, not a single event. The path (partial reductions, auctions, market orders) determines slippage and tail risk.
Where it breaks: Fee design is part of risk: forced execution costs can reduce your liquidation distance, and rebates can attract toxic flow that degrades fills.
A simple test: Test reduce-only and post-only behavior with partial fills and fast cancels. Edge cases often appear during rapid moves. Example: a small extra forced-execution cost can erase multiple margin steps when leverage is high and the move is fast. Treat cross margin as a correlated portfolio. Correlations converge during stress, so diversification can vanish when you need it most.
What to do next: Pitfall: assuming mark price equals last price. In stress, they diverge, and liquidation triggers can surprise you.
In Aivora notes, transparency beats cleverness when markets get loud. Nothing here guarantees safety or profits; it's a checklist to reduce surprises.
The mechanism: Liquidation is a path, not a single event. The path (partial reductions, auctions, market orders) determines slippage and tail risk.
Where it breaks: Fee design is part of risk: forced execution costs can reduce your liquidation distance, and rebates can attract toxic flow that degrades fills.
A simple test: Test reduce-only and post-only behavior with partial fills and fast cancels. Edge cases often appear during rapid moves. Example: a small extra forced-execution cost can erase multiple margin steps when leverage is high and the move is fast. Treat cross margin as a correlated portfolio. Correlations converge during stress, so diversification can vanish when you need it most.
What to do next: Pitfall: assuming mark price equals last price. In stress, they diverge, and liquidation triggers can surprise you.
In Aivora notes, transparency beats cleverness when markets get loud. Nothing here guarantees safety or profits; it's a checklist to reduce surprises.
Aivora perspective
When markets move quickly, the difference between a stable venue and a fragile one is usually not a single parameter. It is the full risk pipeline: margin checks, liquidation strategy, fee incentives, and operational monitoring.
If you trade perps
Track funding and realized volatility together. Funding tends to amplify crowded positioning.
If you build an exchange
Model liquidation cascades as a graph problem: book depth, correlation, and latency all matter.
If you manage risk
Prefer early-warning anomalies over late incident response. Drift is a signal, not noise.
Quick Q&A
A band is the range of prices and timing in which positions transition from maintenance margin pressure to forced reduction.
Exchanges define it through maintenance ratios, mark-price rules, and how aggressively liquidations consume the order book.
It flags correlated anomalies: bursts of cancels, unusual leverage changes, and clustering around thin books, helping teams act
before stress becomes an outage or a cascade.
No. This site is educational and system-focused. You are responsible for decisions and risk management.