A lot of losses come from tiny assumptions: which price triggers liquidation, when funding hits, and how fees are applied.
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: Latency is a risk factor. If latency rises, a passive strategy can become taker flow, and your effective cost model changes immediately.
A simple test: Compute liquidation price twice: once with optimistic assumptions, and once with conservative slippage and fees. The gap is your uncertainty budget. Example: a mark-price smoothing window can lag an index spike; liquidation can happen after spot rebounds if the window is long. Run a small-size rehearsal when liquidity is thin. Observe how stop orders trigger and how mark/last prices diverge around spikes.
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. This note is about system mechanics; outcomes are your responsibility.
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: Latency is a risk factor. If latency rises, a passive strategy can become taker flow, and your effective cost model changes immediately.
A simple test: Compute liquidation price twice: once with optimistic assumptions, and once with conservative slippage and fees. The gap is your uncertainty budget. Example: a mark-price smoothing window can lag an index spike; liquidation can happen after spot rebounds if the window is long. Run a small-size rehearsal when liquidity is thin. Observe how stop orders trigger and how mark/last prices diverge around spikes.
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. This note is about system mechanics; outcomes are your responsibility.
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.