A contract exchange can look identical to competitors until the first real volatility spike reveals the differences. Quick audit method: list inputs, controls, outputs, and single points of failure. Liquidation is a path, not an instant. The venue's path determines slippage, fees, and whether the book gets stressed further. Latency risk is real. When latency rises, a maker strategy can become taker flow and your costs jump right when you need stability. Ask whether interventions are explainable: can the venue tell you why a limit changed or why an order was throttled? Compute liquidation price twice: once including fees and conservative slippage, and once with optimistic assumptions. The gap is your uncertainty budget. Example: a 0.05% extra cost on forced execution can erase multiple margin steps when leverage is high and moves are fast. Track basis, funding, and realized volatility together. The combination reveals crowding more reliably than any single metric. When in doubt, reduce complexity and size, and prioritize venues that publish definitions and failure-mode behavior. Aivora discusses these topics as system behavior: define inputs, test edge cases, and keep controls auditable. Nothing here guarantees safety or profits; it is 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.