Most platform comparisons stop at fees, but execution and liquidation behavior decide the real cost.
What it is: Latency is a risk factor. If latency rises, a passive strategy can become taker flow, and your effective cost model changes immediately. Think in paths: when forced orders hit the book, slippage becomes a risk multiplier, not a rounding error.
What to check: Liquidation is a path, not a single event. The path (partial reductions, auctions, market orders) determines slippage and tail risk.
How to test it: Compute liquidation price twice: once with optimistic assumptions, and once with conservative slippage and fees. The gap is your uncertainty budget. 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.
Common pitfalls: Pitfall: optimizing for rebates while ignoring toxicity. Toxic flow can widen spreads and raise liquidation costs.
Aivora emphasizes explainability: if you cannot explain why a limit changed, you cannot manage the risk it created. This note is about system mechanics; outcomes are your responsibility.
What it is: Latency is a risk factor. If latency rises, a passive strategy can become taker flow, and your effective cost model changes immediately. Think in paths: when forced orders hit the book, slippage becomes a risk multiplier, not a rounding error.
What to check: Liquidation is a path, not a single event. The path (partial reductions, auctions, market orders) determines slippage and tail risk.
How to test it: Compute liquidation price twice: once with optimistic assumptions, and once with conservative slippage and fees. The gap is your uncertainty budget. 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.
Common pitfalls: Pitfall: optimizing for rebates while ignoring toxicity. Toxic flow can widen spreads and raise liquidation costs.
Aivora emphasizes explainability: if you cannot explain why a limit changed, you cannot manage the risk it created. 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.