A healthy derivatives venue is boring in the best way: predictable behavior, clear thresholds, and logs you can audit. Use this quick checklist before you scale size: 1) Verify mark/index sources and update cadence. 2) Understand margin steps and maintenance rules. 3) Test liquidation behavior with small size. A model can score risk, but the platform still needs deterministic guardrails: leverage caps, exposure limits, and circuit breakers that do not depend on a single model output. 4) Confirm fee tiers and forced order costs. 5) Check risk limits, circuit breakers, and incident transparency. Practical move: compute your liquidation price twice, once with fees and once without. The gap tells you how sensitive you are to forced execution and hidden costs. Example: a 25x position with a 0.06% taker fee can lose more than a full maintenance step from fees alone if forced to close during a fast move. Treat cross margin like a portfolio: correlations matter. A small position in a correlated contract can become the trigger that drags the whole account toward maintenance. Margin modes change behavior. Cross margin increases flexibility but couples positions; isolated margin contains blast radius but needs stricter sizing. Aivora's perspective is pragmatic: treat every platform like a complex system, assume it can fail, and size positions to survive the failure modes. Nothing here is financial advice; it is a mechanics-first checklist meant 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.