Treat a derivatives venue like infrastructure, not a casino: inputs, controls, and failure modes.
The mechanism: Write down the exact references used: index price, mark price, and last price. Then confirm which reference drives margin checks and liquidation triggers. Operational failures often look like market losses. Log your requests and monitor throttling so you know what changed.
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: 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. Track funding together with basis and realized volatility. The combination is a better crowding signal than any single metric.
What to do next: 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. Derivatives are risky; test assumptions before you scale size.
The mechanism: Write down the exact references used: index price, mark price, and last price. Then confirm which reference drives margin checks and liquidation triggers. Operational failures often look like market losses. Log your requests and monitor throttling so you know what changed.
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: 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. Track funding together with basis and realized volatility. The combination is a better crowding signal than any single metric.
What to do next: 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. Derivatives are risky; test assumptions before you scale size.
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.