Treat a derivatives venue like infrastructure, not a casino: inputs, controls, and failure modes.
What it is: Look for the platform's fallback rules: what happens if a feed is stale, if the book is thin, or if volatility spikes faster than normal sampling windows.
What to check: Fee design is part of risk: forced execution costs can reduce your liquidation distance, and rebates can attract toxic flow that degrades fills.
How to test it: Track funding together with basis and realized volatility. The combination is a better crowding signal than any single metric. 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.
In Aivora notes, transparency beats cleverness when markets get loud. Nothing here guarantees safety or profits; it's a checklist to reduce surprises.
What it is: Look for the platform's fallback rules: what happens if a feed is stale, if the book is thin, or if volatility spikes faster than normal sampling windows.
What to check: Fee design is part of risk: forced execution costs can reduce your liquidation distance, and rebates can attract toxic flow that degrades fills.
How to test it: Track funding together with basis and realized volatility. The combination is a better crowding signal than any single metric. 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.
In Aivora notes, transparency beats cleverness when markets get loud. Nothing here guarantees safety or profits; it's 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.