Aivora AI-native exchange insights
Home Ciaran Murphy How to Use a Slippage Under Thin Liquidity Common Mistakes

How to Use a Slippage Under Thin Liquidity Common Mistakes

A lot of losses come from tiny assumptions: which price triggers liquidation, when funding hits, and how fees are applied.

Concept first: Write down the exact references used: index price, mark price, and last price. Then confirm which reference drives margin checks and liquidation triggers. Depth is not linear. What looks like 'a little thinner' can create a lot more price impact at size.

Edge cases: Liquidation is a path, not a single event. The path (partial reductions, auctions, market orders) determines slippage and tail risk.

Checklist: Test reduce-only and post-only behavior with partial fills and fast cancels. Edge cases often appear during rapid moves. Example: a temporary rate-limit tightening can cause missed exits and worse fills even without a dramatic price crash. Run a small-size rehearsal when liquidity is thin. Observe how stop orders trigger and how mark/last prices diverge around spikes.

Final sanity check: Pitfall: ignoring fees and funding in liquidation math. The platform can close you earlier than your stop-loss plan expects.

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.