Margining

Margin is isolated. Each position posts its own collateral, risks only that collateral, and is liquidated on its own. There is no cross margin and no portfolio margin.

Key figuresCopy Anchor Link

OpeningCopy Anchor Link

leverage = size / (collateral - open fee)       must be ≤ effective max

Collateral is escrowed when the order is submitted. The part an unfilled order does not use comes back at settlement.

Adding to a position checks the grown position on collateral net of the funding it already owes. The entry blends as the notional-weighted harmonic mean:

entry = (s1 + s2) / (s1 / p1 + s2 / p2)

Example: $1,000 at $100 and $1,000 at $200 is 10 + 5 = 15 units for $2,000, an entry of $133.33. The arithmetic mean, $150, would pay a short more than its lots made and a long less. With the harmonic mean the position's PnL equals the PnL of its fills taken one by one.

Effective maximum leverageCopy Anchor Link

effective max = min(listed max, closed-session max if closed, depth tier)

The depth tier applies only to markets priced off a spot pool.

Leverage follows depthCopy Anchor Link

Depth is what it costs to move the tracked pool 1%. Higher leverage means a smaller move reaches a liquidation, and the move is what an attacker pays for.

Sustained depth:

1. falls to any lower reading at once,
2. rises toward a higher reading by 10% of the gap, at most once every 20 seconds, however often the pool is read,
3. never passes the next tier's floor in one rise.

Liquidity parked in a pool for one reading, however large, buys at most one tier, and the next honest reading takes it back. A new market opens at 2x and earns its tier over depth that stayed. When the pool thins, the tier falls on the next reading, before the next order is accepted.

Maintenance marginCopy Anchor Link

A position is liquidatable when its equity, at the risk price, falls below its maintenance margin:

equity      = collateral + PnL - funding owed
PnL         = size × (exit / entry - 1)        long
              size × (1 - exit / entry)        short
exit        = risk price less the spread, on the closing side
liquidate   if equity < size × maintenance_bps / 10,000

Two constraints on every market, checked at listing and on every parameter change:

1. Maintenance below initial margin. Initial margin, 1 / max leverage, must exceed maintenance: 5x is 20%, above 10%. A position opened at full leverage is not already liquidatable.
2. Maintenance covers one risk price step plus the fee. The risk price moves at most 120 bps per step (40 a slot, 3 slots; see Price sources). So maintenance must be at least 120 bps above the liquidation fee. A position healthy before a step still has its fee left after it, and a liquidation is paid out of the position, not out of the pool.

A site listing at 1,000 bps maintenance and a 100 bps fee clears the floor of 220 bps by 780.

The auction's band is at most half the maintenance margin, so a position opened at either edge of the band starts with at least half its maintenance margin standing.

SessionsCopy Anchor Link

While a tokenized stock's exchange is closed, its maximum leverage and open interest cap tighten. Maintenance does not change. See Sessions.

On the trade screenCopy Anchor Link

The header and each position row show one mark, the pool mid. PnL is taken at the price a close would fill at: the bid for a long, the ask for a short. The two differ by half the spread, shown in the header as its own figure.