Price and limits
The mark
Each market has a mark: a slow copy of the coin’s pool price. It moves toward the pool at most 0.01% a second by default (each market’s speed is set at listing, between 0.002% and 0.1% a second), and only the keeper, an automated bot, moves it. Each of the keeper’s updates names the pool price it saw and fails if the pool has moved more than 1% from it, so a trade placed around the keeper’s update cannot steer the mark.
The mark is what liquidations read. A push of the pool, however large, does not move it within a block.
The price you trade at
Opens and closes use the worst for the trader of:
- the mark,
- the pool’s price right now,
- the pool’s lowest and highest prices over its last 10 to 20 minutes.
So the cheap way to game a small pool, a swap in and a swap back, buys nothing.
Thin pools
A market’s pool is thin when the liquidity locked at listing falls under its floor, or when the price leaves that liquidity’s range. A thin pool freezes the mark and refuses new positions. Closing still works, at the worst-of price.
The limits on every trade
| Limit | Value |
|---|---|
| Each side of a market (all longs, or all shorts) | the smaller of 25% of the pool’s depth and 10% of the vault |
| The vault’s net exposure on a market, when a trade grows it | the smaller of 5% of the pool’s depth and 10% of the vault |
| All markets together (the larger side of each, summed) | 25% of the vault |
| Leverage | from 1x up to the market’s maximum |
| A new position | must not be liquidatable at the mark when it opens |
A trade past any limit is refused before you sign; the ticket says which limit and how much room is left.
The depth is set at listing and refreshed by the keeper at most once an hour, never more than double or less than half of its last value.