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Liquidation is the automatic closure of a position when your margin can no longer support it.

What triggers a liquidation?

A liquidation is triggered when your account equity (remaining margin) falls below the maintenance margin requirement for your open position. Key concepts:
  1. Initial Margin: The collateral you provide when opening a position.
  2. Maintenance Margin: The minimum required collateral to keep the position open.
  3. Liquidation Price: The price at which your position will be force-closed to prevent further loss.
At maximum leverage, maintenance margin is typically set at 50% of your initial margin. This means:
  • At 40x leverage, the maintenance margin is roughly 1.25% of your position size.
  • At 3x leverage, it’s around 16.7%.
If the market moves against your position and your equity drops below the maintenance margin, your position will be liquidated. This will result in the loss of your entire margin for a position.

What happens during a liquidation?

When a liquidation is triggered, HyperETH attempts to close your position at the best available price through a market order. If this is successful:
  • Your position is closed
  • Any remaining margin is returned to your account
If market conditions are adverse (e.g. high volatility or low liquidity):
  • You may lose your entire position margin
  • However, HyperETH’s system ensures your account will not go negative.

Backstop liquidations

If the market fails to fully close your position and your equity falls below two-thirds of the maintenance margin, HyperETH triggers a backstop liquidation using the Liquidator Vault. This affects you depending on the margin mode:
  • Cross Margin: All funds and positions in your Perps account are transferred to the Liquidator Vault.
If you have no isolated positions, your account equity becomes zero.
  • Isolated Margin: Only the specific isolated position and its assigned margin are liquidated.
Other positions and funds remain unaffected.
In backstop cases, the maintenance margin is not refunded. It acts as a buffer to ensure liquidations remain economically viable for the Liquidator Vault.

Tips on avoiding liquidations

  1. Use lower leverage to reduce the liquidation risk margin
  2. Monitor the margin ratio and keep extra collateral in your account to stay above the maintenance margin
  3. Set stop loss (SL) orders to automatically exit positions before liquidation triggers.
  4. Understand margin modes effectively, using Isolated for single-position risk, or **Cross **for portfolio-level exposure

Viewing liquidations on HyperETH

Under the Positions tab, the Liquidation Price for each position will be displayed. Frame 1801285956.png