Risk

What can go wrong, in practice

Perpetual futures with leverage are high-risk. You can lose all the collateral in your account, quickly. This page explains how, so you can decide how much risk to take. It is not financial advice.

Leverage and liquidation

Leverage multiplies both gains and losses. With 10x account leverage, a move of about 1% against you costs about 10% of your collateral. A larger move can cost all of it.

• Liquidation is partial and automatic. When your collateral falls below the maintenance requirement, the venue cancels your open orders and transfers part of your positions to a liquidator at a penalty. You do not get a warning call and you cannot undo it.
• Your account is cross-margined. All positions share one pool of collateral. A loss on one position reduces the margin behind every other position, and one bad position can liquidate the whole account.
• Liquidation prices are estimates. The figure shown is calculated for your whole account at current prices. It moves when any price moves, when funding accrues, and when you deposit, withdraw or change another position.
• Opening at the maximum leaves no room. The gap between initial and maintenance margin is your entire safety margin. An order sized at the limit can be liquidated by a small adverse move.

Collateral risk

• SOL collateral moves with the market. If you hold a long position backed by SOL and prices fall, the position loses value and the collateral behind it shrinks at the same time, so liquidation arrives sooner than with stablecoin collateral.
• Stablecoins can lose their peg. The quote asset is USDT. Its issuer and its market price are outside the control of OccPerps and of the venue.
• Withdrawals can be limited. The venue can pause withdrawals or throttle large ones to protect its markets. Free collateral on screen is not a guarantee that a withdrawal will go through at that moment.

Execution risk

• Prices before a fill are estimates. A market order fills through a short auction against makers or the venue’s AMM. The price you get can differ from the estimate, up to your slippage limit. In fast or thin markets, part or all of the order may not fill.
• A confirmed transaction is not a fill. Confirmation means the order was placed. Check Fills and Positions for the result.
• Limit and trigger orders are not guaranteed. A limit order fills only if the market reaches it. A stop or take-profit becomes fillable at its trigger price and then fills at whatever the market offers, which can be worse than the trigger.
• Solana can be congested. Transactions can be delayed, dropped or expire. During congestion you may be unable to close or reduce a position as quickly as you want.

Funding

Perpetuals have no expiry. Instead, longs and shorts pay each other funding every hour, depending on where the contract trades relative to the oracle price. Funding can be a steady cost for as long as you hold a position, and the rate changes. It appears as unsettled funding on each position and is settled into your balance over time.

Venue and protocol risk

• Your funds are in the venue, not in OccPerps. On Velocity they sit in an on-chain account your wallet owns inside the venue program. On Pacifica a deposit hands USDC to Pacifica’s program and vault; your balance is then a record kept by Pacifica, and getting it back depends on Pacifica processing a withdrawal. OccPerps cannot freeze, move or recover funds on either venue, and neither can it protect them. A bug, exploit, governance action, operator failure or oracle failure in a venue could cause loss.
• Pacifica matches orders off chain. Its order book and matching engine are run by Pacifica, not by a Solana program. You rely on Pacifica to match, liquidate and settle as it documents, and on its API being reachable. Pacifica describes itself as being in closed beta, with deposit and withdrawal limits.
• Small and newly listed markets are riskier. Meme coins and recent listings have thin order books, low leverage limits and large, fast price moves. A market order can fill far from the last price or only in part, and a position can be liquidated quickly. Some markets are priced from the venue’s own trading until other exchanges list them.
• Collateral is separate per venue. Margin on one venue does not protect a position on the other. Two positions that offset each other across venues can still each be liquidated.
• Venue parameters can change. Margin ratios, fees, leverage limits, pauses and market status are controlled by the venue. A market can be switched to reduce-only or settled.
• Oracles can be wrong or stale. Margin and liquidation use an external oracle price. If it is wrong, positions can be liquidated at prices the wider market never traded.
• Losses can be socialised. If a liquidated account ends up with debt and the venue’s insurance fund cannot cover it, the venue’s rules can pass the loss on to other users of that market.

Interface and software risk

• OccPerps is new software. It has not been audited. Transactions are prepared with the venue’s official SDK and simulated before you sign, but that does not rule out mistakes. See the feature status table for what has and has not been verified.
• Data can be late or unavailable. Market data is polled from the venue’s services and can lag or fail. The interface marks stale data and blocks new orders against it, but a displayed price is never a promise of an execution price.
• Read what you sign. Your wallet shows the transaction before you approve it. Signed transactions cannot be reversed by anyone.
• Local alerts are a convenience. They work only while the app is open in a tab. Do not rely on them to manage risk.

Your own responsibilities

• Keep your seed phrase offline. Nobody at OccPerps or the venue will ever ask for it, and nobody can restore it.
• Check that you are on the site you intended before connecting a wallet.
• Find out whether leveraged derivatives are legal and available where you live, and what tax applies.
• Only use collateral you can afford to lose entirely.

Ready to look around without risking anything? Markets, charts and the order form are all readable without a wallet. Browse markets or read how OccPerps works.