Design dial · Maintenance margin
Same scenario, one dial — who gets liquidated changes.
Three traders at different leverage, mark drops to 100. How many get liquidated depends entirely on the maintenance-margin-bps you ship with.
Maintenance margin
Traders
Switch the dial — the outcome updates live
Where the runs diverge
The two runs are byte-identical until the block-2 liquidation scan. That single scan is where the dial changes who gets flagged — everything before it is the same.
| Setting | 200 bps | 500 bps | 1000 bps |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flagged at block 2 | 1 · acct 30 | 2 · acct 20, 30 | 2 · acct 20, 30 |
| Account 20 (the swing) | +5 long · coll 60 | flat · coll 3 | flat · coll 3 |
Account 20’s margin sits between the 200 and 500 bps thresholds: healthy under the loose dial, breached under the tight one. Account 30 is always underwater; account 10 never is. So account 20 is the only one the dial can move — which is exactly why the outcome flips 1 → 2 and then stops.
What the dial buys you
Going from 200→500 bps flips a second account (20) into liquidation. Tightening further to 1000 bps changes nothing — account 10 is too over-collateralized to ever breach. The dial has a floor (account 30 is unavoidable) and a ceiling set by who is genuinely solvent.