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Liquidation on Perps

What liquidation is, what triggers it, what happens to your money, and why the mark price is what matters.

Written by Klutch

Liquidation is the forced closure of your position when the margin allocated to it can no longer cover the maintenance margin requirement. It is automatic, irreversible, and means the margin backing that position is lost.

As the market moves against your position, your unrealized loss grows and your effective margin shrinks. The moment it drops below the maintenance margin floor, your position is liquidated. Because every position on fomo uses isolated margin, each position is judged on its own.

When liquidation triggers, the protocol closes your position at the best price available. Whatever margin remains after covering the loss stays in your account. If the market does not have enough liquidity to absorb the close, a backstop process takes over the rest. Either way, only that specific position and its allocated margin are affected. Your other positions and the rest of your perps cash balance are untouched, and the funds lost to the liquidation cannot be recovered by fomo or anyone else.

Your liquidation triggers off the mark price, not the last trade price you see on the chart. The mark price is the protocol's official reference price for an asset, calculated by combining the oracle price (a composite across major external exchanges) with local trading activity on the protocol. It exists so a brief, isolated spike on one exchange cannot push your position into liquidation on its own. That is also why your position can liquidate when the chart shows a different number, or survive a brief chart spike that the mark price did not reflect.

The estimated liquidation price shown in the app is exactly that, an estimate. It can shift as funding payments come out of your margin or as you add or remove margin from the position. Setting a stop loss closes your position automatically before the liquidation level is reached, and using lower leverage moves the liquidation price further from your entry to begin with.

Perpetuals ("Perps") are provided by third-party protocols and are not available to U.S. Persons (citizens, residents, or anyone located in the U.S.). Do not attempt to access perps from within the United States.


For purposes of these Terms, a "U.S. Person" means: (i) any natural person resident in the United States; (ii) any citizen or permanent resident of the United States, including any such person temporarily located outside the United States; (iii) any entity organized or incorporated under the laws of the United States or any state thereof; (iv) any estate of which any executor or administrator is a U.S. Person; (v) any trust of which any trustee is a U.S. Person; (vi) any agency or branch of a non-U.S. entity located in the United States; (vii) any discretionary or non-discretionary account held by a dealer or fiduciary organized, incorporated, or (if an individual) resident in the United States; or (viii) any entity organized or incorporated outside the United States that is formed by a U.S. Person principally for the purpose of investing in unregistered securities or derivative instruments. "United States" means the United States of America, its territories and possessions, any state of the United States, and the District of Columbia.

Representations and Warranties. By accessing or using Perps functionality, you represent and warrant that: (a) you are not a U.S. Person; (b) you are not accessing Perps from within the United States; (c) you are not accessing Perps on behalf of, or for the benefit of, any U.S. Person; (d) you will not use any technology, mechanism, or technique (including a VPN, proxy, or similar tool) to circumvent or attempt to circumvent geographic restrictions on Perps; and (e) you understand that these representations are material and that Fomo is relying on them in providing you access to Perps functionality.

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