Maintenance margin

The minimum equity required to keep a leveraged position open. Once equity falls below it, the position becomes eligible for liquidation.

Definition

The maintenance margin is the floor under an open position. It is set as a fraction of position size, so it scales with your exposure rather than with what you deposited, and the moment your equity drops beneath it the protocol is entitled to close you out.

How it differs from initial margin

Initial margin is what you must put up to open a position. Maintenance margin is the smaller amount you must keep to hold it. The distance between the two is your entire buffer.

That framing matters more than either number on its own. At high leverage the initial margin is thin to begin with, so the room between opening and being liquidated is thin as well, and a modest adverse move is enough to cross it.

Why the requirement can change

Maintenance requirements are set per market and typically scale with position size, with larger positions carrying stricter requirements because they are harder to unwind. Exchanges also revise them, generally tightening in volatile conditions.

The rates themselves are exchange policy and change without much notice, so read them on the venue you are trading rather than assuming they carry over from another one.

What it means in practice

Maintenance margin is the reason the liquidation price sits where it does. If you want a position to survive a wider price range, you either add collateral or reduce size; those are the only two levers, because the requirement itself is not yours to set.

Where you will run into it

In the risk or margin schedule of a perpetual DEX, in the margin ratio or health figure shown on an open position, and implicitly every time the interface displays a liquidation price.