> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.kairos.trade/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Risk and liquidations

> Risk tiers, restrictions, and public versus private liquidation facts

> **⚠ Nothing on this page is callable**
>
> **Design preview.** The risk data described here is not a live trading or
> liquidation-protection service. The canonical v2 schema defines **no** risk
> schedule or account-risk message. Its one liquidation message,
> `kairos.v2.PublicLiquidation`, is defined but is not published on any subject
> today.
>
> The public perpetual market-data surface is live in production behind
> `PERPETUALS_PUBLIC_API_ENABLED`, but enabling that flag did **not** make this
> page callable in any environment. See
> [Overview](/perpetuals/overview).

This page describes how Kairos intends to model perpetual risk: versioned
margin schedules, the provenance of every risk value, and the difference
between a public liquidation print and a private account consequence.

Perp risk cannot be reduced to a leverage number. Venues apply margin schedules,
position tiers, price bands, concentration rules, and account restrictions that
can change over time.

## Versioned risk schedules

A risk schedule has a provider, environment, instrument or risk group,
effective period, source, and version. It can contain:

* maximum leverage
* initial and maintenance margin rates
* notional or position-size tiers
* maintenance deductions
* order size and price limits
* concentration or open-interest limits
* reduce-only and withdrawal restrictions

<Note>
  **The schedule used for a calculation must be reproducible.** Applying
  today's tier to a historical position is not a valid historical risk
  calculation.
</Note>

## Observed versus calculated

Every risk value identifies its provenance:

| Provenance | Meaning |
| - | - |
| venue-reported | Reported directly by the venue |
| venue-rule calculation | Calculated from documented venue rules and versioned inputs |
| Kairos estimate | Derived by Kairos |

<Warning>
  **An estimate is never silently substituted for a venue-reported value.**
  Calculations fail outright when a required price, tier, collateral rule, or
  multiplier is absent — you get no number rather than a guessed one.
</Warning>

## Account risk state

Private account risk can include equity, initial and maintenance requirements,
available margin, liquidation status, and account restrictions. The observation
is scoped to one trading account and carries its own freshness state.

Cross-margin risk must be evaluated at the account or venue risk-group scope.
An isolated position can be evaluated only with its assigned collateral and
the venue's isolated-margin rules.

## Liquidations

Public liquidation events describe market activity. Private liquidation events
describe an account consequence. They use related shapes but are separate data
classes.

A liquidation event can include:

* instrument and exact execution values
* liquidated position side, distinct from aggressor side
* liquidation method
* account scope for authorized private data
* venue event, order, fill, or liquidation identifiers
* multi-leg or bundle identifiers
* bankruptcy, backstop, or insurance-fund attribution when supplied

<Note>
  **One public print is not one fully closed position.** A single liquidation
  process can produce multiple trades, instruments, or ledger entries. The
  schema handles the multi-leg case by reusing `liquidation_id` and adding a
  `leg_index` or a stable `liquidation_leg_id` — so grouping by
  `liquidation_id` alone will over-count legs as separate events.
</Note>

## ADL and backstop events

Auto-deleveraging, backstop fills, and insurance-fund actions are not ordinary
liquidations. Kairos preserves the venue's method and does not map every forced
execution to the same label. The schema's `LiquidationMethod` names them
explicitly — `MARKET`, `BACKSTOP`, `ADL`, `OTHER` — with `UNSPECIFIED`
reserved for a venue that says nothing. `OTHER` is a venue method Kairos chose
not to collapse; it is not a synonym for `MARKET`.

## Safety rules

* Do not trade from stale or incomplete risk state.
* Do not use a public liquidation feed to infer private account state.
* Do not compare leverage across venues without the applicable margin rules.
* Do not use an estimate as a liquidation guarantee.

Next: [Streaming and recovery](/perpetuals/streaming-and-recovery).


This documentation is built and hosted on [Mintlify](https://mintlify.com), a developer documentation platform.