What happens to open perpetual futures positions during exchange maintenance downtime?

04 October 2026

During scheduled exchange maintenance, your open perpetual futures positions remain open and continue to be subject to price movements, funding rate settlements, and potential liquidation. The exchange does not close or freeze your positions. However, the mechanisms that normally protect you - like the ability to adjust margin, set stop-losses, or close a position - become unavailable until trading resumes.

What maintenance downtime actually is

Exchanges periodically take their trading systems offline for software updates, server upgrades, or bug fixes. This is a planned pause in trading activity. The underlying market (the spot or index price) does not stop moving during this time. The exchange’s internal systems stop processing new orders, but the mark price - used to calculate unrealized profit and loss - continues to update based on the external oracle price feed.

What stays active and what stops

Active during maintenance: - Your open positions remain open with their current leverage, size, and entry price. - The mark price continues to update, so unrealized P&L changes as the market moves. - Funding rate payments are still calculated and settled at the scheduled settlement times. The exchange records the funding rate at each settlement timestamp and deducts or credits your account accordingly once trading resumes. - Liquidation logic continues: if the mark price crosses your liquidation price, your position will be liquidated automatically. The exchange’s internal risk engine runs during maintenance.

Inactive during maintenance: - You cannot place new orders, close existing positions, or adjust margin. - Stop-loss and take-profit orders are not executed. If price hits your stop level, the order will not trigger until trading resumes - by which time the price may have moved past your intended exit. - You cannot add or withdraw collateral from your margin account. - Oracle price feeds that the exchange relies on may experience a delay if the exchange’s internal data pipeline is partially down - but most major exchanges design their maintenance to keep oracle services running.

Liquidation risk during downtime

This is the primary concern. If your position is close to liquidation when maintenance begins, and the market moves against you during the downtime, you may be liquidated without any chance to add margin or manually close.

What happens: 1. The exchange’s risk engine continues to monitor the mark price against your liquidation price. 2. If the mark price crosses your liquidation threshold, the exchange will execute a liquidation order. This uses the same ADL queue or insurance fund mechanism that operates during normal trading (see the site’s article on Auto Deleveraging ADL Queue and Priority Ranking). 3. Once maintenance ends, you will see the liquidated position closed and any remaining collateral (if any) returned to your account.

Liquidation does not wait for trading to resume. It happens in real time based on the mark price.

What you should do before maintenance

1. Check the maintenance schedule. Exchanges typically announce maintenance windows at least 24 - 48 hours in advance. Note the exact start and end times in UTC.
2. Review your position’s distance to liquidation. If your position is within 5 - 10% of your liquidation price, consider reducing leverage, adding margin, or closing the position before maintenance begins.
3. Set a manual reminder. If you plan to monitor the market during maintenance, set an alarm for the maintenance end time. You will not be able to act until trading resumes.
4. Consider reducing position size. If you are not comfortable with the risk of being unable to react for several hours, close part or all of your position.

What happens after maintenance ends

When trading resumes, the order book may be thin initially as the exchange re-syncs data and order books rebuild. This can cause: - Slippage on market orders as liquidity returns gradually. - Gap fills where the last traded price before maintenance and the first traded price after may differ significantly from the mark price. - Delayed balance updates - funding rate settlements and liquidation proceeds may take a few minutes to appear in your account.

Do not immediately place market orders the second trading resumes unless you understand the thin liquidity risk. Limit orders are safer.

How different exchange types handle this

Centralized exchanges (CEXs) typically have a full trading halt. Everything stops except the risk engine. The exchange keeps its own mark price running, often using a cached oracle feed updated every few seconds. Some CEXs also suspend funding rate settlements during maintenance and process them after resuming - check the exchange’s specific policy.

Decentralized exchanges (DEXs) do not have maintenance in the same sense because the smart contract runs continuously on the blockchain. However, if the frontend interface goes down for updates, you may not be able to interact with the contract. In that case, if you have a wallet that can directly call the contract functions (via Etherscan or a similar tool), you can still close or adjust positions. Most retail traders do not have this ability.

Summary

Open perpetual futures positions survive exchange maintenance but remain exposed to market risk and liquidation. The key difference from normal trading is that you lose the ability to react. The safest approach is to reduce risk before the downtime begins. After maintenance, expect temporary liquidity gaps and settle your positions cautiously.

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