What a live tap does
In Live mode, a tap is not a prediction. It opens a real perpetual position on Strike, aimed at the box you tapped: real orders, real fills, real fees. On the hosted app this happens on Strike testnet, with testnet USD and no real funds, while practice follows Strike mainnet's public prices.
No fixed payout. A target hit is not a guaranteed profit.
A live box has no multiplier. What you get is what Strike's order book gives you, minus fees. Spread and fees can turn a target hit into a loss, and with small boxes they often do. See Fees.
The Live board
Your orders meet the market of the Strike network Live mode executes on, and your target and stop trigger on that network's mark price. So in Live mode the board shows that market, its mark price line and its order book bars beside the price axis, and the liquidity gate is checked on it. guarantee
The board is labelled with that network. On the hosted app the status pill reads Live on a phone (Live · testnet · no real funds where there is room), and the label above the price reads Live · testnet prices.
Live boxes have no multiplier, so they show an arrow instead: ↑ above the price opens a long, ↓ below it a short; the row holding the price is blank. A side the liquidity gate has closed is greyed out. A live box you opened is an outlined card with ↑ Long or ↓ Short and a short status word (Preparing, Sent, Open, Closing, Target hit, Stopped, Time exit, Not filled, Rejected, Still open), never the solid card practice calls use.
When practice uses another network's prices, as on the hosted app (Strike mainnet), switching to Live moves the board to the execution network's market, and switching back to practice moves it back. The two networks' prices can differ. In Live mode, then:
- the order book bars, the "Order book paused" note and the order book in the market sheet are the execution network's;
- the 24 h statistics and trades stay with practice mode: the strip says "Live uses Strike testnet's own prices and order book" instead;
- the price line comes from the server's memory of that network's last 15 minutes. After the server restarts, the line starts from the restart. It is shown, not recorded, and nothing is settled from it.
When a deployment uses one network for both, the board is the same market in both modes.
Direction
| You tap a box… | strikeabox opens… |
|---|---|
| above the current price | a long |
| below the current price | a short |
| whose band contains the current price (a price exactly on a row boundary belongs to both neighbouring rows) | nothing: these boxes aren't available in Live mode |
The bracket
Each live box is a bracket of three parts:
- Entry. A limit order, immediate-or-cancel, at the best opposite price in Strike's book: the best ask for a long, the best bid for a short. If that price is more than 0.5 % away from the mark price, no plan is offered. The entry fills now or not at all, and only against orders at that price: nothing rests in the book. A partial fill is kept, and the exits are sized to what filled.
- Target. A take-profit trigger on Strike's mark price, at the near edge of your box: the bottom edge for a long, the top edge for a short.
- Stop. A protective stop trigger on the mark price, the same distance on the other side of the entry price, and at least 0.15 % (15 basis points) away from the entry price and from the current mark price, so Strike can't refuse it as "triggers immediately".
The target and the stop are attached to the entry on Strike's side and work from the moment the position opens. When one of them triggers, Strike cancels the other.
The triggers watch the mark price. The fill happens in the order book, so the price you actually get can differ from the trigger price, and on a thin book it can differ a lot.
The time exit
The window end is the deadline. If the position is still open when the window ends, the strikeabox worker cancels the remaining exit orders and closes the position with a reduce-only order. This runs on the server, with your browser closed or not.
You can also close a live box yourself before the deadline. That is the same reduce-only close, started by you.
A box only ever manages its own position. Its closing orders are sized to what that box opened and has not yet closed, never to a bigger position that happens to be on your Strike account. Live also allows one open box per market, and it refuses a market where your Strike account already holds a position.
What you see before you tap
Before anything is sent, the plan for the box shows:
- direction, size and notional;
- estimated entry price;
- target and stop prices;
- estimated P&L at the target and at the stop, both including estimated fees and spread;
- the leverage your Strike account uses for that market, and the margin;
- the fees: Strike's trading fee and the strikeabox builder fee, on the way in and on the way out, in dollars (see Fees);
- the expected fill: the average price you would get and its distance from the best price, worked out from the server's copy of the order book, with the time of that book;
- the deadline.
Expected fill model
The expected fill walks your size through the orders resting at the entry price, best first, as the server's copy of the order book shows them. Because the entry is limited to the best opposite price, a thin book often holds less than your size there:
- Full: the book at that price holds your whole size. The line shows the average price and the slippage, for example "$67,431.5 average · 1.2 bps from best".
- Partial: it holds only part of it. The line adds "fills only partly at the cap", and the note says the rest is not filled and the target and stop follow the filled size.
- None: nothing rests within the limit, or there is no current book. The line reads "No liquidity within the cap", and Confirm turns into Nothing would fill and stays off.
It is an estimate from the book at that moment. What you actually get is what Strike fills.
The plan can move between the moment you review it and the moment your tap arrives: the order book changes, and the stop follows it. If the fresh plan has a different side, size or target, or the stop has moved by more than a small tolerance, nothing is opened. You get the new plan to review (PLAN_CHANGED) and decide again.
What you see after
The actual fills, fees and realised P&L as reported by Strike. Not estimates.
Size and leverage
- Choose a notional of $25, $50, $100 or $200.
- The size is rounded down to the market's size step, and must meet the market's minimum order value on Strike. Presets below a market's minimum can't be used and are disabled with the reason shown. For example, at the time of writing BTC-USD on Strike testnet requires at least $100, so the $25 and $50 presets are off there. The app reads the current rules from Strike.
- Leverage is whatever your Strike account currently uses for that market. strikeabox reads it from Strike and never changes it.
States and outcomes
While a box is in progress you may see: submitted, open, closing, or reconciling. A box that was closed by an exit order also records why: the deadline (time), you (user), or a protective close. When it ends, it has one outcome:
| Outcome | Meaning |
|---|---|
TARGET_HIT | The take-profit filled. Check the realised P&L: it can still be negative after fees and spread. |
STOPPED | The stop filled. |
TIME_EXIT | Neither filled by the window end, so the worker closed the position. |
NOT_FILLED | The entry got no fill, usually because the orders at the entry price were gone by the time it arrived. No position was opened. |
REJECTED | Strike rejected the order. The reason is shown. |
CLOSE_FAILED | strikeabox could not close the position. It is still open on Strike. You are told, and shown how to close it in the Strike app. See CLOSE_FAILED. |
RECONCILING | The outcome isn't known yet, for example after a connection drop. The worker checks Strike and fills it in. |
What live mode is not
- It is not practice. Live boxes don't use credits and don't count on leaderboards or in battles.
- On the hosted app it is not mainnet: orders execute on Strike testnet, with no real funds, even though practice there shows Strike mainnet's prices. A deployment trades on mainnet, with real funds, only when its operator turns that on explicitly. See Network and limits.
- It is not always on. If the operator switches Live off, or the deployment isn't set up for it, new connections and new entries are refused and the app says why. Closing your open boxes, reading your account, disconnecting and the deadline exits keep working.
- It is not a fixed-odds game. The box sets where your target and deadline are; Strike's market decides what you get.
Before you start
You need a Strike account with collateral (testnet collateral on the hosted app), connected through Builder Connect. Read the fees and the risk disclosure first.