Liquidity gate

A position you can't get out of is not opened. guarantee

Before Live mode lets you tap on a market, it checks Strike's order book for that market, on the network Live orders execute on (testnet on the hosted app). Books on Strike testnet are often thin: few orders, small sizes, and best prices that can sit far from the mark price. When the book is too thin, Live entries on that market are switched off until it recovers.

The rule

A market is open for Live entries only while both of these hold:

• the best bid and the best ask are each within 0.75 % of the mark price;
• on each side, the orders resting within 0.75 % of the mark price add up to at least twice the notional of the box you want to open (size × price, summed over every price level in that band, not only the best one).

The size check depends on the notional, so the answer can differ by box size: see What you see.

One gate, both directions

Every live box has to be both entered and exited. A long enters on the ask side and exits on the bid side; a short does the opposite. So the gate looks at both sides, and the answer is the same for both directions: a market is either open for long and short entries, or closed for both. There is no "long only" or "short only" state. A crossed or locked book (best bid at or above the best ask) closes it too.

What you see

The Live bar shows the gate of the market on the board:

Label	Meaning
Live available	You can open boxes in either direction.
The reason	The book fails the rule, and the server says how, naming the network. For example: "Testnet book too thin: only $120 of bids within 0.75% of mark (need $200)", or "Testnet book too thin: best bid 20.9% below mark". Practice mode still works on this market.

The gate shown is checked for a $100 box, and the app only builds a plan while it is open. The plan then checks the gate again for your chosen notional, and so does your confirmed tap, so a $200 box can still be refused while the market shows "Live available".

A market can also be closed for reasons that are not about the size of the book:

Reason	Meaning
No recent mark price	The execution network's mark price has gone stale.
No recent order book	The best bid and ask haven't been refreshed for 10 seconds.
No recent order-book depth	The server's copy of the order book isn't current.
Market data delayed: Strike clock out of sync	Strike's clock is out of step with ours (see Outcomes and settlement).

Where the book comes from

Everything the gate reads is the execution network's market, the same market the Live board shows. On the hosted app that is Strike testnet, even though practice there uses Strike mainnet's prices.

• Best bid and ask. Strike's public bookTicker stream pushes them when they change, and a REST snapshot of the same data (GET /price/v2/ticker/bookTicker) is read every 5 seconds, because the stream stays silent while a book is quiet. Best prices older than 10 seconds close the gate.
• Resting size. The server keeps a copy of the order book: Strike's depth stream keeps the 20 best levels on each side current, and the whole book is read again every 2 seconds. A copy that isn't current (the whole book not read again for 20 seconds, or being rebuilt after a reconnect) closes the gate.
• Mark price. A mark price that has gone stale closes the gate.

Boxes the gate never offers

A box whose price band contains the current mark price isn't offered in Live mode at all, because there is no side to open. That includes a mark that sits exactly on a row boundary: the boundary belongs to both neighbouring rows, so neither is offered.

Why it exists

Every live box has an exit plan: a target, a stop and a time exit at the window end. If the book on the other side is empty or far away, those exits can fill at a terrible price, or not at all. Opening only what the book can absorb is how strikeabox keeps "a position that cannot be exited" from happening.

Why it happens so often on testnet

Testnet is for testing. Its books don't have the depth of a busy production market, and its best bid or ask can stay far from the mark price for long stretches. That is expected, and it is the main reason a market is closed on testnet.

The entry cap is separate

Even when the gate is open, the entry is limited to the best opposite price, and that price must be within 0.5 % of the mark price; if it is further, no plan is offered. Because the entry only takes orders at that price, it often fills only partly on a thin book: the plan's expected fill shows that before you confirm. If the orders are gone by the time the entry arrives, it gets no fill and the box ends as NOT_FILLED. No position is opened.