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Order types on Lighter
Verified against Lighter's official docs on 2026-09-29. Where the buttons sit on the screen is on the Lighter trading screen.
| Order | What it does | Options |
|---|---|---|
| Market | Fills immediately against the best prices in the book; "may experience slippage during periods of low liquidity or high volatility." | Reduce-only |
| Limit | Fills at your price or better. | Post-only (cancelled rather than taking), reduce-only; good-til-time or immediate-or-cancel |
| Stop-loss / take-profit | Triggered when the mark price crosses your trigger price; market or limit variants. | Reduce-only; good-til-time on the limit variants |
| TWAP | A market order every 30 seconds for the run time; slices = duration ÷ 30 s + 1. | Reduce-only (keeps running to expiry, trading only when it reduces) |
| Advanced TWAP | TWAP with randomisation, configurable slice frequency and passive, neutral or aggressive styles. | — |
| Chase limit | Moves its limit price to stay near the best bid or ask. | "Remains subject to configured execution limits" |
| Atomic | A basket across several markets in one transaction; all legs execute together. | No partial execution across the basket |
Stops trigger on the mark price
The docs give the trigger conditions as formulas: a stop-loss sell or take-profit buy triggers when
markPrice ≤ triggerPrice; a stop-loss buy or take-profit sell when markPrice ≥ triggerPrice. The mark price blends Lighter's own book with
oracle and other-exchange prices (see mark price and funding), so
a stop will not fire on a single stray trade, but a market stop still fills at whatever the book
offers once it does. A stop-limit fills "only at the specified price or better", and may not fill
at all.
Checks that can cancel or reject your order
- Fat-finger check. A limit sell must be priced at least max(mark price, best bid) × 0.95; a limit buy at most min(mark price, best ask) × 1.05. Stop-limit orders use their trigger price instead of the mark.
- Risk checks after every trade. A trade must not turn a healthy account unhealthy, and must improve an unhealthy one; otherwise "the Matching Engine auto-cancels the corresponding order(s)".
- Order margin. Resting limit orders reserve margin so the book shows orders likely to execute. It "does not affect the position margin" and "does not affect liquidations"; it only limits how many new orders you can place.
Matching and self-trades
Matching is price-time priority: best price first, oldest order at that price first. Lighter says it uses SNARK proofs so the engine is "bound to function in a predefined way". If your order would trade with your own resting order, the default from 31 May 2026 is cancel maker: the resting order is cancelled in full and your incoming order keeps filling against the rest of the book. Before that date the default reduced both orders by the overlap. Cancel taker, cancel both and reduce both remain available as explicit order attributes.
FAQ
How big is each TWAP slice?
The total divided by the number of slices, where slices = run time ÷ 30 seconds + 1. A 10-minute TWAP places 21 market orders.
Why did my limit order get rejected?
Most often the 5% fat-finger band around the mark and the best price, or not enough order margin for another resting order.
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