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Market-maker performance guide

This page describes how a market maker keeps block finality out of its quote loop.

MetaFlux is a BFT chain. An order gets a final on-chain id (oid) only after the block commits. A quoting bot that blocks on that commit for every place and cancel has a quote loop capped by block finality. High-frequency market makers do not wait on the commit. They use three built-in fast paths. With all three, the quote loop has no commit latency.

Async confirm​

warning

A node honours ?confirm=async. The public endpoint does not honour it today. A gateway serves the public endpoint, and the gateway forwards the /exchange body without the query string. If you send the parameter there, the gateway discards it, and you get the default synchronous reply. Test your endpoint before you build the quote loop on it. See optimizing latency.

POST /exchange?confirm=async returns 202 Accepted at once (T+0) with a correlation handle. It does not block until commit:

{ "accepted": true, "action_hash": "0x…", "cloid": "0x…", "nonce": 123 }

The response has no oid, because the chain assigns the oid at commit. Get the outcome from the WebSocket feed (next section). A rejection that the chain can know only at execution time arrives on the order_updates channel as {"status":"rejected", "reason":"<free-text reason>"}. Correlate by cloid, not by action_hash. order_updates has no action_hash field.

Use the synchronous path (/exchange without ?confirm=async) only when you need the oid in the response, for example a one-shot order. A quote refresh does not need it.

Cancel by cloid​

Set a client order id (cloid) on every order you place. Then cancel or replace by cloid. This does not depend on the oid that the commit assigns:

  • CancelByCloid: buildNativeCancelByCloidAction (TS), or the equivalent in the Rust SDK.

A loop keyed on cloid never waits for an oid, and never correlates one, before it can cancel.

Batched quotes​

Do not send N separate orders or cancels for an N-level quote refresh. Send one batched action:

  • batchModify: buildNativeBatchModifyAction. It cancels and replaces many resting orders in one signed action, up to 1000 legs.
  • batchOrder: buildNativeBatchOrderAction. It places many orders in one signed action.

One batch uses one signature, one nonce and one commit round for the whole refresh. A 50-level two-sided requote is 1 action instead of 100 round trips. It uses 1 block inclusion slot instead of 100. This is the largest throughput multiplier available to a market maker.

WebSocket state​

Subscribe to the per-account channels and act on deltas. Do not poll /info:

  • order_updates: resting, fill and cancel transitions. Correlate by cloid or action_hash.
  • fills / user_fills: your executions.
  • account_state: margin health and the whole token ledger (spot.balances). clearinghouse_state: perp positions. spot_margin_state: spot-margin positions.

Subscriptions are free. A subscribe costs 0 weight, and so does every pushed message. /exchange is weight 5 per request, and /info polling uses your rate budget. See Rate limits.

The quote loop​

on market move:
  batchModify([ cancel-replace all N levels ])   // 1 signed action, ?confirm=async
  // do NOT await an oid
on order_updates / fills WS delta:
  update local book, size next requote

Your local strategy and the network RTT bound this loop. Per-order block finality does not. Batch your refreshes. Do not fire many individual orders in a burst. A batched action is faster, and it puts less load on the mempool.

Checklist​

  • Every order carries a cloid.
  • Quote refreshes go through batchModify / batchOrder, not per-order calls.
  • Submits use ?confirm=async, and the loop never awaits an oid.
  • Order, fill and account state come from the order_updates / fills / account_state WS channels, not from polling.
  • Cancels and replaces are keyed by cloid (CancelByCloid).