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Market-maker performance guide

MetaFlux is a BFT chain: an order gets a final on-chain id (oid) only after the block commits. If a quoting bot blocks on that commit for every place and cancel, its quote loop is capped by block finality. High-frequency market makers do not wait on the commit — they use three built-in fast paths. Adopting all three removes commit latency from the quote loop entirely.

1. Submit with ?confirm=async​

warning

?confirm=async is honoured by a node, not by the public endpoint today. The public endpoint is served by a gateway, and the gateway forwards the /exchange body without the query string. Sent there, the parameter is discarded 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 immediately (T+0) with a correlation handle instead of blocking until commit:

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

You get no oid in the response (the oid is assigned at commit). Learn the outcome from the WebSocket feed (next section). A rejection that is only knowable at execution time arrives on the order_updates channel as {"status":"rejected", "reason":"<free-text reason>"} — correlate by cloid, not action_hash (order_updates carries no action_hash field).

Use the synchronous path (/exchange without ?confirm=async) only when you genuinely need the oid in the response — e.g. a one-shot order, not a quote refresh.

2. Cancel and modify by cloid, not oid​

Set a client order id (cloid) on every order you place. Then cancel or replace by cloid with no dependency on the commit-assigned oid:

  • CancelByCloid — buildNativeCancelByCloidAction (TS) / the equivalent in the Rust SDK.

A cloid-keyed loop never has to wait for, or correlate, an oid before it can cancel.

3. Batch your quotes — one action, one nonce, one round​

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

  • batchModify — buildNativeBatchModifyAction: cancel-replace many resting orders in one signed action (up to 1000 legs).
  • batchOrder — buildNativeBatchOrderAction: place many orders in one signed action.

One batch = one signature, one nonce, one commit round for the whole refresh. A 50-level two-sided requote is 1 action, not 100 round-trips — and it consumes 1 block inclusion slot instead of 100. This is the single largest throughput multiplier available to a market maker.

4. Drive state from WebSocket, do not poll​

Subscribe to the per-account channels and react to deltas instead of polling /info:

  • order_updates — resting/fill/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 burns your rate budget. See Rate limits.

Putting it together — 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

This loop is bound by your local strategy + network RTT, not by per-order block finality. Batch your refreshes rather than firing many individual orders in a burst — a batched action is both faster and kinder to the mempool.

Checklist​

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