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Leverage on Intention is set per contract, not per account or per order. Each contract has its own leverage ladder — larger positions can only use lower leverage, keeping systemic and liquidation risk contained as a position’s footprint grows.

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How leverage works

When you set a contract’s leverage to L, new positions in that contract use L as their target leverage. Higher leverage means lower initial margin (notional / L) and a tighter liquidation buffer. In cross margin, long and short on the same contract must share the same leverage. In isolated margin, they can differ. Changing leverage requires three conditions to be true:
  1. Risk-limit ceiling. The target leverage must not exceed the contract’s maximum leverage for your current position size (see risk-limit tiers below).
  2. Margin adequacy. Lowering leverage increases required margin on your open positions and orders. Your free balance must cover the increase, or the change is rejected.
  3. Market conditions. In extreme volatility, Intention can temporarily lower the contract-wide leverage ceiling.

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Risk-limit tiers

Intention’s risk-limit ladder is a step function of position notional. As a position grows, the contract moves to higher tiers where max leverage is lower and maintenance margin rate is higher. This is how professional venues manage the exponential risk of very large positions. A tier is determined by the effective position value, which is the worst case across open longs, open shorts, and orders: 
effective_position_value = max(
  long_position_notional_at_mark + long_open_orders_at_order_price,
  short_position_notional_at_mark + short_open_orders_at_order_price
)

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Example: BTCUSDT tiers

TierEffective notionalMax leverageMaintenance margin rateMaintenance deduction
10–0 – 5M100×0.50%$0
25M–5M – 50M80×0.60%$5,000
350M–50M – 100M60×0.80%$100,000
4100M–100M – 150M40×1.25%$450,000
5> $150M20×2.50%$1,875,000
Each contract defines its own ladder based on liquidity and volatility. Less liquid contracts start at lower leverage and step down faster.

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Maintenance margin formula

Maintenance margin is a continuous (not step-wise) function of position size, thanks to the deduction term: 
maintenance_margin = notional × maintenance_margin_rate − maintenance_deduction
The deduction parameter ensures that a position sitting just above a tier boundary does not experience an abrupt jump in maintenance margin. Instead, the function is piecewise linear and always continuous.

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What happens at the ceiling

If your position grows large enough to exceed the highest tier’s risk limit, Intention does not force you to unwind — but it restricts new actions:
  • Existing orders stay live. No forced cancellation.
  • No new orders that would increase the position. Blocked at submission.
  • Reduce orders still allowed. You can always decrease exposure.
This gives large positions a controlled path down without surprise liquidations or forced unwinds.

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Interaction with initial margin

Initial margin per order is: 
initial_margin = (qty × order_price) / leverage + open_loss_adjustment
The open_loss_adjustment term accounts for unfavorable limit prices (for instance, a buy limit far above the mark price) and forces extra margin so the system never issues leverage against an already-underwater order.

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Practical guidance

  • For most majors, the tier 1 leverage is high (50–100×) but meaningful positions quickly move into tier 2 or 3 where effective leverage drops anyway.
  • If you care about a specific liquidation price, compute it at your actual target size, not at the ticker’s headline max leverage.
  • Lowering leverage on an existing position is useful as a soft hedge — it immediately raises your margin buffer.
  • For size-adjusted margin math and liquidation price formulas, see Liquidations.