BACKPACK - FRIDAY CRASH
Without any maximalism , let’s be honest here:
There was indeed a serious issue with Backpack’s liquidation engine that caused severe losses to me and other users ( hopefully temporarily ) , and I’d like to properly address this case.
TLDR:
I was running a delta-neutral strategy on HYPE when Backpack suddenly closed all my positions, and my portfolio went from 40K to 96K USD ( profit ) probably due to the price gap between PERP and SPOT.
1–2 hours later, my balance crashed to 11K USD.
During that time, I couldn’t execute any trades everything was at the mercy of Backpack’s liquidity engine.
My SPOT position simply disappeared after my delta-neutral setup had been settled.
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First of all, I want to say that I consider myself an ambassador of the
@Backpack brand and that I genuinely admire
@armaniferrante , his dev team, and the entire Backpack staff who, during this incident (as in previous ones), stood by the community, listening and trying to solve everyone’s problems.
I truly hope the same will happen in my case.
As a product, I’ve never seen anything like Backpack in terms of what it delivers to users especially regarding capital efficiency. It’s completely different from any CEX or DEX I’ve tested over the years.
But we got issues here...
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Here is what happened :
During Friday’s crash, I had approximately $40,000 USD in collateral/margin, distributed as follows:
0.25 BTC
46 SOL
$1,500 net positive (accumulated HYPE funding rate gains, shown below)
In addition, I was holding a delta-neutral position structured as:
1750 HYPE SPOT (≈ $80,000)
1750 HYPE SHORT PERP (≈ $80,000)
Again :
*** This represented around 1% of the total HYPE open interest on Backpack, which had around $8M in total OI : So yes, it was a fairly relevant position ***
During the crash, I saw my total balance increase (positive PnL) and my MMR decrease (getting “greener,” from 20% down to around 7%) even as the market was dropping.
That’s because my short position (the most liquid side) was skyrocketing in value ; it grew larger than my entire collateral and far above my spot position in HYPE , since there was roughly a 20% price discrepancy between PERP and SPOT markets.
-> HYPE PERP price dropped to 21
-> HYPE SPOT price dropped to 24.4
At that moment, my portfolio was somehow actually profiting from the market crash due to this arbitrage spread.
However, during that time I was unable to perform any actions on the exchange. I couldn’t buy/sell SPOT or PERP, nor adjust any positions. Every attempt resulted in an error.
Still, I remained relatively calm, because my short (the most liquid position) was offsetting my USD borrow with a healthy surplus, and my MMR kept improving (greener), and also my HYPE spot price was above HYPE perp price.
To my surprise, a few minutes later my positions were closed automatically and a settlement occurred with PROFIT ;
-> leaving me with around $30,000 in realized profit, as shown in both the attached screenshot and Backpack’s on-chain history.
Here’s what happened:
> My short and borrow were automatically closed
> My 46 SOL and $1,500 USD were liquidated
> Half of my HYPE spot position was sold, leaving me with:
> 0.25 BTC (untouched from the start)
> ≈ 900 HYPE
This brought my wallet from $40K to around $70K USD, adding roughly $35K in profit from what appeared to be the arbitrage between PERP and SPOT HYPE.
At that point, I was confused but not worried, since I was seeing my account value go up despite all the chaos.
*** All of this happened automatically under Backpack’s liquidation engine ***
Everything is recorded in Backpack’s trade history and in the attached screenshot.
Then, 1–2 hours later ( after everything was settled ) , to my total despair, I saw all 900 HYPE disappear from my spot balance , along with 0.15 BTC, leaving me with just 0.1 BTC (~$11K USD) that is what has left for my entire bag atm.
That means over $30K USD in losses compared with my initial BAG ( before crash ), not even counting the supposed profit I had from the PERP/SPOT arbitrage during the crash settled by Backpacks engine itself.
I’m honestly devastated and still in shock.
Not only because I (hopefully temporarily) lost a significant portion of my capital , years of work and effort , but also because this happened on the protocol I use and endorse the most in all of crypto.
Everyone who follows me knows I’m truly “skin in the game” , my money is where my mouth is.
I’ve made several threads here on X and YouTube videos showing how to operate FR strategies and how efficient Backpack was compared to every other DEX/CEX/PERP product out there.
I’ve already sent an email and filled out the form as instructed by the Backpack team, and I sincerely hope this can be resolved.
My intention here is not to cause FUD , but quite the opposite.
I’m still using Backpack and rooting for the team to overcome this issue and come out stronger, as they have in past incidents.
However, I can’t ignore this serious problem that has affected me and many other users and its impossible to remain quiet seeing all this misinformations coming to X regarding BP from both sides ( FUDers real Believers ).
I really hope that everything ends up well for all sides.
Im tired, boss...