Release notes
March 13, 2024
New features
Liquidity distribution to the B2Trader Brokerage Platform (BBP)
With this release, the MarksMan team is excited to announce that the emerging B2Trader Brokerage Platform has been added to our growing list of supported trading venues. This addition further advances our commitment to delivering top-notch connectivity to trading platforms and liquidity providers.
The key updates encompass a bespoke order execution flow as well as custom FIX API endpoints that streamline the retrieval of available markets and contract specifications. With these enhancements, our industry-standard FIX protocol implementation enables a robust connection between the newly added platform and the liquidity providers supported by MarksMan.
This integration empowers BBP’s clients to embrace flexible business models and adjustable execution strategies. And, as a result, further boost their success by providing exceptional user experiences to their end users — the members of the trading communities.
November 10, 2023
New features
Maker-integration with cTrader via the FIX protocol
With this release, the MarksMan team is pleased to announce the achievement of a significant milestone in our ongoing quest to provide exceptional connectivity to both trading platforms and liquidity providers: we have successfully integrated MarksMan Hub with cTrader.
With this integration, MarksMan Hub can now distribute the liquidity to cTrader, a complete trading platform solution for the forex and CFD brokers, via the FIX protocol. On one hand, this furnishes our clients running trading platforms with the ultimate access to liquidity. On the other hand, this empowers liquidity providers to implement comprehensive distribution solutions.
This release marks the paradigm shift in the connectivity approach by including trading platform integrations alongside the liquidity providers and liquidity aggregators — our focus previously. This is a major step forward in expanding our ecosystem to include taker-venues, making our product a versatile liquidity distribution solution that meets the needs of a wide range of industry players in the dynamic world of trading.
This new integration enables the provision of unique liquidity streams empowering our clients to differentiate themselves in a competitive and highly volatile market. Retail and institutional brokers, crypto exchanges, and liquidity providers can leverage our performant liquidity distribution solutions powered by industry-standard communication protocols and fast APIs built on scalable frameworks.
October 20, 2023
New features
Full support for Bitfinex Derivatives
Following the Bitfinex Spot support implemented earlier this year, we are pleased to announce full support for Bitfinex Derivatives with this release. It has been done per popular client request to support and improve diversification of perpetual futures liquidity flows, following the collapse of a global cryptocurrency derivatives player late last year.
With this release, trading platforms powered by the B2Broker technology receive additional benefits and opportunities, such as:
expand your offer with additional trading instruments
increase market depth due to additional liquidity source
improve liquidity, including faster and more flexible price feeds and better execution quality
diversify liquidity streams by the additional source of liquidity and avoid a single point of failure
differentiate yourself from competing platforms and, at the same time, delight your users by creating unique liquidity streams that have just become available from the newly supported platform.
Among other features, the trading API and pre-execution model are fully supported and immediately available to client venues using the FIX protocol and relying upon the MarksMan’s signature FIX API (v1.2 and later).
Improvements
A new how-to article has been added to the MarksMan Product guide, illustrating the process of setting up a connection to Coinbase. We took a special care to highlight the required credentials and help clients find them easily.
September 29, 2023
New features
FIX API 1.2
With this release, MarksMan introduces a new version 1.2 of FIX API, which is an expanded and improved version of the previous implementation:
The Business Message Reject has been deleted.
The Sequence Reset message has been added.
The following tags have been added to the Market Data Request message:
<267> NoMDEntryTypes(required),<269> MDEntryType(required).The following tags have been added to the Market Data — Snapshot/Full Refresh message:
<299> QuoteEntryID.The following tags have been added to the New Order Single message:
<1> Account.The following tags have been added to the Execution Report message:
<64> SettlDate,<75> TradeDate,<103> OrdRejReason.The following tags have been added to the Order Cancel Reject message:
<39> OrdStatus(required).
Updated FIX API specification
The FIX API specification has been updated to reflect changes in FIX API as well as to become more clear and consistent.
May 12, 2023
New features
A new form for entering API keys
The MarksMan Web UI has been updated to display a customized form for entering API keys for each of the supported hedging platforms. As a result, the issues with entering the credentials have been eliminated.
Since every platform features a different set of fields for entering the API keys, this form was updated to display the authorization fields as they are provided by each hedging platform and to prevent any ambiguity arising from the difference in the field names.
Improvements
The contents of Web UI controls and field descriptions have been revised to afford a more intuitive interface.
The look and feel of the MarksMan Web UI has been enhanced by updating some of its most commonly used visual elements.
Bug fixes
Fixed an issue causing the API key editing window to hang when an entry for a hedging platform was absent in the configuration. Such exceptions are now handled, and the stability of the UI has increased as a result.
Fixed an issue due to which empty fields were erroneously assigned zero values after updating the hedging configuration.
Fixed an issue due to which duplicate entries could be displayed for clients on the Hedging Status tab.
Fixed an issue due to which incorrect values were submitted in certain scenarios when enabling or disabling hedging on the Hedging Status page of the Web UI.
April 21, 2023
Improvements
Liquidity provider validation before accepting incoming orders
The order execution reliability has been greatly improved as a result of including a check for the actual availability of the supported liquidity providers before the MarksMan Liquidity Hub services can go forth and accept the incoming orders from a taker platform.
Following the update of the MarksMan liquidity distribution services, they now always ensure that the connected liquidity providers are ready to execute a placed order, in which case the order is then accepted for execution on the connected trading venue serving as a liquidity consumer.
Type-agnostic execution of orders
If the order type that was set by a taker platform isn’t recognized as a valid execution option, the MarksMan liquidity distribution services can be configured to emulate the required order type by assigning a different type to the order. This way you can further ensure that the placed orders will be filled regardless of their types, and their execution quality will match the expectations of your end-users to the fullest possible extent.
Repeated requests for order placement
The MarksMan order placement services have been revised to enable them to retry order placement if a target liquidity provider platform is unable to fill an order for a transient reason.
If the dedicated MarksMan service recognizes the returned error as transient (as opposed to intrasient errors, such as those arising from connection failures), the service then works around this issue by automatically sending a repeated request for order placement, which increases the chances that the order will be eventually filled.
This is especially useful in times of increased market volatility resulting in drastic increase in traders’ activity, which may overwhelm the liquidity provider services making it difficult to fulfill all the requests for orders execution.
Bug Fixes
Fixed some issues affecting the MarksMan notification service. These include occasional service stability issues arising from an incorrect data format, as well as the issue due to which a user identifier defined in hedging configuration could not be resolved if this user’s trading platform was left unspecified.
Fixed an issue that affected the adapter used to connect to one of the supported liquidity providers and prevented restarting the service and restoring the connection after the liquidity provider has disconnected the communication protocol.
Fixed some minor issues with the MarksMan Web UI due to which it could be difficult for users to replace the API keys in certain scenarios.
Fixed an issue with the Hedging Reports section of the MarksMan Web UI due to which the Amount field in the Order Details section could be occasionally assigned incorrect data.
March 10, 2023
New features
Hedging on Bitfinex
Bitfinex, a global cryptocurrency exchange and spot trading venue, is now supported as a new hedging platform.
As is well known, diversification is the key to thriving, regardless of market conditions. This is why with the two most recent releases we specifically focused on providing the widest variety of connectivity options to our global-minded clients, while offering them the opportunity to hedge market risks on suitable platforms in as many regions and jurisdictions as possible with a view of achieving the maximum geographical and regulatory diversity.
The newly released trading adaptor for the Bitfinex API is the next step on the MarksMan’s journey aimed at empowering its discerning B2B clients, which include cryptocurrency exchanges and crypto brokers. In the meantime, our main goal remains constant: we are eager to not only delight trader communities by ensuring a fantastic user experience, but also to offer trading platforms broad opportunities for spreading risks and allow them to take a savvy approach to exposure in a wide range of market situations.
Improvements
Enhanced support for trading instruments engineered as contracts
We have significantly expanded the contract specification capabilities for some of the supported crypto assets by encompassing all popular methods of defining trading instruments.
With the enhanced contract sizes, the price and/or amount can be configured in any combinations while designing contracts for various symbols, with taking into consideration both the contracts that are priced by amount and those evaluated by face value regardless of their amount.
Bug fixes
Fixed an issue due to which the adaptor used for price discovery on one of the supported liquidity providers could hang in certain scenarios.
Fixed an issue which hampered the efficiency of the cloud resources utilization by making multiple subscriptions to quotes for the same asset if liquidity for this asset was used to maintain price feeds for several symbols.
Fixed an issue which caused intermittent disconnection of the FIX protocol after restarting one of the supported liquidity aggregators.
Fixed an issue related to number formats which occasionally appeared in hedging reports. As a result, the scientific EXP format used for some of the fields has been replaced with a more user-friendly financial format.
February 17, 2023
New features
Hedging on Kraken
As part of our relentless pursuit of providing crypto asset exchanges and brokers seamless access to the widest possible choice of hedging platforms, we are pleased to announce full support for the Kraken trading API, which opens new horizons for trading venues relying on MarksMan Liquidity Hub in terms of risk transfer and supplying the price feed.
This is a major landmark for MarksMan, made possible by enhancing the previously released adapter used for connecting to this well-established bitcoin trading platform and cryptocurrency exchange which is based in San Francisco. As a result, both Level 2 quotes and hedging for all symbols traded on Kraken are now available to MarksMan clients.
Improvements
Extended documentation
A new tutorial has been added to MarksMan documentation, illustrating the process of obtaining the API keys required to enable hedging on Kraken using the newly introduced hedging adapter.
Paying special attention to keeping our documentation up-to-date and complete, we invite you to learn more about MarksMan by exploring our Product Guide and encourage you to contact us if you have any suggestions or need further assistance.
Bug fixes
Fixed an issue which caused the hedging engine to hang up immediately after entering the API keys for connecting to some of the hedging platforms in certain scenarios.
Fixed an issue which prevented simultaneous placement of multiple hedging orders, causing instead their consecutive placements which resulted in slightly delayed execution.
Fixed an issue which caused recurrent switching between the main and backup liquidity providers in certain scenarios.
January 27, 2023
New Features
Level 2 quotes supported for Bitfinex spot liquidity
Yet another major cryptocurrency exchange Bitfinex has been integrated, ensuring steady supply of spot asset liquidity from this global platform.
This highly anticipated development opens exciting new opportunities for operators of crypto trading venues, since it is hard to overestimate the importance of being able to connect to unique liquidity sources. For those who are determined to survive the ongoing “crypto winter” and excel in a highly competitive environment, this is a great opportunity to appeal to extremely discerning trader communities with the best possible offering, which includes a wide array of trading instruments and guarantees tighter spreads and remarkable market depth.
This is undoubtedly great news both for the exchanges powered by matching engines, such as B2Trader, and for third-party crypto exchanges and brokers connected to MarksMan via the FIX protocol (either using the MarksMan’s proprietary FIX API or solutions relying on liquidity aggregators, such as oneZero and PrimXM).
Improvements
Improved handling of Level 2 quotes
The performance of locally maintained extended order books with a virtually unlimited number of price levels (up to 5000 and beyond) has been enhanced, thanks to implementation of an improved solution, which enables combining multiple price feeds into a single data stream, as opposed to one-to-one channel subscriptions that were previously supported.
This has resulted in a drastic performance boost for the price discovery engine, along with a notable increase in the frequency of Level 2 quote updates.
Bug Fixes
Fixed an issue that caused occasional generation of empty reports due to incorrect logging of executed trades.
Fixed an issue that prevented subscription to more than a hundred trading instruments due to a bug in the adaptor used to connect to one of the supported liquidity providers.
Fixed an issue related to data exchange with message-oriented middleware, which caused occasional rejection of orders placed using the FIX protocol.
Fixed an issue due to which in certain scenarios the hedging engine attempted to place trades on one of the supported liquidity provider platforms despite the corresponding API keys being missing.
Fixed an issue due to which requests to place offset orders were occasionally sent to hedging platforms even when the order volume was zero after applying the trading rules governing decimal precision of order amounts on these platforms.
December 16, 2022
New Features
Support for multiple accounts on a single hedging platform
Automated hedging can now be performed simultaneously on two or more accounts on the same hedging platform for routing offset trades with a purpose of hedging market risks.
First and foremost, the MarksMan team is committed to empowering its user base — that is, operators of trading venues, such as spot crypto exchanges and brokerages — and putting their best efforts to implement as flexible and efficient hedging policies as possible. With that in mind, this newly added feature is aimed at supporting multiple accounts on a single hedging platform, while ensuring precise order placements, timely delivery of execution confirmations and in-depth reporting for each account used to make offset trades on a given liquidity provider platform.
Improvements
Unmatched execution quality due to asynchronous placement of orders
The MarksMan order placement engine relying on trading sessions maintained using the FIX protocol has been vastly improved by adding support for asynchronous placement of large numbers of orders submitted for execution on liquidity provider platforms, which has resulted in unprecedented speed and unrivaled execution quality.
Extended infrastructure for engineering of synthetic instruments
A new improvement to the MarksMan synthetics engine has significantly extended the range of available sources of quotes suitable for engineering synthetic trading instruments, such as synthetic crosses, fractional markets and inverted pairs.
Accessible price feeds are not only received from a MarksMan instance hosting the synthetics engine itself, but also from any other instance within the Liquidity Hub ecosystem.
Bug Fixes
Fixed an issue related to the reporting service: when a single order was filled by way of multiple executions on a particular hedging platform, only one of the executions was recorded.
Fixed a bug related to the SimpleFIX Go library implementing the FIX protocol, which could have caused an issue with the logon sequence if a client used a different FIX protocol implementation.
Fixed an issue causing a resource leak in the synthetics engine that could have given rise to intermittent stability issues. In addition, another resource leak has been eliminated in an adapter used to connect to one of the supported spot cryptoasset liquidity providers, ensuring overall stability of the service, its reliability and uninterrupted uptime.
November 25, 2022
New Features
Direct integration of the MarksMan FIX server with PrimeXM
The MarksMan Liquidity Hub is now capable of distributing liquidity as a maker to PrimeXM. Client connections to this leading liquidity aggregation platform are powered by the industry-standard FIX protocol, and the liquidity bridged by MarksMan can now be distributed directly on PrimeXM for its subsequent distribution across other trading venues.
Both the quoting and trading sessions are supported, providing immense benefits to trading venues participating in the MarksMan ecosystem and offering them new exciting opportunities to grow their business and differentiate from competitors in both the scope and performance of trading instruments available both to their users and the trading community as a whole.
Improvements
Automatic validation of markups
The price construction mechanism featured by MarksMan has been further improved by adding validation to the key parameters entered for price markups.
If the markup values assigned to the BID and ASK sides are asymmetric, a warning is issued prompting a venue operator to correct the entered values so that unequal markup amounts are not placed on both sides of the order book.
More data for tracking orders and matching elements of the hedging flow
The logging and reporting functionality provided by various MarksMan services has been enhanced by listing external execution identifiers assigned by connected liquidity providers along with their MarksMan-assigned equivalents. This way, order matching has become much quicker, also facilitating subsequent analysis of trades.
Moreover, orders have also become easier to track thanks to newly introduced granular timestamps.
Bug Fixes
Fixed an issue due to which the order book was reset upon receiving out-of-sequence incremental updates for Level 2 quotes from one of the supported liquidity providers.
Fixed an issue related to one of the supported liquidity providers: a command to subscribe to incremental updates was ignored for all trading instruments if it couldn’t be executed only for some of them.
Fixed an issue related to the MarksMan FIX protocol: non-sequential numbers were assigned to certain FIX messages.
Fixed a rarely occurring issue related to the MarksMan Web UI: toggling a certain switch when setting up one hedging platform could result in misconfiguration of another hedging platform.
Fixed an issue related to the reporting and alerting service used for sending messages to a Slack channel: in some cases, incorrect data was being reported.
October 14, 2022
New Features
Liquidity from and hedging on FTX
We are happy to announce yet another major achievement in our quest for unrivaled connectivity for MarksMan across the spot crypto liquidity space: with this release, FTX, a top-rated global crypto exchange, has been supported, once again letting MarksMan assert itself as a flagship liquidity hub and price discovery engine.
The liquidity for all markets represented on FTX is immediately available for any exchange powered by the B2Trader matching engine as well as to any trading platform connected to MarksMan via the FIX API.
Along with supplying the price feed for spot markets, the newly introduced connection adapter radically extends the range of price risk hedging options offered by the MarksMan hedging engine.
Improvements
DB connectivity monitoring
When it comes to the cloud infrastructure accommodating the MarksMan services, we put our best efforts to not only ensure its highest performance and extreme reliability, but also envision efficient ways to monitor and maintain connectivity.
In keeping true to our principle — trust, but verify — we have implemented automated detection of connectivity issues related to managed cloud database services.
Optimal subscription management
Superb performance is the cornerstone on which rests the success of the MarksMan liquidity platform, and it’s been proved time and again during its development that the key to achieving the highest degree of efficiency is constant optimization.
This time, it has been ensured that the liquidity hub only subscribes to the symbols that take part in liquidity distribution. This saves the cloud resources due to removal of subscriptions which are not currently in demand and further improves the overall platform performance.
Bug Fixes
Fixed an issue due to which one of services stopped after removing a subscription to a price feed.
Fixed an issue due to which a mandatory time-in-force parameter value wasn’t sent when placing hedging orders of a certain type on a particular hedging platform.
September 23, 2022
New Features
Conversion of derivative contract lot sizes to smaller and larger tradeable amounts
With this release, you can split derivative contracts and reform contract specifications with underlying digital assets to change the contract lot size and lot price.
This is a major development, since it enables quoting and trading fractional and, inversely, consolidated crypto derivative contracts. For example, if an instrument is traded at a liquidity provider venue in lots of 1000, such derivatives can now be traded in lots of one to a million on a taker side, with the contract quotes readily adjusted to the new contract sizes. When the orders are placed for executions on liquidity provider venues, they are adjusted to meet the lot size requirements of each venue.
Improvements
The order book state may be preserved indefinitely
The adapter used to connect to liquidity providers has been further improved by adding the option to hold the last value of a quote indefinitely.
A good case for this is dealing with acquisition of quotes when the asset price changes only intermittently even though the connection to the liquidity provider is alive.
The current state of Level 2 quotes is now reset upon disconnection
This improvement is related to the previous one: it has been ensured that even when the asset price is configured to handle infrequent refreshing of quotes, once connection to a liquidity provider goes down, the state of Level 2 quotes is reset until connection to the source of quotes is renewed.
Bug Fixes
Fixed an issue due to which, when asset volume is denominated with high decimal precision, small order amounts could be truncated to zero and error messages may be sent by liquidity providers.
It is now ensured that hedging is handled properly, and in cases when orders are so small that they would be rejected by liquidity provider venues, they are not sent there for execution.
Fixed an issue which caused race conditions. This has resulted in improved stability and performance of a hedging agent along with an adapter used to fetch asset quotes from a liquidity provider venue.
Fixed an issue related to recording of time values. It has been ensured that timing is now properly recorded and corrected for ongoing order execution requests.
Fixed an issue concerning a service responsible for handling the FIX protocol.
The service is now capable of resuming the price feed after connection to the liquidity taker was reinstated.
Fixed an issue due to which upon entering a long numerical value on a Web UI form, its last digit was switched to zero.
September 2, 2022
New Features
Updated documentation
A new section has been added to the MarksMan documentation providing a user interface overview and illustrating how to accomplish the most common tasks. Refer to the Product guide to learn about the hedging functionality provided by MarksMan.
Improvements
With this release, various changes have been introduced to MarksMan user interface, which include the following improvements:
A fixed table header
A table header in the Hedging Configuration section has become fixed, making it easier to see the field captions when scrolling down the page.
New tooltips
All buttons have been provided with tooltips describing their functionality.
Support for minimum screen resolution
The minimum screen resolution (960px) is now supported on all product pages.
August 12, 2022
New Features
Full support for Huobi Futures
Huobi Futures, a top-rated derivative exchange platform, has been fully supported.
As a result, robust supply of level 2 quotes has been ensured across the entire range of trading instruments, including but not limited to futures, swaps and perpetual swaps available on the newly supported platform.
This new level of liquidity has been provided following a major update of a recently released Huobi spot adapter, which was greatly extended to allow MarksMan clients to explore all the advantages offered by Huobi-powered trading venues.
The trading API is also supported, which opens new opportunities for best price execution and radically expands the range of options available to MarksMan Liquidity Hub clients in the realm of market risk mitigation while allowing them to offer their end users the tightest spreads and deepest order books across today’s markets.
Among other features, pre-execution model is fully supported and immediately available to client venues utilizing the FIX protocol and relying upon the MarksMan’s signature FIX API.
Improvements
Increased consistency of synthetic quotes
The engine responsible for engineering synthetic cross pairs and fractional trading instruments has received yet another boost in functionality to increase the consistency of synthetic quotes by eliminating any outlying values when calculating spreads.
Extra validation ensuring decimal precision of asset prices
Arguably, when it comes to cryptocurrencies and other types of digital assets, the issue of decimal precision may be challenging for some legacy trading platforms and liquidity aggregators that primarily deal with fiat instruments and traditional securities.
In contrast, MarksMan ensures that liquidity is always ingested, handled and distributed with superb efficiency, regardless of decimal precision and numerical value range of asset prices.
With an additional layer of validation added to its liquidity engine, MarksMan makes sure that decimal precision values are always handled in strict accordance with the client specification, throughout the entire liquidity processing pipeline.
Bug Fixes
Fixed an issue due to which supported platforms could sometimes fail to subscribe to level 2 quotes provided by MarksMan.
Fixed an issue due to which the final status of an order execution could be recorded incorrectly in certain scenarios involving one of the supported hedging platforms.
July 1, 2022
New Features
Hedging Reports — New section in Web UI
On a newly introduced Hedging Reports page, you can find the history of hedging orders, view comprehensive order data and drill down to the minute details of each execution. The data on order placement requests and hedging platform responses is readily available, along with the information related to timing of each step along the order processing pipeline. You can filter the reports by various criteria, including different types of order and counterparty IDs, order placement and execution data, as well as various time intervals. The table layout is configurable, making it possible to reorder the columns and display or hide any column according to your preferences.
Bug Fixes
Fixed various usability issues to improve the user experience.
Fixed an issue which prevented access to inputs due to an overlapping menu.
June 10, 2022
New Features
A tenfold increase in Level 2 quotes update speed
The rate of Level 2 quote updates has been increased ten times compared to the previous release, enabling liquidity feeds to be refreshed with an interval of 100 ms. This feature allows MarksMan Liquidity Hub clients to initiate and maintain the most up-to-date order books that enhance user experience for traders on the supported exchange and broker platforms, as well as make risk management aspects of trading venue operations more predictable.
Improvements
API rate limits implementation
The MarksMan Liquidity Hub hedging engine’s reliability has been given yet another boost with the implementation of support for request rate limits. This ensures optimal uptime for API connections employed for the purposes of trade executions and reporting.
Heartbeats and graceful connection termination
Health checks and connection handling safeguards have been added to ensure a seamless connection to liquidity provider data. As a result, unmatched reliability in managing Level 2 quote feeds has been achieved.
Bug Fixes
Fixed timeout issues that could affect reliability of full-duplex communication channels-while connecting to certain liquidity providers via API.
Fixed an issue with the mechanism responsible for restoring an API connection upon its interruptions in certain corner cases.
Fixed an issue due to which the Filled Amount field in hedging order execution reports could contain incorrect values.
May 20, 2022
New Features
Markups as a function of order book depth
MarksMan Liquidity Hub clients can now apply multiple markups based on the price level defined for Level 2 quotes. Together with variable volume modifiers introduced earlier this year, this feature empowers the trading venue operators to manage the liquidity of their order books to a highest precision, thus improving the user experience while mitigating market risks.
Improvements
Improved logics for applying markups
The algorithms used for applying both constant and multi-tiered markups have been revised. This has resulted in improved quality of liquidity distribution after applying markups.
More granular analytics with new data included in hedging order execution reports
More data about orders is now recorded by the MarksMan reporting engine. A new field has been added to store the order status information provided by hedging platforms. Furthermore, a new status has been included to distinguish expired orders from those canceled for other reasons.
Bug Fixes
Fixed an issue that caused a leak of resources during disconnections occurring as a result of intermittent network failures.
Fixed several issues that occurred in rare scenarios. Reliability and high availability of services responsible for liquidity supply in various market conditions has been ensured as a result.
April 29, 2022
New Features
Yet more liquidity from Huobi Global
The MarksMan Liquidity Hub is celebrating a new major update: we worked hard to introduce a fully featured adapter for the top-rated crypto exchange Huobi Global. Both the Level 2 quote and hedging adapters have become available to all MarksMan Ecosystem participants. This highly anticipated component has boosted both the breadth and depth of the crypto spot liquidity offering, carrying a great advantage for supported digital asset exchanges, including B2Trader. For the liquidity hub as a platform, this also ensures increased availability and improved failover capability. The influx of liquidity from the new source will also benefit the client venues integrated with MarksMan via FIX API.
Improvements
Optimized market data delivery
The parser of market data coming from one of the world’s largest crypto exchanges has been optimized, which resulted in a significant improvement in the adapter performance. Latency has been reduced by an order of magnitude, and the quality of market data and overall reliability have been considerably improved.
More flexible hedging with enhanced time-in-force settings
A hedging adapter for one of the major crypto-asset exchanges has been revamped, extending our offering to encompass the full range of trading parameters available for orders placed in the context of market risk hedging. With the newly introduced time-in-force options, our clients are free to devise more flexible and ultimately more efficient hedging strategies.
Bug Fixes
Fixed an issue which didn’t allow the hedging agent to record certain fields when trades were rejected by a hedging platform.
Fixed an issue which affected processing of incoming and outgoing messages used by one of the supported protocols, when some messages could be blocking other ones at a high load. A considerable potential bottleneck has been prevented as a result.
Fixed an issue that could affect order book consistency for one of the supported exchanges.
Fixed an issue that could have impact on the stability of some of the MarksMan services if reports were received in an incorrect format.
Fixed an issue that could result in a failure to cancel a previously placed order while executing a hedging strategy on one of the supported hedging platforms.
April 8, 2022
New Features
Comprehensive integration with Bittrex Global
A new adapter has been introduced to enable price discovery and market risk hedging on Bittrex Global. Connection to this global crypto exchange drastically extends the range of trading instruments and hedging options provided by MarksMan.
Hedging on Coinbase
A new adapter has been introduced to enable spot asset hedging on the Coinbase crypto exchange. For MarksMan Liquidity Hub clients who already came to appreciate the advantages of seamless Coinbase connection, this improvement signals complete integration with this major crypto trading platform, opening the opportunity for superior spot asset hedging.
Improvements
Extended price feed options
The price feed can now be streamed in the form of order book snapshots. Adding up to incremental feed updates, this further ensures even and reliable streaming of prices.
New performance benchmark reached
Over 200% increase in MarksMan performance has been secured thanks to optimization of the data interchange mechanism, which resulted in a major reduction of latency and more judicious use of computing resources. Smart use of cloud resources and bandwidth directly translates into the amount of trading instruments which a MarksMan instance can handle efficiently. This also implies increased market depth and higher frequency of symbol quote updates, along with a much better quality of order execution and improved bottom line.
Bug Fixes
Fixed an issue impairing the reliability of streaming order book data in rare scenarios.
Fixed an issue which occasionally caused a resource leak in cases when specific configuration parameters were missing. The stability of the hedging services has improved as a result.
Fixed an issue causing occasional inversion of sides when hedging trades were placed on certain platforms.
March 18, 2022
New Features
Streamlined order book consolidation
With this release, MarksMan supports consolidation of Level 2 quotes with unlimited market depth into any order book, according to flexible configuration rules. As a result, MarksMan clients can stream a price feed with a specified liquidity distribution to fill an order book with fewer levels while preserving the overall market depth. This way the MarksMan platform, with its support for virtually unlimited market depth, becomes even easier to integrate with trading venues whose market depth is limited to just a dozen or a hundred order book levels. At present, this functionality is available only for services accessible via FIX API.
Improved SimpleFIX Go documentation
The official documentation for the SimpleFIX Go library has been updated. This state-of-the-art library makes for a major contribution to open source on behalf of B2Broker, providing an up-to-date FIX engine implementation out of the box while featuring high performance and employing a highly sought-after Go technology stack. The library is available at https://github.com/b2broker/simplefix-go offering the global developer community a quick and easy approach to integrate FIX messaging pipelines into modern trading solutions powered by Go as well as ensure a closer integration with well-proven products from the B2Broker family.
Improvements
Support for liquidity with virtually unlimited order book depth
As a result of this improvement, nearly unlimited number of Level 2 quotes is now supported when it comes to the actual number of price levels in the order book, which includes (but is not limited to) order books featuring 1000+ levels that are currently supported.
Extended configuration of Level 2 quotes
The set of configuration parameters required for consolidation of Level 2 quotes into a custom price feed has been extended to include the options that define the number of price levels being consolidated into a target order book, volume distribution settings and the rules for discovering prices at specific order book levels.
Bug Fixes
Revamped a service responsible for switching the source of Level 2 quotes in the case when the counterparty starts supplying incorrect order book data. Continuous operation of price discovery services has been ensured as a result.
Fixed an issue that caused inversion of hedging trade sides in certain scenarios.
February 25, 2022
New Features
Pre-trade execution control
MarksMan now supports pre-trade execution control that enables the trading venues integrated via the FIX API to connect to the MarksMan Liquidity Hub as takers. When connected as a taker, a venue receives Level 2 quotes, it can place orders and receive confirmations when a maker executes the orders.
FIX API documentation
Basic FIX API specification has become available to help independent trading venues and liquidity providers integrate MarksMan Liquidity Hub into their solutions via the FIX API.
Improvements
Pricing Service streams prices with markups already applied
A specialized MarksMan service providing top-of-the-book prices (that is, Level 1 quotes) is now streaming quotes with configurable markups already applied, as opposed to the earlier implementation, with only the raw quotes provided so that markups had to be applied explicitly upon receiving the markup values via separate REST APIs. The newly introduced approach is much easier and less time-consuming.
Bug Fixes
Fixed an issue that resulted in the lot size not being taken into account when placing hedging orders on certain hedging platforms.
Fixed issues that affected the stability and performance of the MarksMan hedging engine.
February 4, 2022
New Features
Full support for Kraken spot liquidity
Trading venues participating in the MarksMan Ecosystem can now take advantage of ready access to spot liquidity on one of the top-ranked cryptocurrency exchanges — yet another milestone for MarksMan continuing on its mission of diversifying access to liquidity, be it crypto spot markets, crypto derivatives or other popular trading instruments.
Improvements
Improved support for Poloniex API
The Poloniex connection adapter has been updated following the changes to the API of this leading digital assets exchange, which resulted in enhanced performance and improved connection stability.
Extended integration with B2Trader
With this release, MarksMan features even deeper integration with B2Trader, a flagship matching engine and crypto assets exchange platform. As a result, more efficient delivery of trading reports and faster execution of hedging orders have become possible.
Bug Fixes
Fixed an issue related to the Poloniex adapter and causing inconsistencies in Level 2 quotes under certain circumstances.
Fixed a reporting-related issue to ensure that the fees and commissions data is properly received and reflected in hedging reports.
Fixed issues causing occasional quote feed inconsistencies arising immediately after updating the configuration of some of the MarksMan services.
January 14, 2022
New Features
Volume modifiers variable by price level
MarksMan Liquidity Hub clients can now configure a volume modifier (otherwise known as multiplier) as a function of market depth. Risk management precision can be ensured by fine-tuning liquidity distribution data in the order book.
Execution of hedging orders on Binance Futures
A new adapter has been introduced for execution of hedging orders on Binance Futures, a major platform specializing in crypto derivatives. Combined with instruments for perpetual futures trading, this new service creates truly exciting opportunities for MarksMan Liquidity Hub clients.
Hedging of spot assets with Binance perpetual futures
Spot asset trades can be hedged with perpetual futures. MarksMan clients can reduce costs and improve the cash flow by applying more attractive strategies.
Improvements
A new adapter has been introduced for connection to Gemini, another major cryptocurrency exchange providing spot liquidity for MarksMan clients.
A new adapter has been introduced for execution of hedging orders on the Poloniex crypto exchange.
Bug Fixes
Fixed an issue that could result in omission of some trade parameters in the hedging orders trade history.
Fixed an issue that could cause an order timeout error despite normal execution of actual trades.
December 17, 2021
New Features
Hedging configuration in the MarksMan admin panel
Introducing a new admin panel with a convenient user interface featuring useful hedging configuration options, allowing you:
to specify the minimum and maximum amount at which to execute hedging orders, and define different hedge ratios for each order side
to map some of the hedging order symbols to other symbols, meaning that you can hedge using any symbols apart from those present in a particular instrument
These options can find a variety of applications. For example, you can hedge by forcibly splitting large orders and executing each portion separately.
Hedging Status — New Web UI section
On a new Hedging Status page, you can manage and monitor trading venues and hedging platforms to solve any of the following tasks:
run or stop the hedging process
connect hedging platforms to client exchanges or disconnect them according to your risk transfer preferences
manage API keys provided by the connected hedging platforms
December 3, 2021
New Features
FIX integration — Another major liquidity distribution platform supported
A new adapter has been introduced for connection to another major platform specializing in margin trading. This is a welcome addition to a rich set of connectivity options available to MarksMan Liquidity Hub clients.
Simultaneous connection to a number of ecosystem makers
Any venue participating in the MarksMan Ecosystem (or ecosystem taker) can now establish a live connection with multiple ecosystem partners, enjoying simultaneous access to multiple liquidity streams and gaining a competitive edge on the turbulent hedging market
Improvements
The identifier assigned to executions by an exchange is now being tracked throughout the entire succession of hedging operations. This greatly improves the quality of end-to-end analytics available to risk managers employed at venues participating in the MarksMan Ecosystem.
The hedging order placement process has been streamlined, resulting in improvements to the prioritization engine, which ensures the fastest possible routing of orders resulting in timely and efficient risk transfer coming handy to any risk management strategy.
In anticipation of possible connection failures or other issues compromising continuous liquidity flow from ecosystem makers, both the price feed and hedging can be configured to prescribe automatic switching to another ecosystem partner or external liquidity provider, followed by switching back to use them again as soon as the connection is restored.
Bug Fixes
Fixed an issue that could compromise reliability of order routing services in some scenarios. Fault tolerance is now ensured in potentially disruptive cases, such as when trading symbols are found to be misconfigured or missing from a hedging configuration.
November 12, 2021
New Features
The VWAP and total volume included in reports
Hedging orders exceeding a certain amount (configurable) can be executed in multiple portions. The total hedging volume and Volume Weighted Average Price are included into a corresponding report.
100 price levels — Market depth milestone passed
Liquidity can now be provided with a market depth of more than 100 order book levels, which in practice implies virtually infinite order book. The previous milestone, with a maximum of 100 levels in the order book, has been reached and passed — the actual market depth now depends solely on the available computing resources.
Flexible user roles and granular access permissions
It is now possible to configure and assign custom user roles, dynamically if required. This approach to maintaining access permissions ensures proper access control granularity, promising an easier way to manage a multitude of permissions across various system modules.
Improvements
Data exchange between various product services via the internal messaging system has been optimized, resulting in sturdier interoperability and reduced consumption of cloud resources.
Currency pairs can now be inverted, which adds up to the range of hedging parameters available for synthetic instruments. They can be modeled on any of the symbols in a pair, regardless of whether they are notionally considered base or quoted.
Bug Fixes
Fixed an issue that imposed an unreasonable limit upon the order book depth.
October 22, 2021
New Features
Synthetic Engine integration
The Synthetics Engine has become an integral part of the MarksMan Liquidity Hub ecosystem.
Notional values as hedging order limits
The set of hedging configuration parameters has been extended, making for a much more flexible risk management: when configuring limit settings of your hedging orders, you can list both a base asset and a notional symbol which may be quoted in any asset, including fiat currencies.
More order types, hedging with time-in-force settings
The set of available time-in-force options has been extended. Apart from a variety of market orders, you can place limit orders and configure their slippage settings.
Improvements
Precise timing is now an important aspect of analytics available to MarksMan Liquidity Hub clients. The time of order execution at a hedging platform is now being tracked, opening doors for new insights inspired by accurate execution data.
It is now possible to specify the minimum and maximum amount for hedging orders. The amount limits are adjusted to the hedge ratio.
Bug Fixes
Fixed an issue compromising the stability of an internal service monitoring the status of sources supplying Level 2 quotes to MarksMan. Continuous streaming of liquidity feeds is now ensured.
June 10, 2021
New Features
RESTful API with Swagger documentation
RESTful API has been provided to lay the ground for a graphical user interface and further integration between MarksMan and other B2Broker products featuring a UI.
External liquidity providers as venues for price risk hedging
Trades executed on B2Trader can now be hedged automatically, by forwarding price risks to an external liquidity provider, such as Binance.
Direct hedging upon external liquidity providers for B2BX clients
Direct hedging of price risks via external liquidity providers has become possible. You can execute hedging orders on Binance or any other platform connected to a client exchange participating in the MarksMan ecosystem and receiving liquidity from B2BX.
Currency conversion for values displayed in reports
A new service has been introduced, tracking conversion rates and allowing you to convert the reported order size and trade total values into any currency.
Improvements
Extended hedging parameters
The set of hedging parameters has been extended, enabling MarksMan clients to:
configure hedge parameters based on trader account identifiers
define a hedge ratio based on the trade side (buy or sell)
map a hedging instrument to another spot market symbol (for instance, you can hedge BTC/USDT trades with BTC/USDC orders)
Improved trade placement and execution analytics
More data about each trade is now provided by B2Trader, improving end-to-end analytics derived from hedging requests and responses.
Synthetics engine supports inversion
When designing synthetic instruments, components of synthetic cross pairs can now be inverted.
Bug Fixes
Fixed an issue causing the hedging agent to drop connection in case of empty credentials having been specified for any API member in the configuration.
Fixed an issue preventing operation of some of the markets available to a pricing service.
Fixed an issue related to a price discovery gateway and resulting in improper application of market depth constraints to some of the trading instruments.
February 18, 2021
New Features
Internal hedging on B2Trader
Introducing a new hedging agent, named Hedgehog, for redirecting trading orders placed on one platform to another venue.
Authorization based on JSON Web Token
A new JWT-based service has been implemented, enabling authorization of clients connecting to MarksMan. Among other things, this makes it possible to identify transactions made on different B2Trader platforms with a view of subsequent hedging.
Tracking of hedging orders
A new service has been implemented for gathering statistics and analytics necessary to properly monitor execution of hedging orders.
Improvements
Timeout customization for individual instruments
Custom timeouts can now be configured separately for each instrument. Using this option, you can reset the instrument’s order book and switch to another price source, ensuring price quotation reliability for low-liquidity instruments.
Improved price feed
The price feed reliability has been ensured, while the overall performance has improved.
New metrics for performance monitoring
New metrics have been added for tracking the status and performance of MarksMan services to identify and prevent any possible failures.
Bug Fixes
Fixed an issue preventing constructed quote (market) updates for some instruments by checking that a corresponding symbol is mapped.