Solana Research Institute reported $18 billion in liquidations during the October 10, 2025 crypto crash, but public records from Amberdata show only $9.89 billion across six exchanges over the same 14-hour window, creating a measurement gap that cannot be reconciled.
The discrepancy emerged after SRI revived a July open letter by Angus Scott on August 14, pairing the $18 billion total with a $3.21 billion peak in liquidations during a single minute at 21:15 UTC, according to a CryptoSlate article. Amberdata’s 14-hour figure for the same period stands at $9.89 billion. SRI did not specify which venues or asset classes comprised its $18 billion estimate, nor did it disclose its aggregation method or common venue universe. Amberdata did not name the six exchanges included in its analysis.
A third measurement complicates the picture. The European Securities and Markets Authority separately cited market estimates of approximately $19 billion in automated derivatives liquidations for the day, a figure that describes a different scope than either SRI’s or Amberdata’s totals.
On-Chain and Centralized Venues Diverged
The October 10 crash exposed operational differences between centralized and decentralized derivatives platforms. Binance experienced collateral asset depegs after 21:36 UTC, triggering forced liquidations and cascading selling, according to ESMA. The exchange compensated users liquidated due to collateral depegs with $283 million. Binance’s internal collateral pricing for assets including USDe, BNSOL, and WBETH dislocated after the 21:36 UTC timestamp.
Hyperliquid executed $2.10 billion in auto-deleveraging, or ADL, across 34,983 executions in roughly 12 minutes. According to CryptoSlate, “Auto-deleveraging, or ADL, is a last-resort derivatives mechanism that reduces profitable traders’ positions when liquidations and risk buffers cannot keep a venue solvent.”
Aave recorded $180 million in liquidations and $500,000 in bad debt and expected deficit. Chaos Labs later reported that Aave’s protocol remained net positive by $1.5 million after deficits, following a 5-block price-update delay on some Aave markets.
Regulatory Pressure for Standardization
SRI’s August 14 revival of the July open letter argued that opaque centralized venues failed while transparent on-chain finance kept functioning. The 33-page letter covered 7 domains and followed discussions between the FCA and Solana Foundation, though no independent FCA confirmation is available in public material.
The UK Financial Conduct Authority’s June 2026 final cryptoasset framework requires qualifying cryptoasset trading platforms and principal dealers to publish post-trade information as close to real time as possible and no later than one minute. However, the FCA framework does not expressly require standardized cross-venue reporting of liquidation volumes, ADL use, or backstop losses.
Hyperliquid and Aave disclosed different risk engines, denominators, and loss outcomes, making comparison possible only when distinctions remain visible. The absence of a common reporting standard leaves liquidation totals dependent on which venues a researcher includes and how they define the perimeter of the crash event.
