Kraken Futures Cancellation Policy Offers Relief for Traders
Key Summary
Kraken has introduced a new policy for futures limit orders, allowing some orders to still fill after a successful cancellation if the cancel arrives during the Maker Protection hold window. This change affects selected futures markets and can provide traders with more flexibility.
Expanded Protection for Futures Traders
Kraken expanded its Maker Protection system to more contracts on October 8, introducing a new policy for futures limit orders. This change allows some orders to still fill after a successful cancellation if the cancel arrives during the Maker Protection hold window.
Impact on Traders
The new policy affects selected futures markets and can provide traders with more flexibility. Traders with resting orders can take liquidity before they reach the matching engine, giving them time to react to changes in the market.
Limit Order Behavior
A limit order without a post-only instruction is held on a covered market even if it would otherwise have rested on the book. A cancel inside that window changes what the order may leave behind. Kraken converts the held placement to immediate-or-cancel, meaning it can trade when released but cannot leave an unfilled remainder on the book.
Success and Failure
The cancel receives success with order status “cancelled,” while the order later reports its own fills or failure to execute. For a converted limit that cannot trade, the REST v3 response is iocWouldNotExecute.
Exclusions and Exemptions
Kraken’s instruments feed identifies each market’s configured hold through makerProtectionMillis. Its documentation says an absent or zero value means no configured delay. The distinction is contract-specific, so traders cannot infer coverage from the coin name alone. Kraken says its ten most liquid linear perpetual markets are excluded and spot trading is unaffected. Standalone post-only placements bypass the hold. Cancel requests also bypass it; a held limit placement still waits for its original release time.
Order Types and Cancel Responses
Other held order types have different cancel responses. A cancel targeting a held immediate-or-cancel, fill-or-kill or market placement returns ORDER_NOT_FOUND; the original request still reaches matching when released. Automated traders in Kraken futures need to reconcile the order’s execution response as well as the cancellation acknowledgment. A successful held-limit cancel can coexist with a later fill.