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The numbers don’t add up. The Solana Research Institute is pushing back hard on the widely cited $18 billion liquidation figure from the October 10, 2025 crypto crash, saying public records tell a pretty different story.
The institute flagged a report claiming $18 billion in liquidations over a 14-hour window — including a $3.21 billion spike crammed into a single minute. But Amberdata’s own analysis put the figure at $9.89 billion over the same period. That’s nearly half the headline number. Amberdata’s findings also broke down that 93.5% of liquidations in that peak minute came from forced selling. Still, the Solana Research Institute said its figures lack a common venue universe or methodology that lines up cleanly with Amberdata’s approach, so the gap probably can’t be resolved with the data currently available. No one’s quite sure whose number is right.
A nearly $9 billion discrepancy.
Binance Glitches and the ESMA Angle
Binance’s own postmortem of the crash told a messy story. Operational glitches hit after 21:18 UTC, disrupting internal transfers and knocking collateral prices out of sync. The exchange compensated users with roughly $283 million because of those issues. The European Securities and Markets Authority weighed in too — ESMA said Binance’s internal collateral pricing contributed directly to forced liquidations, essentially creating local depegs that hammered collateral values and triggered a cascade of selling. But no specific auto-deleveraging total for Binance was ever provided. That missing number complicates any attempt to measure the full scale of what went wrong there versus failures elsewhere in the system.
Auto-deleveraging, or ADL, isn’t the same as a standard liquidation. On derivatives platforms, ADL is basically a last-resort tool — when a position’s insurance fund runs dry, the platform reduces profitable traders’ positions to keep itself solvent. It’s different from ordinary liquidations, which kick in when collateral drops below a required threshold. Regulators trying to assess systemic risk need to understand that difference, and right now, not all of them do.
On-Chain Data vs. Centralized Chaos
Hyperliquid’s on-chain records gave a clearer window into how decentralized platforms handled the stress. Hyperliquid logged approximately $2.10 billion in ADL across 34,983 executions over 12 minutes. That’s a lot of executions in a short time, and the data was all publicly visible. Aave’s records showed $180 million in liquidations, with deficits tied to price-update delays — oracle lag, basically, where the price feeds couldn’t keep up with how fast markets were moving. Both platforms faced real stress. But because the data was on-chain, it was at least observable.
Centralized venues? Not so much. The Solana Research Institute’s core argument is that public records can expose venue failures, but they can’t guarantee safety — and right now, the fragmentation of data across platforms makes it nearly impossible to get a clean, cross-venue picture of what happened. Hyperliquid and Aave showed varied stress responses. Binance’s internal mechanics stayed murky. That asymmetry is the problem.
The UK Financial Conduct Authority has moved to close some of that gap. The FCA’s cryptoasset framework, effective from June 2026, requires UK crypto trading platforms to publish post-trade data as close to real-time as possible. It covers both centralized and decentralized platforms, depending on whether there’s a clear controlling entity. But the framework doesn’t explicitly mandate standardized reporting of liquidation volumes or ADL events across different venues. So it’s a step forward, not a solution.
Regulators elsewhere haven’t caught up yet. Standardized cross-venue reporting for liquidation data remains absent across most jurisdictions, which means the kind of apples-to-apples comparison needed to assess systemic risk still can’t happen. The Solana Research Institute’s letter pushed on exactly that gap — arguing that comparable data across venues is what’s missing, and that without it, monitoring crypto market infrastructure is more guesswork than oversight.
And the crash itself made that case pretty vividly. One report said $18 billion. Another credible source said $9.89 billion. ESMA flagged Binance’s collateral pricing as a factor. Binance paid out $283 million in compensation. Hyperliquid ran 34,983 ADL executions in 12 minutes. Aave’s oracle delays created observable deficits. Each piece of data came from a different source, in a different format, with different methodology.
Aave’s $180 million in lending liquidations, with deficits from price-update delays, sits in the public record.
Frequently Asked Questions
What did the Solana Research Institute dispute about the October 2025 crypto crash?
The Solana Research Institute questioned the reported $18 billion in liquidations over 14 hours, pointing to Amberdata’s analysis that put the figure at $9.89 billion for the same period, and flagged the lack of a common methodology across venues.
How much did Binance pay users after the October 2025 crash?
Binance compensated users with approximately $283 million following operational glitches and collateral pricing issues that occurred after 21:18 UTC during the crash.
Why It Matters
The dispute over the liquidation figure highlights the ongoing challenges of transparency and accuracy in crypto market reporting, which can significantly influence investor sentiment and market stability. Misinformation or inflated statistics can lead to panic selling or misallocation of resources among traders, further exacerbating market volatility. As the industry matures, the emphasis on reliable data and analysis will be crucial for fostering trust and informed decision-making among participants.
