Kraken Futures Orders Can Fill After Successful Cancellations

Kraken completed the second phase of its Maker Protection expansion on Oct. 8, adding the system to 61 more perpetual contracts. The rule applies to selected futures markets and affects limit orders submitted without a post-only instruction.

Maker Protection holds an eligible order before sending it to the matching engine. Kraken’s documentation describes an initial hold of 20 milliseconds, while the exact duration is set for each market. The hold gives traders time to respond to new orders and market changes.

If a non-post-only limit order is canceled during the hold, Kraken changes the pending placement to immediate-or-cancel. The order keeps its original release time. When released, it can execute against available liquidity, while any unfilled portion is removed instead of being placed on the order book.

Kraken reports the cancellation and the later execution separately. A cancellation response can mark the order as “cancelled,” followed by a fill or a response showing that the immediate-or-cancel order could not execute. The REST v3 response for an order that cannot trade is “iocWouldNotExecute.”

The instruments feed lists each market’s configured hold through the “makerProtectionMillis” field. A missing or zero value means that no delay is configured. Coverage cannot be determined from the asset or coin name alone.

According to Kraken, its 10 most liquid linear perpetual markets are excluded from Maker Protection. Spot trading is unaffected, and standalone post-only orders bypass the hold. Cancellation requests bypass the delay, but a held limit order still waits for its original release time after its instructions change.

Cancellations of held immediate-or-cancel, fill-or-kill or market orders return “ORDER_NOT_FOUND.” The original order can still reach the matching engine when its hold ends.