Gate BEN Market Logs 92 Liquidations After Scheduled Dividend Adjustment

Gate’s BENUSDT perpetual market logged 92 liquidation orders in the 65 seconds after a scheduled stock-dividend adjustment on Sept. 30, according to the exchange’s public liquidation feed.

Gate’s Sept. 28 announcement assigned a $0.33 Franklin Resources dividend adjustment to BENUSDT, payable at 4 a.m. ET on Sept. 30. Yet the contract’s mark price—the reference price used for settlement—was just 0.000589 $USDT in the preceding minute, according to Gate’s historical data. The announced adjustment was about 560 times that price. Under Gate’s rules, net longs receive the payment and net shorts pay it.

Two accounts identifying themselves as Gate managers subsequently acknowledged an error caused by assets sharing a name. In a reply on X, @luxiong_Gate said 200 accounts were involved, the problem was located and handled within minutes, and affected balance displays were being restored. The account said users would suffer no losses. @Godot_gate posted the same explanation.

A Stock Adjustment on a Crypto Index

The exchange’s announcement identified BENUSDT’s underlying asset as Franklin Resources. But Gate’s public index-composition endpoint showed the contract drawing prices from BEN trading pairs on MEXC and Uniswap V3, rather than a stock-market price feed.

Gate’s contract specification API listed a multiplier of 100. Applying the announcement’s formula—net contract quantity multiplied by the contract multiplier and the per-share dividend—would therefore produce a 33 $USDT adjustment for each net contract. That is the formula’s implied payment, not a verified amount ultimately retained by traders.

The mechanism explains why the adjustment threatened short positions even without a comparable market-price move. Gate said the dividend would be processed as an additional funding payment, separate from ordinary funding, and warned that deductions could leave shorts with insufficient margin and trigger liquidation.

Its dividend rules describe these payments as contract-level adjustments intended to reflect an underlying asset going ex-dividend. They do not confer ownership of shares or direct dividend rights.

The liquidation feed establishes that orders were recorded immediately after the scheduled settlement, but it does not identify individual account balances or establish final customer losses. The amount ultimately credited, withdrawn or reversed remains unclear.

The two manager accounts described the recovery as restoration of balance displays, without setting out a clawback policy or a compensation timetable. They directed users with outstanding problems to customer service.