EarnPark said a single Binance Portfolio Margin Pro account shared by four strategies — Maker Core, BTC LP, ETH LP and ETH DeFi — was liquidated on Aug. 23, 2026, leaving the affected strategies with results of about negative 30%. The platform posted those losses to participant accounts on Aug. 29 and notified users afterward.
In its public review, EarnPark said its internal risk model failed to include the exchange’s collateral haircut, which caused the team to overstate the account’s buffer above the liquidation line. The company added that the account was running at roughly 5.5x effective leverage at the time.
Different strategies, one margin account
In its description of Maker Core, EarnPark said the strategy used algorithms to place buy and sell orders at the same time, aiming to capture bid-ask spreads while using hedging to keep the portfolio as close to delta-neutral as possible. Users did not need to write code, place orders, or manage hedges themselves. Those tasks were handled by the platform.
What users did not separate at the account level, according to EarnPark’s later disclosures, was risk. Maker Core, BTC LP, ETH LP and ETH DeFi all ran through one exchange account under Binance Portfolio Margin Pro. In that setup, the exchange evaluates assets and positions on a unified margin basis. So while the products carried different names, they were all constrained by the same account-level risk condition.
EarnPark said in a review based on information available through Sept. 4 that its model treated collateral at full market value and did not include the exchange haircut applied to margin value. That left the internal model showing more safety room than the exchange calculation did. The company also said hedging could not remove the need to satisfy the exchange’s margin requirements or the risk of account liquidation.
The team had asked Binance about collateral calculation five days earlier
According to the review, EarnPark’s trading team asked Binance on Aug. 18 how collateral was calculated under Portfolio Margin Pro. The platform said Binance explained the unified margin approach and provided related methodology, but did not directly answer the specific example raised by the team.
EarnPark also said it lacked a necessary independent check between its internal model and the risk indicators shown by the exchange. The metric Binance uses for this type of account, according to the platform, is the unified maintenance margin ratio, or uniMMR. If that figure falls below 105%, liquidation is triggered.
EarnPark said the relevant account crossed that line at 21:11 UTC on Aug. 23, 2026, which was 05:11 Beijing time on Aug. 24. At that point, the account’s effective leverage was about 5.5x, the platform said.
The review also said the team had margin monitoring in place but lacked a complete around-the-clock alerting system, multi-contact notification, and tiered escalation procedures. The company attributed the incident to gaps in its own risk model and controls, and said it was not caused by a hack or unauthorized third-party access.
Under Binance Portfolio Margin Pro rules cited by EarnPark, the mode does not use gradual partial liquidation. Once liquidation starts, it continues until completion.
Losses reached user balances days after the liquidation
On Aug. 25, EarnPark suspended new deposits into the affected strategies and began calculating the results. On Aug. 29, it posted the results to participant accounts and sent notices to users. The four strategies ended up at about negative 30%, and funds invested by the founder and team in those same strategies were treated under the same rules, according to the review.
The platform also said deposits made from Aug. 20 up to the liquidation were excluded from the loss calculation. It stressed that the roughly negative 30% figure referred to the results of the affected strategies, not necessarily the percentage loss on each user’s total assets on the platform.
That left a gap of several days between the liquidation event itself and the moment users saw balance changes. For some users, the first sign was an email saying funds had been lost.
Users questioned how a “low-risk” or “fixed-return” product could lose more than 30%
On Sept. 1, 2026, a Trustpilot reviewer using the name Garry G wrote that he had received an email from EarnPark saying funds placed in the Maker Core strategy had lost more than 30%. He said he had understood the product to be low risk, to offer a fixed 5% return, and to include safeguards for deposited funds. After receiving the notice, he requested withdrawal of the remaining balance and sought compensation.
Another reviewer, identified as Rob, raised a similar question: if he had chosen a strategy designed to earn from bid-ask spreads, why was he left bearing losses caused by a leveraged liquidation?
The article noted that the identities of those reviewers and their account records had not been independently verified. The liquidation event they described, however, was confirmed in EarnPark’s own review.
In public replies, EarnPark said its risk ratings described the type of risk involved and did not represent a cap on losses. The platform said it published expanded strategy descriptions on Sept. 2 and later told users that, on Sept. 11, it replaced broad risk grades with more specific risk labels.
Those changes made the disclosures more detailed after the fact. They did not settle what users had actually seen when they invested or whether the risks had been fully understood at the time, based on the cited public materials.
EarnPark also said the affected strategies reopened for deposits on Aug. 29 under limits, and yield accrual resumed on Aug. 30. Withdrawals remained available during the incident period, the platform said.
Remediation plans are on the table, but compensation is still unresolved
EarnPark’s review listed actions already taken and measures still planned, including adding exchange collateral ratios to its model, checking account risk against exchange metrics, and cutting positions when risk rises.
As of Sept. 4, the target date for automated deleveraging was Sept. 25, while the target date for splitting exchange accounts by strategy was Oct. 1. At that stage, both measures were still pending. One was aimed at response speed when risk builds; the other addressed the use of one shared account across multiple strategies.
The platform also announced PARK rewards and higher annualized yields for affected participants. But those steps were not presented as a direct reimbursement of lost principal. Based on the public materials cited, the real value of token rewards would depend on their specific terms and whether they could be realized, while higher future yields are not the same as compensation already paid.
EarnPark said it was still reconciling the liquidation process with Binance. As of the Sept. 4 review, it had received a liquidation snapshot, but was still waiting for a full formal liquidation report and a comprehensive reply from Binance. It had not reached a final conclusion on the exchange’s calculations or the liquidation execution, and it had not announced a definite compensation outcome.
Separately, EarnPark disclosed another negative-return event involving USDT DeFi and USDC DeFi during the same period. The platform said that was an independent incident and not the result of the liquidation tied to the four shared-account strategies.
For the trading team, the review laid out where the model went wrong, which controls failed to catch the mismatch, and how the company planned to change its setup. For complaining users, the more immediate questions remained practical ones: what happens to the funds already written down, how much the support measures can actually offset, and whether they are willing to keep assets under the platform’s management. As of the public materials cited, Garry G’s request to withdraw the remaining funds and receive compensation had not reached a clear resolution.