Self-liquidation

A liquidator takes 5–6% of your collateral. Close it yourself and keep it.

When a position goes underwater, whoever liquidates it is paid a bonus out of your collateral. Close the position yourself first — in one atomic transaction, funded by a flash loan — and that bonus never leaves your account.

What the penalty actually costs

Your collateralAave liquidation bonus On $1MOn $10M
wstETH6.0%$60,000$600,000
WETH5.0%$50,000$500,000
WBTC5.0%$50,000$500,000
USDC4.5%$45,000$450,000

Read from Aave v3 on Ethereum mainnet. It is liquidationBonus on each reserve, and anyone can verify it — these are not our numbers.

Why you cannot simply repay

The obvious move is to repay the debt and withdraw the collateral. The obvious problem is that the money to repay it is the collateral — locked behind the debt you are trying to clear. Chicken, meet egg.

So the usual options are to find the cash from somewhere else at short notice, or to sell something in a hurry, or to watch a bot do it for you and take the bonus.

A flash loan removes the deadlock. It lends you the repayment for the length of one transaction, on the condition that the transaction repays it — which yours does, out of the collateral it just freed. No outside capital, no deadline, no bot.

What happens, in order

Every step is one transaction. If any part fails, all of it reverts and your position is untouched — you are never left half-closed.

Proven, not theoretical

Run on Ethereum mainnet on 4 August 2026, against a real position with real Uniswap liquidity:

Drawing gas705,703
Spark position aftercollateral $0.00 · debt $0.00
Debt token remaining0 — not dust, zero
Contract residual0 DAI · 0 WETH

The last two lines are the ones that matter. The debt token reading exactly zero proves the repayment cleared an accruing balance rather than leaving a remainder that would have blocked the withdrawal. The contract holding nothing proves the loan was borrowed, used and repaid inside the one call.

When to use it

It does not rescue an insolvent position. If the collateral is worth less than the debt, no arrangement of transactions fixes that. This wins you the penalty, not the market move.

What it costs

The terms

Close a position on your terms.

Get access

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