Alerta Chain Lab: our own order-flow tools

Alerta Chain Lab is a set of our own tools built on the order flow we record from Binance, Bybit, OKX, Coinbase and Hyperliquid: aggressive buying and selling, open interest, funding and liquidations. Open the order-flow toolbox from the chart toolbar; the tools are under Alerta Chain Lab. They are part of the Pro and Elite plans and work on crypto markets.

Reading the flow

• Alerta Flow Score: one 0–100 reading of the flow. 50 is neutral; above it buyers lead, below it sellers. It weighs aggressive buying, spot leadership, open interest and funding.
• Spot / Perp Lead: who drives the move: spot buyers and sellers, or leveraged traders on perpetuals. A rise carried by spot is usually sturdier.
• Session Volume Profile: volume by price for each day or week, with buyers and sellers split where the flow is recorded, the POC and the value area, and their developing lines through the session. It can also combine several days into one profile, draw the session's VWAP and mark its peaks and valleys (high- and low-volume nodes).
• Delta Profile: aggressive buying minus selling at each price over the candles in view, from a centre line at the right edge: where buyers or sellers pressed.
• TPO: the market profile: for each day or week, a letter for every 30 minutes at every price traded, with the POC, the value area and the first hour's range (initial balance). It can also draw the initial balance's extensions (IB ±50 % and ±100 %, up to ±200 %) with their prices, and split each day in two at a time you choose, the New York open by default.
• OI Regime: what positions did in each candle: new longs, shorts closing, new shorts or longs closing.
• Squeeze Risk: whether fuel for a sharp squeeze is building: crowded funding, rising open interest and a tightening range. Below zero the risk is down, above zero up.
• Venue Flow Share: which exchange drives each candle's aggressive volume, and whether it bought or sold.

How Spot / Perp Lead is calculated

For each candle, we add up aggressive buying and selling on spot and on perpetuals separately, in coins, across the exchanges you have switched on.

• Each market's pressure: its buying minus selling, divided by its buying plus selling, both smoothed over recent candles (14 by default, set in Smoothing (bars)). It runs from −1, all aggressive selling, to +1, all aggressive buying.
• The bar is spot pressure minus perpetual pressure, from −2 to +2. Above zero, spot buys harder or sells less than the perpetuals: demand that needs no leverage. Below zero, leverage carries the move.
• The panel's legend shows three numbers, for example "Spot buying +0.30 · Spot +0.62 · Perp +0.32": the bar, then each market's own pressure. Spot +0.62 means about 81% of spot's aggressive volume was buying.
• The colour names the market with the stronger pressure and whether it buys or sells: by default green for Spot buying, orange for Leveraged buying, red for Spot selling and purple for Leveraged selling. Bar and colour can differ: spot +0.10 against perpetuals −0.50 is a +0.60 bar in purple, because the perpetuals' selling is the stronger side.
• It measures whose aggressive flow dominates, not which market moves first, and it has no fixed thresholds: compare a reading with the same coin's past on the same timeframe.

Aggressive buying and selling

• Delta Divergence: marks where price makes a new high or low and buying or selling does not follow.
• Absorption: big aggressive buying or selling that did not move the price: hidden support or resistance.
• Delta Z-Score: how unusual each candle's buying minus selling is against the candles before it.
• Aggressor Ratio: the buyers' share of aggressive volume from 0 to 100, like an RSI read from the flow.
• Session CVD: buying minus selling that starts again at the Asia, Europe and US sessions.
• Average Trade Size: volume per trade: big players stepping in, or a rush of small traders.

Leverage and funding

• Leverage Saturation: open interest as a share of the coin's supply: how much leverage has piled up.
• Funding Cost: what longs or shorts pay per hour, in dollars, across the exchanges.
• Funding Spread: the gap between the highest and lowest funding rate, and on which exchanges.
• Net Position Flow: how fast estimated net longs and shorts change: who is opening positions now. It is an estimate.
• OI Spike: candles where big positions opened or closed at once.

Liquidations

• Liquidation Cascade: chains of liquidations that speed up with price, and where they end, often near a short-term low or high.
• Flush Ratio: liquidations as a share of open interest: how much leverage a candle wiped out.
• Liquidation Imbalance: long against short liquidations, smoothed: which side is in pain.

The whole market and options

• Flow Breadth: the share of the 100 most traded perpetuals whose buyers led in each candle: a broad move or BTC alone. It is the same on every chart.
• Coinbase Premium: Coinbase's dollar price against Binance's USDT price, with Coinbase's own buying and selling: a read of US spot demand.
• Squeeze Radar: the 60 most traded perpetuals ranked by squeeze risk. Tap a row to open its chart.
• Volume Heat Hours: when the coin trades: the average hourly volume and the buyers' share for each weekday and hour over the last 30 or 90 days, in your time or UTC.
• Options Levels: the call wall, put wall, max pain, gamma flip and expected move from Deribit, OKX, Bybit and Binance options, as lines on your chart.
• Greek Exposure: the dealers' gamma, vanna or charm at each strike from the same options venues, as bars at the right edge of your chart; the total at the top.
• IV Rank: where the options' implied volatility (Deribit's DVOL) stands in its past year, from 0 at the year's low to 100 at its high. BTC and ETH.
• Variance Risk Premium: implied volatility minus the last 30 days' realized volatility: above zero, options price more movement than the coin has had. BTC and ETH.
• Options Levels can read the expiry settling next alone (0DTE), the nearest one a day or more out, the next 30 days or every expiry: choose in its settings.

On the order-book heatmap

• Walls & Spoofing: big resting orders and what became of them: filled, pulled, or pulled just as price came near.
• Iceberg Detector: price levels that traded far more than they ever showed while refilling: a hidden buyer or seller.
• Liquidity Depth: the buy and sell orders within 0.25% to 1% of the price, in dollars, over time: what it takes to move the price.
• Book Pressure: which side of the order book is heavier within the same band: buy orders below the price against sell orders above it, from −100% to +100%, over time.

Good to know

• A closed candle never changes later: each candle reads only itself and the candles before it.
• Most panels count every exchange; switch one off from its logo or in the gear settings. Coinbase Premium and Flow Breadth read fixed sources.
• Liquidations come from Binance, Bybit and OKX; Coinbase and Hyperliquid publish none.
• The heatmap tools work on the most traded Binance markets, where the order book is recorded.
• No tool is a signal on its own: read them together with the price.