Reading MAPLUS Market Depth

Order books tell you more than "the price." They tell you how much size sits at each price level, and where that size actually lives. On Solana, liquidity is split across AMM pools and any order-book venues a token trades on, so knowing how to read a depth display matters more than it might on a single centralized exchange.

What Level 2 depth actually shows

A Level 2 view lists bids and asks stacked by price, with the size available at each level. Instead of just seeing "best bid $1.20, best ask $1.21," you see a ladder: $1.20 with 4,000 tokens, $1.19 with 9,000 tokens, $1.18 with 15,000 tokens, and so on down. The same happens above the ask.

This matters because the top-of-book price can be thin. A token might show a tight spread with almost no size behind it, meaning a modest order could move the price several percent. Depth is what tells you whether a quoted price is actually tradable at size, or just a number sitting there.

Source badges: where the liquidity comes from

On Solana, "the order book" is rarely one thing. A token might have:

  • An AMM pool (constant-product or concentrated liquidity) contributing a continuous price curve
  • A separate CLOB-style venue with real limit orders
  • Aggregator routes that split an order across both

MAPLUS tags each depth row with a source badge so you can see whether a given size sits in an AMM curve or in a standing limit order. This distinction is practical, not academic:

  • AMM-sourced depth moves with a predictable curve — the further you go from the current price, the worse your fill gets, and that slippage is calculable from the pool's reserves.
  • Order-book depth is discrete — a specific size at a specific price, placed by a specific participant, that can be pulled or filled all at once.

Mixing these up leads to bad assumptions about how a large order will behave.

Cumulative size: the running total

Raw per-level size is useful, but cumulative size — the running total from the best price outward — answers the question traders actually have: "If I need to buy 50,000 tokens, what average price do I get?"

MAPLUS displays cumulative size alongside each level so you don't have to add rows by hand. Watching how quickly the cumulative column grows tells you whether depth is front-loaded (most size near the current price, a good sign for smaller orders) or back-loaded (thin near the top, requiring you to walk deep into the book for real size).

What consolidated mode adds

Consolidated mode merges depth from every source MAPLUS tracks for a token into one ladder, rather than showing each venue separately. This gives you the true tradable depth at each price across the whole market, not just one pool or one order book.

Without consolidation, you might look at a single AMM and conclude a token is illiquid, when in fact a CLOB venue has real size sitting just below the surface. Consolidated mode also makes cumulative size meaningful across the full market — which is the number that matters if your order will actually be routed across multiple sources.

A concrete example

Say a token trades on an AMM pool and also has a small order-book market. The AMM shows a smooth curve: $0.50 bid, dropping to $0.485 for 20,000 tokens sold. Separately, a limit order sits at $0.495 for 8,000 tokens on the order book. Viewed separately, neither looks great. In consolidated mode, MAPLUS shows the order-book bid as the first 8,000 tokens (better price) and the AMM curve absorbing anything beyond that — giving you a single, accurate picture of what a 20,000-token sell would actually realize.

Common mistake

Reading only the top-of-book price and assuming it holds for your full order size. On thin Solana pairs, the difference between the quoted price and your actual average fill price can be large — check cumulative size before sizing an order, not after.

On MAPLUStrade

Use source badges to tell AMM curves apart from order-book liquidity, check the cumulative size column before entering a large order, and switch to consolidated mode when you want the full picture across every venue MAPLUS tracks for a token.

Recap

Depth shows where liquidity actually sits, not just the current price. Source badges, cumulative size, and consolidated mode together tell you what an order will really cost.

*This is educational content, not financial advice. Trading crypto assets carries risk, including loss of principal.*