Gate’s BENUSDT Dividend Adjustment Triggered Liquidations
A stock dividend adjustment on Gate unexpectedly put crypto traders on opposite sides of a huge balance change, with short positions facing deductions many times larger than the contract’s market price.
The incident centred on BENUSDT, a perpetual futures contract linked in Gate’s announcement to Franklin Resources, the US asset manager behind Franklin Templeton.
Gate later said an error involving assets with the same name affected about 200 accounts, adding that it would take responsibility for the losses.
How A $0.33 Dividend Became A Huge Crypto Charge
Gate announced on 28 September 2026 that a $0.33-per-share dividend from Franklin Resources would be applied to BENUSDT at 08:00 UTC on 30 September.
Under Gate’s dividend adjustment rules, traders holding net long positions receive the payment, while those holding net short positions pay it.
The problem was the large gap between the announced dividend and the price at which BENUSDT was trading.
Gate’s historical data showed the contract’s mark price was around 0.000589 USDT shortly before the adjustment.
Social media posts cited a similar price of about $0.000585.
That put the $0.33 dividend at roughly 560 times the contract’s market price.
Gate’s contract specification also listed a multiplier of 100.
Based on the published formula, each net contract would therefore imply a $33 adjustment.
That figure represents the payment implied by Gate’s formula, rather than a confirmed amount ultimately retained by traders.
Short Traders Faced Liquidations Within Minutes
For traders betting against BENUSDT, the adjustment was deducted from their margin rather than being treated as an ordinary market loss.
When available margin falls below the amount required to keep a leveraged position open, the exchange can automatically close the position.
Gate’s public liquidation feed recorded 92 liquidation orders during the 65 seconds after the scheduled adjustment on 30 September.
The liquidation count does not establish that 92 separate accounts were affected, nor does it show the total value of positions that were closed.
Some traders also used shared margin across multiple positions, meaning a deduction on BENUSDT could have affected other trades held in the same account.
One screenshot shared on X by user @SmallPig0526 showed an account balance at negative $1.46 million.
Gate had warned short holders ahead of the settlement that they needed enough margin to cover the dividend deduction or risk liquidation.
Why Was BENUSDT Trading At Such A Low Price?
Gate’s 28 September announcement identified Franklin Resources as the underlying asset for BENUSDT.
However, Gate’s public index data showed that the contract was drawing prices from BEN trading pairs on MEXC and Uniswap V3 rather than a stock-market price feed.
This created a major disconnect between the $0.33 Franklin Resources dividend and the crypto asset price used by the perpetual contract.
The dividend adjustment was processed as an additional funding payment, separate from normal funding charges.
Gate’s rules describe such payments as contract-level adjustments designed to account for an underlying asset going ex-dividend.
They do not give traders ownership of the underlying shares or direct rights to the stock dividend.
Franklin Resources’ $0.33 quarterly distribution was tied to its 30 September ex-dividend date.
The company has also increased its annual dividend for 45 consecutive years.
Gate Blamed Duplicate Names For The Incident
Two accounts identifying themselves as Gate managers later attributed the problem to assets sharing the same name.
Godot, who leads Gate’s creator community programme, said the exchange found and handled the issue within minutes and was progressively restoring affected balances.
Godot in a post wrote,
“Today at 16:00 UTC+8, while processing the BEN contract funding rate in accordance with the announcement made two days ago, we encountered an error due to duplicate names, affecting a total of 200 accounts…The resulting user balance display issues are being resolved progressively. All users have incurred no losses whatsoever, with Gate bearing the full responsibility.”
Another Gate manager account, @luxiong_Gate, gave a similar explanation and also said around 200 accounts were involved.
Gate has not released a detailed incident report explaining which assets shared the name or exactly how the alleged naming error caused the abnormal adjustments.
The available information also does not establish whether the reported 200 affected accounts and the 92 liquidation orders represent the same group of traders.
Gate Has Not Explained What Happened To The Large Credits
While short traders faced deductions, net long positions would have received the corresponding credits under Gate’s adjustment mechanism.
It remains unclear how much was credited to long positions, whether any traders withdrew those funds, or whether Gate reversed the payments.
The exchange has said affected balances were being restored and that users would not bear losses, but it has not provided a public clawback policy or compensation timetable.
Gate has previously carried out similar dividend adjustments for equity-linked perpetual contracts, including STR-C, SYK and MPW, without the same reported liquidation activity.
The incident comes as Gate expands its stock-related products, including Japanese stock trading introduced in August.
Other crypto platforms are also moving into tokenised equities.
The New York Stock Exchange recently signed an agreement aimed at bringing tokenised US stocks to crypto users.
Jixu
