# Liquidation ## Why liquidate？ When the value of the collateral within a Vault is insufficient to support the debt, the system needs to take over the collateral and debt and auction it off to achieve a situation where the system's assets exceed its liabilities. {% hint style="info" %} The most important principle of the system is that **at any moment, the value of assets cannot be less than the value of liabilities.** To achieve this purpose, we need a liquidation system and an auction system. {% endhint %} Liquidation In the Ethereum network, a block is typically around 10 seconds, and during network congestion, the confirmation time for a transaction might be longer, making liquidation not very real-time. However, in the Arbitrum network, a transaction can be confirmed within a second, allowing for rapid price feeding. And the gas cost is much lower than on the Ethereum mainnet. \\ --- # Agent Instructions: Querying This Documentation If you need additional information that is not directly available in this page, you can query the documentation dynamically by asking a question. Perform an HTTP GET request on the current page URL with the `ask` query parameter: ``` GET https://docs.unitindex.org/theunit/unit-etf/liquidation.md?ask= ``` The question should be specific, self-contained, and written in natural language. The response will contain a direct answer to the question and relevant excerpts and sources from the documentation. Use this mechanism when the answer is not explicitly present in the current page, you need clarification or additional context, or you want to retrieve related documentation sections.