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HOW EXCHANGES TURN ORDER BOOKS INTO DISTRIBUTED LOGS

quant.engineering21 min read

Summary from the TLDR Dev newsletter

Order books are distributed logs of market events. This architecture guarantees fairness through deterministic ordering. Modern exchanges behave like ultra-low-latency log processors. The sequencer defines the timeline, the matching engine reduces that timeline into a book, and replication keeps the log durable without slowing the fast path.