# Maturity

## Before Maturity (-4 days)

Once a market is close to maturity, rates tend to be extremely volatile, and the general exchange UX surrounding trades degrades for both lenders and active rate traders.

**In order to ensure our users orders can only place orders that execute as expected, we ensure all orders expire 4 days before maturity. At that point all markets are halted, and a countdown until maturity will begin.**

This means that no more trades can be made in that market, and that users will need to wait to redeem their positions at maturity.

## After Maturity

As is implied by the name, once a market hits its maturity, it can be considered "Matured".

Once a market has matured, users can redeem their zcTokens 1:1 for their underlying deposit (e.g. 1 zcUSDC = 1 USDC).

**Redeeming zcTokens:**

1. Navigate to your [Positions ](https://swivel.exchange/positions)page
2. Select "Matured" to view the recently matured markets
3. Assuming you have zcTokens to redeem, click "redeem".
4. Confirm the transaction and receive a 1:1 amount of tokens !

## Archived Markets

After a market has matured for a significant amount of time (2+ weeks), it may be "archived".

An "archived" market is no different than a "matured" market, and users can still redeem balances in an archived market.

We separate out these markets in order to ensure users can easily identify which markets may be most relevant regardless of our exchange's scale.


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