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LearnStart here4 pages
How these docs workFoundationHow the site is organised by what you came to do, how every page runs from first principles to engineering detail, and where every fact comes from.Hyperliquid in five minutesFoundationHyperliquid is a set of financial primitives and protocols that combine into one financial system. Build a financial system from nothing, and each Hyperliquid protocol takes its place in it.The house of finance, layer by layerFoundationHyperliquid drawn as a house: one consensus, two engines joined by two bridges, an accounts layer, six financial pillars, a distribution layer that pays others to build, and Hyperliquid itself on top.Traditional finance, pillar by pillarFoundationEvery part of Hyperliquid has a traditional finance counterpart, and each analogy breaks in a specific place that shows what is actually new.
LearnFirst principles5 pages
Why Hyperliquid runs on its own chainFoundationHyperliquid built its own chain so that order books, margin and matching run fully on chain, in one consensus order, fast enough to trade on and with no off-chain book.One chain, two execution environmentsFoundationHyperCore holds the markets as native state and the HyperEVM runs contracts; one HyperBFT consensus orders both, joined by precompiles and CoreWriter.What an on-chain order book actually meansFoundationEvery order, cancel and fill is a transaction ordered by consensus and executed by every node, so the book is public chain state, not a private database.Ordering, finality and fairnessPractitionerHyperBFT gives every honest node one ordered list of committed rounds, a committed block is final, and each block runs cancels before GTC and IOC orders.HYPE: what the token doesFoundationHYPE pays HyperEVM gas, secures consensus, discounts fees, bonds deployers, backs borrowing, and is what the Assistance Fund converts fees into and burns.
LearnConsensus and validators4 pages
HyperBFTPractitionerHyperBFT is Hyperliquid's HotStuff-derived proof-of-stake consensus: stake-weighted validators commit rounds that every honest node executes in the same order.Validators and delegationPractitionerValidators run HyperBFT, ranked by stake; delegators choose them, pay commission, earn nothing while one is jailed and face no automatic slashing yet.Staking HYPE, rewards and the unstaking queueFoundationStaked HYPE is delegated to validators for compounding rewards and fee discounts; getting it back to spot takes a 7-day queue on mainnet.Running a nodeExpertA non-validating node follows consensus and writes every committed transaction, fill, order status, book change and HyperEVM block to local disk.
LearnHyperCore8 pages
HyperCore overviewFoundationHyperCore is where Hyperliquid's order books, margin, clearing and settlement run as native protocol state, applied by every validator in one order.The clearinghouse: one margin enginePractitionerHyperCore's clearinghouse holds balances and positions and checks margin on every trade; in standard mode each perp dex has its own balance and cross margin.The order book and matchingPractitionerEach HyperCore asset has one on-chain book matched in price-time priority, with cancels and post-only orders sequenced ahead of orders that take liquidity.Oracles, mark prices and robust price indicesPractitionerValidators publish perp oracle prices every 3 seconds; the mark price used for margin and liquidation is a median that no single book or venue can move.Quote assets: USDC, USDH, aligned and permissionlessPractitionerAny token can become a HyperCore quote asset if its issuer stakes 200k HYPE against a peg and liquidity standard; aligned issuers also share reserve yield.Vaults: HLP, protocol vaults, user vaultsFoundationA vault pools depositors' USDC into one HyperCore account run by one strategy; HLP is the protocol vault that makes markets and performs liquidations.Multi-sig accountsPractitionerHyperCore can make any account a native k-of-n multi-sig with no smart contract, but CoreWriter stops working for it and its HyperEVM side keeps the old key.API servers and how state reaches youPractitionerAPI servers follow a node, keep a local copy of HyperCore state, answer reads from it, and reply to a transaction only once it executes in a committed block.
LearnResearch5 pages
What one HyperEVM transaction can and cannot doExpertOne HyperEVM transaction can read HyperCore and emit a perp order and an outcome operation, but it only enqueues them, so the legs are not atomic.Options on the borrow rateExpertA research track priced the HyperCore USDC borrow rate with HIP-4 scalar bands, listed them on somebody else's perp, and found owning the perp does not pay.Composable creditExpertA research track tokenised HyperCore lending positions as HyperEVM ERC20s, proved a contract can supply on testnet, and found the vault must be a queue, not a wrapper.Collateral underwritingExpertA research track found the protocol refuses a deployer stake posted by somebody else, and rebuilt underwriting as two-of-two co-custody of the deployer's own bond.Where the chain and the docs disagreeExpertEvery place where measured behaviour on Hyperliquid contradicts the official docs: what the docs say, what was measured, the sample and the covering page.
LearnFor the press4 pages
Start here: press and analystsFoundationFor people writing about Hyperliquid: what it is, how to measure and name it correctly, and the stories behind the numbers.Measuring Hyperliquid: volume, open interest, usersFoundationPublic Hyperliquid figures disagree mostly because each counts the same fills differently; a number means something only with its rows and units.Common misconceptionsFoundationTwelve common claims about Hyperliquid that the official docs or on-chain measurement contradict, each with what is true and where it is explained.Naming and style guideFoundationWrite HyperCore, HyperEVM, HyperBFT, CoreWriter and HIP-1 to HIP-4 exactly, never shorten HyperCore to one word, and do not cite a HIP-5, because none exists.
LearnWhat Hyperliquid is and how it works
Start here
First principles
Consensus and validators
HyperCore
Research
For the press
TradeMarkets, margin and risk
Start here
Trading fundamentals
Perpetuals
Spot
Outcome markets
Accounts and credit
Advanced trading
Incentives
BuildApps, bots and contracts
Start here
Build on HyperCore
Build on the HyperEVM
DeployLaunch and run markets
Start here
The HIPs
Deploy markets
ReferenceEvery number, action and term
Look up
Protocol tables

Quote assets: USDC, USDH, aligned and permissionless

Practitioner

Any token can become a HyperCore quote asset if its issuer stakes 200k HYPE against a peg and liquidity standard; aligned issuers also share reserve yield.

A quote asset is the token you price a spot pair in, or post as margin on a perp dex. Unless it is USDC or USDT, its issuer stakes HYPE that validators can slash if the peg or liquidity fails.

What a quote asset is used for

Section titled “What a quote asset is used for”
Use Rule
Spot pairs The pricing and settlement token; pairs between two quote assets are discounted (see the numbers)
HIP-3 collateral Any quote asset. Losing quote status by validator vote disables dexes using it; a deployer disabling its own token does not. HIP-3 deployers are not slashable over their choice
Validator-operated perps USDC collateral against mostly USDT oracle prices, unconverted, so quanto (oracles)
Outcome markets Optional quoteToken field; outcomes are now quoted in USDC, and tooling reads a missing field as USDC
New accounts The first transfer in costs 1 unit of a quote asset, such as 1 USDC or 1 USDT

Any token can qualify, against a 200k HYPE stake

Section titled “Any token can qualify, against a 200k HYPE stake”

A deployer meeting these requirements sends enableQuoteToken, irreversible and gasless:

Requirement Detail
Decimals wei decimals 8, size decimals 2
Deployer fee share zero on the quote token
Stake 200k HYPE, committed for 3 years, slashable by validator vote
Peg, tight QUOTE/USDC book holds 100k USDC on both sides between 0.998 and 1.002 inclusive
Peg, wide QUOTE/USDC book holds 1M USDC on both sides between 0.99 and 1.01 inclusive
HYPE book HYPE/QUOTE holds 50k QUOTE on both sides within a 0.5% spread

The peg must be to 1 US dollar; other stable assets await a future upgrade. A condition is breached if, over three days, it fails for a majority of uniformly spaced 1-second samples. Validators then vote on the slash.

Say a stablecoin’s QUOTE/USDC book thins out. Three days hold 259,200 one-second samples. If the tight peg fails in more than 129,600 of them, the stake is slashable.

What this means for you. A peg is bonded, not guaranteed: the docs describe no payout to holders after a breach. A HIP-3 dex holds your margin in its collateral token and is disabled if that loses quote status by vote.

USDC, USDT and USDH

Section titled “USDC, USDT and USDH”
Asset HyperCore token Notes
USDC 0 Natively minted on the Hyperliquid L1; 8 decimals on HyperCore, 6 on the HyperEVM; exempt from quote staking for its track record and scale
USDT USDT0, index 268 Links 0xb8ce59fc3717ada4c02eadf9682a9e934f625ebb, the contract HyperEVM lending markets use, so one asset on both sides; exempt from quote staking
USDH 360 (1452 on testnet), pair @230 (@1338 on testnet) Not described by the official docs; HIP-4’s first quote asset

Circle’s CCTP brings USDC from Arbitrum; the legacy Arbitrum bridge holds under 10 per cent of HyperCore USDC supply.

Under unified account the USDT spot balance is the only margin source for USDT-quoted spot pairs and, in the docs’ example, the CASH perps. USDT is a portfolio margin asset and, with USDC, one of two borrowable quote assets.

Funding an outcome position once meant moving USDC to spot and buying USDH on USDH/USDC. Outcomes moved to USDC during 2026, and deployer tooling updated in September 2026 dropped USDH, defaulting quoteToken to USDC. Undocumented CoreWriter action 14 appeared 25 times in 3M mainnet blocks, its one decoded instance carrying 360 in its first field; what it does is unknown.

Aligned quote assets share reserve yield

Section titled “Aligned quote assets share reserve yield”

Alignment is opt-in for stablecoin issuers, in two versions; stakes, shares and benefits are in the numbers.

AQAv1 applies to an existing permissionless quote asset, with benefits on spot pairs quoted in it and HIP-3 perps collateralised in it. The AQA rate is a stake-weighted median of validator-reported values. Off-chain conditions, enforced by validator vote:

  • 1:1 backing in cash, short-term US treasuries, or tokenised treasury and money market funds
  • par redemption at all times
  • the full supply natively minted on the HyperEVM
  • no issuer benefit from converting the stablecoin into other assets
  • an independent team dedicated to building on Hyperliquid

AQAv2 is for stablecoins that also exist outside Hyperliquid, with no fee or volume benefit, and has two stakers:

Role Stake Duty
Treasury deployer 500k HYPE Designates a treasury address that pays 100% of the AQA rate to the protocol, twice the AQAv1 share
Technical deployer 500k HYPE Keeps mint, redemption and cross-chain transfer infrastructure reliable
  • Per the docs, about 90 per cent of cost-adjusted reserve yield on Hyperliquid supply goes to the protocol.
  • Payment is deducted from a system interest address, 0x50...00 plus the token index, for the Assistance Fund; a shortfall makes the treasury stake slashable.
  • Either deployer must give notice before stopping; stakes stay slashable throughout.
  • The HyperEVM balance behind minted HyperCore tokens is held 9:1 between the treasury address and the technical deployer’s linked contract.
  • Activation is by validator vote once both have staked and authorised.
  • A future upgrade will require AQAv2 for quote assets against HIP-4 and validator-operated perps; spot and HIP-3 will still accept others.

The numbers

Section titled “The numbers”
Parameter Value
Permissionless quote stake 200k HYPE, committed 3 years (50 HYPE on testnet)
AQAv1 total stake 1M HYPE (200k plus 800k)
AQAv1 protocol share 50% of the AQA rate
AQAv1 benefits taker fees 20% lower, maker rebates 50% larger, volume contribution 20% higher
AQAv2 stakes 500k HYPE treasury deployer, 500k HYPE technical deployer
AQAv2 protocol share 100% of the AQA rate
AQAv2 payment 30-day intervals, paid 8 days after each interval
AQAv2 shortfall penalty stake slashable at 2% per day
AQAv2 notice period 6 months
Stable-to-stable spot pairs taker fees, maker rebates and volume contribution 80% lower
Activation fee for a new account 1 unit of a quote asset

Enabling a quote token from code

Section titled “Enabling a quote token from code”

Quote status is set by the token deployer’s spotDeploy action:

{ "type": "spotDeploy", "enableQuoteToken": { "token": <token index> } }
  • A token index is not a pair index: spot order asset ids use 10000 + pair index.
  • HyperEVM decimals are weiDecimals + evmExtraWeiDecimals: 8 minus 2 for USDC and USDT0.
  • Aligned HIP-3 collateral discounts only the protocol’s share of the fee, not the deployer’s (fees).
  • disableQuoteToken also exists. A deployer-initiated disable leaves HIP-3 dexes trading on collateral that is no longer a quote asset; the docs mention a future migration upgrade.

For where the discounts apply, see Fees, tiers and rebates. For how a token is born, see HIP-1.