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TradePerpetuals9 pages
What a perpetual future isFoundationA perpetual future is a contract on an asset's price that never expires, kept close to that price by an hourly payment between longs and shorts.Contract specificationsPractitionerEvery Hyperliquid perp is a linear contract on 1 unit of its asset, defined by size decimals, maximum leverage, a margin table and a margin mode.FundingPractitionerFunding is an hourly payment between longs and shorts, set by how far the perp trades from the oracle price, that ties a contract with no expiry to its index.Margin: cross, isolated and margin tiersPractitionerMargin is the collateral behind a perp: initial margin to open, maintenance margin to stay open, shared in cross mode or ring-fenced in isolated mode.Leverage and liquidationPractitionerBelow maintenance margin, positions go to the order book as market orders; below two thirds of it, the liquidator vault takes them over.Auto-deleveragingExpertWhen an account goes below zero, auto-deleveraging closes the most profitable, most leveraged opposing positions at the previous mark price, leaving no bad debt.Hyperps and index perpetualsPractitionerHyperps fund against a moving average of their own mark price until spot trading exists; index perps track a formula the validators publish.AMM-priced perpetualsExpertSome perps price off a Uniswap V2 or V3 pool instead of exchange spot prices, and are isolated only, with margin locked in until the position closes.DelistingPractitionerWhen validators vote to delist a perp, positions settle at the 1-hour time-weighted oracle price before the vote and no new orders are accepted.

Points (historical)

Foundation

Hyperliquid ran two points programmes: 1M points a week from November 2023 to May 2024, then 700k a week in an L1 phase from May to November 2024.

Points rewarded users for their activity, one week at a time. The docs say they were meant for users who contribute to the protocol’s success. Both programmes have ended, and the docs describe no current one.

The first programme followed points for the closed alpha. Its criteria were updated on a recurring basis and never published in the docs. Referrers, called affiliates in the docs, earned 1 point for every 4 their referred users earned: 25 per cent. If your referred users earned 400 points in a week, you earned 100.

The L1 phase followed. Activity in the gap before it received a multiplier whose size the docs do not state. The docs also reserve Hyperliquid’s right to modify previous point distributions at its sole discretion.

Period Dates Points per week
Closed alpha up to 31 October 2023 not stated
First programme 1 November 2023 to 1 May 2024 1,000,000
Gap 1 to 28 May 2024 not stated; this activity received a multiplier
L1 phase 29 May 2024 to November 2024 700,000
Rule Value
Weekly activity window ends Wednesday 00:00 UTC
Distribution day Thursday
Affiliate points 1 for every 4 earned by referred users

The first programme ran exactly 26 weeks (182 days, Wednesday to Wednesday), so its weekly figure implies about 26 million points. That total is arithmetic on the docs’ numbers, not a figure they state.

Today’s incentives are the fee schedule, referrals and staking discounts on fees. Referrers earned points then; now they earn a share of fees.

  • The docs give no total for either phase, and the L1 phase’s end only as a month, so its length is uncertain to within a month.
  • The docs do not say what points were later exchanged for, and neither does this page.

For the dates around both programmes, see the timeline; for the native token, see HYPE.