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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

Where the chain and the docs disagree

Expert

Every place where measured behaviour on Hyperliquid contradicts the official docs: what the docs say, what was measured, the sample and the covering page.

The docs lag the chain, and following a stale sentence can fail silently: a transaction that succeeds and does nothing, a timing off by a factor of ten, a field scaled differently. Where they disagree, on-chain measurement wins, then the official docs, then SDK code. Each canonical page flags its own cases; this page lists them all, with the sample size wherever there was one.

Most measurements come from three September 2026 research tracks, settled by transactions and live API responses (borrow-rate options, composable credit, collateral underwriting). The rest come from auditing SDK wire formats against the live exchange.

The docs say one thing, the chain does another

Section titled “The docs say one thing, the chain does another”
Topic The docs say Measured Evidence Covered on
CoreWriter delay Order actions and vault transfers sent from CoreWriter “are delayed onchain for a few seconds” Orders are accepted 0.35 to 0.51 s after the EVM block. Only vault transfers are delayed, by 4.05 to 4.10 s 5,455 mainnet CoreWriter actions over 73,914 blocks; 52 orders matched by client order id across 15 accounts and 14 markets; 6 vault transfers execution order
CoreWriter supply for contracts The portfolio margin page: “In a future upgrade, CoreWriter will expose the same supply action for smart contracts.” The CoreWriter table on another page already lists action 15 Live. A testnet contract supplied 500 USDC and held 500.00000051 one block later. Mainnet decodes action 15 into a typed lending action and enforces lending rules on it Testnet probe contract; two mainnet refusals carrying the CoreWriter-only action shape composable credit
CoreWriter action 14 The action table runs from 13 to 15 Action 14 exists on mainnet; its semantics are unknown 25 emissions in 3,000,001 mainnet blocks CoreWriter action reference
HIP-4 status The HIP-4 deployer actions page is headed “Testnet-only” HIP-4 runs on mainnet 228 active outcomes, 21 questions and 3 venues on mainnet on 2026-09-20; the live page had dropped the line by then, the dated mirror still carries it HIP-4
Outcome fees The HIP-4 page: “Fees are currently zero for outcome markets for initial testing.” Fees are charged on the closing side only, at spot rates x (scale + max(scale, 1)). Every buy was billed 0 and every sell was charged. The docs’ own fees page agrees with the measurement 7,256 mainnet fills, 2026-09-12 fees
HYPE lending supply cap “HYPE: 10M HYPE global supply cap” 10,233,170.44 HYPE supplied: either the cap moved or it is soft Live reserve read, 2026-09-20 borrowing and lending
Aligned quote token actions enableAlignedQuoteToken and disableAlignedQuoteToken are documented spotDeploy variants Both are rejected at the parse stage on mainnet and testnet SDK audit using a dummy signature, which the exchange checks only after parsing quote assets
outcomeMetaUpdates frame Typed as a one-element tuple, [WsOutcomeMetaUpdate] Arrives as an array SDK wire audit WebSocket

The docs are silent, and not knowing loses money

Section titled “The docs are silent, and not knowing loses money”

Here the docs say nothing, or cover one direction only.

Topic The docs say Measured Evidence Covered on
CoreWriter failures CoreWriter burns about 25,000 gas “before emitting a log to be processed by HyperCore as an action”; nothing on failure The EVM transaction succeeds whether or not HyperCore executes. Four refusals seen with EVM status 1: Invalid number of decimals, Insufficient USDC or HYPE balance for token transfer gas, Borrow/Lend error: Insufficient spot balance for operation, Manual borrow/lend not allowed with portfolio margin Testnet transactions and mainnet refusals, each read from HyperCore’s action log footguns
Rounding, HyperCore to HyperEVM A non-round amount is “burned (guaranteed to be <1 Wei)”, which describes the HyperEVM to HyperCore direction with extra EVM decimals In the other direction, with USDC’s evmExtraWeiDecimals of -2, an amount that is not a multiple of 100 wei is rejected, not burned 5 of 5 transfers matched wei % 100: two non-round refused, three round accepted moving assets
Bridge gas A transfer from HyperCore to the HyperEVM “costs 200k gas at the base gas price of the next HyperEVM block” The gas is charged from the sender’s HyperCore balance, so the whole balance can never be sent On testnet, sending 100 of 100 USDC refused; 99 sent for 0.000588 USDC moving assets
Action 17 units wei “must be a multiple of size”; no scale given 1e8 per contract wei = 100000000 minted exactly one Long and one Short and moved 1 USDC, testnet CoreWriter
Precompile history Values match the latest HyperCore state when the EVM block is built; independent archive nodes serve historical state The precompiles fail at any explicit block number, including the current head, even on an archive node that serves historical eth_getCode PrecompileOutOfGas at head, head minus 1, 20 and 10,000 precompiles
0x811 with no record Nothing Reverts rather than returning zeros, even for a HyperCore user holding spot Mainnet and testnet, including an account holding 31,989 USDC of spot precompiles
USDC on the HyperEVM The USDC page gives 0xb88339cb7199b77e23db6e890353e22632ba630f as the USDC contract on the HyperEVM HyperCore USDC (token 0) is linked to a different contract, 0x6b9e773128f453f5c2c60935ee2de2cbc5390a24. The docs’ USDC is not linked, so moving between the two is a swap spotMeta and the tokenInfo precompile moving assets
Staking links and deployers Staking links attribute a staking account’s HYPE to a trading account’s fee tier; nothing on deployers A deployer cannot have one. Activation is refused with Deployer cannot have staking link Testnet probe collateral underwriting
Unstaking on testnet A 7-day unstaking queue Exactly 7 days on mainnet; about 5 minutes on testnet One mainnet exit finalised 7 days and 1 second after it started; one testnet withdrawal finalised in 5 minutes staking
Undocumented surface Nothing One SDK audit counted 18 exchange actions and 19 info requests that answer on mainnet but that it found no docs page for. Two checked against the current mirror appear nowhere in it: the HTTP borrowLend action and the userToMultiSigSigners info request SDK audit against both networks; mirror search exchange action reference

Wrong once, corrected since

Section titled “Wrong once, corrected since”

These are now right in the current docs mirror; they stay listed for checking older notes and SDKs.

Topic What was reported The docs now Covered on
Negate key Earlier documentation and SDK examples used negateQuestion; the wire key is negateOutcome, checked against Hyperliquid’s own interface The exchange endpoint page in the current mirror documents negateOutcome split, merge, negate
HIP-4 deploy action Deployment used {"type":"spotDeploy","outcome":{...}}; that shape is now rejected The current mirror documents a top-level outcomeDeploy with venue and operation outcome templates

Older SDKs still carry superseded forms: one sent outcomeDeploy without the venue and operation envelope, and mainnet answered Failed to deserialize the JSON body into the target type.

Not yet shown to contradict the docs

Section titled “Not yet shown to contradict the docs”
Topic What is known
API wallets per account The docs allow 1 unnamed and up to 3 named, plus 2 named per sub-account. One live account held 14; without its sub-account count, not yet a contradiction
Action 17 timing on mainnet Split and merge landed in the transaction’s own block on testnet; the mainnet timing window had no action 17 traffic, so mainnet is inferred, not measured
Borrow and repay through CoreWriter The docs list action 15 as supply and withdraw; one tool routes ops 2 and 3 as borrow and repay; measurements cover supply and withdraw only
HIP-4 slashing for late settlement Specified when HIP-4 was announced, disclaimed for the testnet release, not observed on mainnet

For the timing and failure findings in context, see What one HyperEVM transaction can and cannot do. Every silent failure, with its fix, is in Footguns, measured.