Hyperliquidity for traders

A new token has no outside price to quote from. HLP quotes perps off centralised exchange prices; HIP-2 gives spot tokens a ladder that needs none.

The ladder runs in HyperCore’s block logic under the same consensus as the order book, with no operator. Modelled on an automated market maker’s price range, it quotes on the ordinary book, where anyone can quote alongside, inside or ahead of it.

Say the lowest ask sits at 1.000 USDC and each level holds 1,000 tokens. You buy 3,000:

• You fill 1,000 at 1.000, 1,000 at 1.003 and 1,000 at about 1.006, for about 3,009 USDC.
• At the next update, 3 seconds or more later, those levels flip to bids at the same prices: if the price falls, Hyperliquidity buys back down the ladder.

Five parameters set the ladder

The deployer sets them at launch: the spot pair, startPx, nOrders, a size per order orderSz, and nSeededLevels.

Price grid. Each level is 0.3 per cent above the one below:

px_0 = startPx
px_i = round(px_(i-1) * 1.003)

Inventory. The token’s Hyperliquidity allocation sits as asks; the lowest nSeededLevels levels start as deployer-funded bids instead (sizes in the table below).

Update. On the first block at least 3 seconds after the last update, every completely filled level is reposted at full size on the other side, restoring a one-level spread of 0.3 per cent. The spread holds only where there is inventory on both sides.

Filled levels flip side at the next update, so the ladder quotes both ways where it holds inventory.

Post-only. A placement that would cross a resting order is rejected, leaving that level empty for the update; the docs guarantee the orders only “to the extent that ALO orders are not rejected”.

Finite range. The ladder runs from px_0 to px_(nOrders - 1): no asks above, no bids below, and depth inside set by how much inventory has changed hands.

The numbers

Parameter	Value
Quote asset	USDC only
Level spacing	0.3% (px_i = round(px_(i-1) * 1.003))
Refresh	first block at least 3 s after the previous update
Size per level	orderSz, set by the deployer; one partial level for the remainder
Seeded bid levels	nSeededLevels, each funded with px * sz USDC by the deployer
Price after walking k levels	px * 1.003^k, before rounding
100 levels	about 35%
Doubling	about 232 levels
100 times the start price	about 1,538 levels

Official frontend checks, client-side and not necessarily protocol rules:

Frontend check	Limit
Number of orders	at least 10
Hyperliquidity share of total supply	more than 1%
Market cap at the start price	under 10M USDC
Market cap at the top of the ladder	between 1B and 100B USDC
First order	at least 1 USDC

Together they force a ladder spanning at least 100 times in price, about 1,538 levels.

Trading against the ladder

• A market buy walks up level by level, so size it against the ladder (order types).
• Quote inside the 0.3 per cent gap to sit ahead of Hyperliquidity; its post-only orders won’t cross yours.
• It moves only on trades, so a gap to another venue lasts until someone arbitrages it.
• Check the seeded bids, the only protocol bids at launch: seededUsdc in tokenDetails (native tokens).

Registering a ladder

One action registers it:

{
  "type": "spotDeploy",
  "registerHyperliquidity": { "spot": 1, "startPx": "0.05", "orderSz": "10000", "nOrders": 1600, "nSeededLevels": 2 }
}

• spot is the pair index, not the token index; orderSz is in tokens, not wei.
• A token deployed with noHyperliquidity must send nOrders: 0.
• spotDeployState reports hyperliquidityGenesisBalance during deployment; tokenDetails reports seededUsdc afterwards.
• In l2Book the ladder’s levels carry px, sz and an order count n, with no owner.

Rounding, partial fills, bridged tokens

• Rounding makes levels not exactly 1.003 apart: compute them with the recursion, not a power.
• Only completely filled levels flip; a partly filled level stays on its side.
• Bridged assets usually launch without Hyperliquidity, so their books depend on other traders.

For the standard, see HIP-2; for choosing parameters, see Deploying a spot token.