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TradeStart here1 page
Start here: tradingFoundationWhere a trader stands in the house, which floors every order touches, what you use to trade, and a reading order from a first trade to professional practice.
TradeTrading fundamentals6 pages
Accounts, deposits and your first tradeFoundationTrading on Hyperliquid needs an EVM address, a deposit that lands on HyperCore and one gas-free signature; then every order is an on-chain transaction.Order types and time in forceFoundationEvery order on HyperCore is a limit order with one of three time-in-force rules, Gtc, Ioc or Alo; a market order is a limit order with a worst acceptable price.Take profit, stop loss, TWAP and scale ordersPractitionerTrigger orders wait for the mark price, then send an ordinary order with a worst price; TWAP and scale orders split one decision into many limit orders.Fees, tiers and rebatesFoundationEvery fill pays a maker or taker fee set by one 14-day volume tier, cut by staked HYPE and referral codes, with rebates for the largest makers.Entry price and PnLFoundationEntry price and PnL are display conventions computed from your fills; HyperCore itself margins cash and signed position size.Self-trade preventionPractitionerWhen an order would fill against the same address's resting order, HyperCore cancels the resting one: no fill, no fee, and the incoming order carries on.
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.
TradeSpot3 pages
Spot marketsFoundationA spot market on HyperCore swaps one token balance for another on an on-chain order book, fully funded, with no funding or liquidation, under pair names like @107.Native tokens for tradersFoundationA HIP-1 token is a capped-supply token native to HyperCore whose supply, genesis split, deployer and launch liquidity are public state a buyer can check.Hyperliquidity for tradersPractitionerHyperliquidity is a protocol-run ladder of post-only orders 0.3 per cent apart, refreshed at most every 3 seconds, that gives a new token two-sided liquidity without a market maker.
TradeOutcome markets4 pages
What an outcome market isFoundationAn outcome market trades fully collateralised contracts on an event: every Yes and No pair is backed by 1 unit of quote token and always redeems for exactly 1.Market shapes: binary, labelled, multi-outcome, price bucket, scalarPractitionerEvery HIP-4 market arranges the same Yes and No outcome into one of five shapes: price binary, labelled binary, multi-outcome question, price buckets or scalar.Split, merge, negatePractitionerFour conversions turn collateral into outcome positions and back at exactly 1 per complete set, which keeps related outcome books priced consistently.SettlementPractitionerSettlement posts one fraction per outcome, converts every Yes to it and every No to the rest in the quote token, then prunes the outcome from the live list.
TradeAccounts and credit5 pages
Account modes: standard, unified, portfolio marginPractitionerAn account's mode decides whether its spot and perp balances are one pool or several, which assets back perps, and whether a 50k daily action cap applies.Portfolio marginExpertPortfolio margin treats an account's cross perps and spot balances as one portfolio, borrows against HYPE and BTC, and liquidates when its ratio passes 0.95.Borrowing and lendingPractitionerHyperCore lends USDC and USDT against HYPE or BTC at a fixed loan-to-value, on a curve where suppliers earn the borrow rate times utilisation times 0.9.Sub-accountsPractitionerA sub-account is a separate HyperCore account with its own address, balances, margin and rate limits, signed for by a master account whose fee tier it shares.API wallets and agentsPractitionerAn API wallet is a key the master account approves to sign trades for it: it can place and cancel orders but cannot withdraw or send funds to another address.
TradeAdvanced trading4 pages
Market making on HyperliquidExpertMarket making on Hyperliquid is post-only quoting on an on-chain book with no special terms, where repricing, reconciliation, nonces and shutdown decide survival.Latency, priority and infrastructureExpertHyperliquid latency is set by distance to Tokyo, consensus and your own round trips, and the protocol sells read and write priority for fees that are burned.Carry: funding, basis and borrowExpertCarry on Hyperliquid is set by three published rates, hourly funding, the spot-perp basis and the borrow rate, each computable before a position is taken.Risk playbookPractitionerMost losses on Hyperliquid come from liquidation distance, shared margin, funding, auto-deleveraging and operational slips, each checkable before sizing up.
TradeIncentives2 pages
ReferralsFoundationA referrer earns 10% of a referred trader's fees for that trader's first $1B of volume, and the referred trader gets a 4% fee discount on their first $25M.Points (historical)FoundationHyperliquid 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.
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

Spot markets

Foundation

A spot market on HyperCore swaps one token balance for another on an on-chain order book, fully funded, with no funding or liquidation, under pair names like @107.

Spot is ownership, not price exposure. HYPE you buy sits in your balance, to stake, withdraw or move to the HyperEVM (HYPE). Say you buy 10 HYPE on @107 at 50 USDC as a taker:

  • You pay 500 USDC; the 0.070% base fee is taken in HYPE, leaving 9.993.
  • HYPE trades in lots of 0.01, so you can sell 9.99.
  • The last 0.003 HYPE (0.15 USDC) is under a lot: only dust conversion or a transfer moves it.

Tokens, pairs and balances

Section titled “Tokens, pairs and balances”

Every HIP-1 token gets a spot pair at deployment; a pair between existing tokens needs its own deploy auction.

Term What it is
Token an index, a tokenId, weiDecimals (smallest stored unit) and szDecimals (smallest size a book trades)
Pair a base and a quote token under its own index, named @N after that index in spotMeta.universe
Quote asset USDC or USDT, with no stake; other stablecoins by meeting peg and liquidity conditions backed by 200,000 staked HYPE (quote assets)
Balance a total and a hold (reserved, not free to spend) per token, in the spot clearinghouse
  • BTC/USDC in the app is UBTC/USDC on HyperCore.
  • Standard mode keeps spot and perp balances apart, moving USDC between them; unified mode shares one per asset (account modes).
  • A buy spends the quote token, a sell the base token; short of it, the order fails with “Order has insufficient spot balance to trade”. Under portfolio margin, a spot or perp order borrows against eligible collateral instead.

Spot beside perps

Section titled “Spot beside perps”
Spot Perps
What you hold A token balance A signed position plus margin
Leverage None, except by borrowing under portfolio margin 1 to the asset’s maximum
Funding None Every hour
Liquidation Not for a spot holding, except under portfolio margin Yes
Market name @N (PURR/USDC is the exception) Ticker such as BTC; dex:COIN for HIP-3
Asset id for orders 10000 + pair index Index in meta.universe; 100000 + dex index x 10000 + index for HIP-3
Price decimals at most 8 minus szDecimals at most 6 minus szDecimals
Minimum order value 10 units of the quote token $10
Base fees, taker and maker 0.070% and 0.040% 0.045% and 0.015%
Volume weight toward fee tier x 2 x 1
Fee paid in Quote token on a sell, the bought token on a buy Collateral
Builder fee cap 1% 0.1%

The numbers

Section titled “The numbers”
Parameter Value
Spot asset id 10000 + index in spotMeta.universe
HYPE on mainnet token 150, pair @107, asset id 10107
HYPE on testnet token 1105, pair 1035
Price at most 5 significant figures and at most 8 - szDecimals decimals; integers always allowed
Size multiple of the lot; lot = 10 ** (weiDecimals - szDecimals) in the token’s smallest unit
HYPE smallest size 0.01 HYPE (szDecimals 2)
Spot USDC szDecimals = weiDecimals = 8
Minimum order value 10 units of the quote token
Dust conversion daily at 00:00 UTC; balances under 1 lot and worth at most $1 are sold together and the USDC shared back

Finding and selling tokens

Section titled “Finding and selling tokens”
  • Find a token by its pair, not its ticker; the app’s token details page shows the on-chain name.
  • A pair between two quote assets pays 80 per cent less in taker fees (fees).
  • Each spot token has its own transfer address to the HyperEVM. 0x2222222222222222222222222222222222222222 is HYPE’s alone; any other token sent there is lost (moving assets).

Reading spot from code

Section titled “Reading spot from code”
Info request Gives
spotMeta tokens and pairs
spotMetaAndAssetCtxs markPx, midPx, prevDayPx, dayNtlVlm
spotClearinghouseState balances; under unified account or portfolio margin, the source of truth for the whole trading balance
  • Info requests and WebSocket subscriptions name a spot market PURR/USDC or @N. activeAssetCtx on a spot coin replies on activeSpotAssetCtx.
  • Find a token by its index field, never by array position: on mainnet, @367 points at token 479 in a 464-entry array.
  • Outcome tokens sit in spot balances as +<encoding> (asset ids).
{ "type": "spotClearinghouseState", "user": "0x0000000000000000000000000000000000000000" }

Where spot orders fail

Section titled “Where spot orders fail”
  • The API has “Order price too far from oracle”; the docs list “order too far from reference price” among pre-match rejections. On testnet, one production codebase saw spot orders outside a tight, undocumented oracle band rejected.
  • In a small testnet sample, spot orders from a HyperEVM contract through CoreWriter were dropped, with no error reaching the contract.
  • Dust conversion skips one-sided books and pooled dust too large for the book (over 10,000 USDC for PURR, 3,000 USDC for other tokens). Slippage can push proceeds below the mid.

Before buying a new token, read native tokens and Hyperliquidity.