Hyperliquid
Layer 1 blockchain running a fully onchain order book for perpetual futures and spot trading.
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Hyperliquid key facts
| Category | Derivatives exchange |
|---|---|
| Chains | Hyperliquid L1 (HyperCore and HyperEVM) |
| Platforms | Web, API |
| Custody | Non-custodial |
| Fees | Perps base tier: 0.045% taker, 0.015% maker |
| Security audits | Zellic (legacy bridge contract) |
| Token | HYPE (staking cuts trading fees up to 40%) |
| US availability | Not available: terms exclude US residents and US-incorporated entities |
HYPE token
- Price
- $74.7 +1.2% 24h
- Market cap
- $17.9B
- Fully diluted value
- $71.1B
- 30-day change
- -11.8%
Market data: CoinGecko, updated Nov 10, 2026. Educational content, not financial advice.
What is Hyperliquid?
Hyperliquid is a layer 1 blockchain with an onchain order book for perpetual futures and spot trading. Base perps fees are 0.045% taker and 0.015% maker, lower with 14-day volume. Its site says it was built with no private investors and no paid market makers. The legacy bridge contract was audited by Zellic.
How Hyperliquid works
Hyperliquid runs its own layer 1 chain secured by HyperBFT, a consensus design based on HotStuff in which validators produce blocks in proportion to staked HYPE.
The chain state has two parts: HyperCore, which holds the perpetual and spot order books plus margin state, and HyperEVM, a general smart contract environment. Every order, cancel, trade and liquidation is processed onchain. The docs quote a median end-to-end latency of 0.2 seconds for a co-located client and throughput of about 200,000 orders per second.
Perpetual positions are margined in USDC. Funding is paid every hour, peer to peer, with an interest component fixed at 0.01% per 8 hours. When account equity falls below maintenance margin, which ranges from 1.25% on 40x assets to 16.7% on 3x assets, the engine first sends market orders to the book. If equity drops below two thirds of maintenance margin, the liquidator vault takes over the position. HLP, a community-owned protocol vault, runs market making strategies, performs liquidations and earns part of trading fees.
How to start with Hyperliquid
- You can log in at app.hyperliquid.xyz with an email address and a 6-digit code, or connect an EVM wallet such as Rabby or MetaMask and sign a gasless Enable Trading message.
- Third-party front ends listed in the docs include Based, Dexari, MetaMask and Phantom.
- To fund the account, send USDC on Arbitrum, Ethereum, Base or Polygon to your deposit address, or send BTC, ETH, SOL, MON, XPL, AVAX, ZEC and several other listed assets, which you then sell for a quote asset.
- Depositing from Arbitrum needs ETH for gas on the source chain, but trading on Hyperliquid itself uses no gas.
- If you deposit into the HLP vault, you can withdraw 4 days after your most recent deposit.
Hyperliquid fees and limits
- At the base tier, perps cost 0.045% taker and 0.015% maker, and spot costs 0.070% taker and 0.040% maker.
- Above $500 million in volume the perps maker fee reaches zero, and makers with more than 0.5% of total maker volume earn rebates of 0.001% to 0.003%.
- Staking HYPE cuts trading fees by 5% at more than 10 HYPE, up to 40% at more than 500,000 HYPE.
Fees depend on your rolling 14-day weighted volume, where spot volume counts double. Funding payments carry no protocol fee. The docs say fees go to HLP, the assistance fund and asset deployers rather than to a team. Withdrawals may cost small gas fees depending on the destination chain.
Risks to know before using Hyperliquid
- The audits page lists Zellic's review of the legacy Arbitrum bridge contract and points to Circle's separate audits of its own contracts.
- The docs say that bridge now holds less than 10% of USDC on HyperCore, since USDC is natively minted on the chain.
- No audit of HyperCore itself is published there.
- A bug bounty pays in USDC for node and API server bugs and requires researchers to pass KYC.
- In a backstop liquidation you lose the maintenance margin, and a cross-margin account with no isolated positions ends at zero equity.
- Staking account linking is permanent, and the linked staking user can move all of the trading user's funds in one irreversible transaction, so link only addresses you control.
- Liquidations use a mark price that blends external exchange prices with Hyperliquid's book, and in volatile markets it can differ sharply from the book price.
Hyperliquid usage
From DefiLlama (TVL) (fees users paid), updated Nov 10, 2026.
Hyperliquid alternatives
Other projects people compare with Hyperliquid.
Decentralized perpetual futures and spot exchange with verifiable order matching and zero fees on Standard accounts.
Onchain crypto index protocol behind TCAP and the Cryptex Digital Market Cap Index, governed by CTX holders.
Perpetual futures exchange running on its own dYdX Chain with an order book and DYDX staking.
Pool-to-peer perpetuals and spot exchange on Solana with up to 500x leverage.
Decentralized spot and perpetual exchange on Arbitrum, Avalanche and MegaETH that trades against liquidity pools.
Hyperliquid pros and cons
- Base perps fees of 0.045% taker and 0.015% maker
- Onchain order book with hourly funding
- Maker rebates at higher volume tiers
- Published audit covers the bridge contract, not the whole chain
- Max leverage varies by asset, with order size limits
- Spot volume counts double toward tiers, which makes fee tiers harder to predict
- Interface not available to US residents
Hyperliquid FAQ
What is Hyperliquid?
Hyperliquid is a layer 1 blockchain with an onchain order book for perpetual futures and spot trading. Base perps fees are 0.045% taker and 0.015% maker, lower with 14-day volume. Its site says it was built with no private investors and no paid market makers. The legacy bridge contract was audited by Zellic.
How much value is locked in Hyperliquid?
$8B according to DefiLlama on Nov 10, 2026. It is deployed on 2 chains: Hyperliquid L1, Arbitrum.
How much does Hyperliquid cost?
Perps base tier: 0.045% taker, 0.015% maker, according to Hyperliquid’s own page (checked Sep 26, 2026).
How much do users pay Hyperliquid in fees?
$88.2M over the last 30 days, according to DefiLlama on Nov 10, 2026.
Does Hyperliquid have a token?
Yes, HYPE. Its market cap was $17.9B on CoinGecko on Nov 10, 2026. Educational content, not financial advice.
Is Hyperliquid available in the US?
Not available: terms exclude US residents and US-incorporated entities, according to Hyperliquid’s own page (checked Sep 26, 2026).
Does Hyperliquid hold my funds?
No. Hyperliquid is non-custodial: you keep your funds in your own wallet and sign each transaction.
Sources
- Hyperliquid: official site
- Hyperliquid: Docs, Fees
- Hyperliquid: Docs, Audits
- Hyperliquid: Fees
- Hyperliquid: Terms of Use
- Hyperliquid: HyperCore overview
- Hyperliquid: About Hyperliquid
- Hyperliquid: Funding
- Hyperliquid: Liquidations
- Hyperliquid: Protocol vaults
- Hyperliquid: How to start trading
- Hyperliquid: USDC
- Hyperliquid: Audits
- Hyperliquid: Bug bounty program
- Hyperliquid: Staking
- CoinGecko
- DefiLlama
How this page works
Sources: Hyperliquid: official site, Hyperliquid: Docs, Fees, Hyperliquid: Docs, Audits. Data as of Sep 26, 2026.
Not affiliated with any project listed. Educational content, not financial advice.