Skip to content
DFUHL Docs
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

API wallets and agents

Practitioner

An 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.

An API wallet, also called an agent, limits what a stolen trading key can do. Your bot’s key sits on a server, and if it were your account key a breach would drain the account. An agent is a second key your cold master approves: it signs orders and cancels but can’t move money to another address.

Say your account holds 50,000 USDC and the bot’s server is breached. The thief can lose that 50,000 through bad trades, but can’t withdraw it or send it to another address.

What an agent can sign, and what only the master can

Section titled “What an agent can sign, and what only the master can”

The master signs approveAgent naming the agent’s address and an optional name. The agent then signs L1 actions for the master and its sub-accounts, only on the network hyperliquidChain binds: a testnet approval does nothing on mainnet.

Who can sign Actions
An agent (L1 actions) orders, cancels, modifies, scheduleCancel, vault transfers, borrowLend, agentSetAbstraction, HIP-3 and HIP-4 deployer actions such as settlements, and agentSendAsset, between the account’s own balances only (destination must equal source)
The master key only (user-signed) withdrawals (withdraw3), sends to another address (usdSend, spotSend, sendAsset), approving another agent, approving a builder fee
Never an agent, even an approved one activateOutcomeDeployer

An agent is a signer, not an account: queries on its address return empty (nonces and agents).

Slots, expiry and removal

Section titled “Slots, expiry and removal”

Slots. One unnamed slot, several named ones; approving into an occupied slot or name replaces the holder. A valid_until <timestamp in milliseconds> suffix on the name sets an expiry, at most 180 days ahead.

Removal. There is no revoke action. Per the docs an agent is removed, and its nonce state may be pruned, when replaced, when expired, or when the registering account has no funds. In each case the re-approval danger below applies.

The numbers

Section titled “The numbers”
Item Value Source
Unnamed agents per account 1 exchange endpoint docs
Named agents per account up to 3, plus 2 per sub-account exchange endpoint docs
API wallets per account 3 per master, plus 2 per sub-account sub-accounts docs
Observed on one live account 14 measured; unreconciled with either figure
Longest expiry 180 days exchange endpoint docs
Agent name length 1 to 16 characters SDK constants
Nonces kept per signer the 100 highest nonce docs
Nonce window block time minus 2 days to block time plus 1 day nonce docs

The count is unresolved: read extraAgents on your own account.

Keeping a trading key safe

Section titled “Keeping a trading key safe”
  • Retire a leaked key by approving a fresh address into its slot or name. Until then it trades without limit.
  • Set a valid_until expiry so a forgotten agent stops on its own.
  • Run one agent per process. Nonces are per signer, so processes sharing one collide. The docs recommend one API wallet per trading process and per sub-account.

Approving and inspecting agents from code

Section titled “Approving and inspecting agents from code”

The master key signs the approval; a null agentName signs as the empty string and approves the unnamed agent.

{
  "type": "approveAgent",
  "hyperliquidChain": "Mainnet",
  "signatureChainId": "0xa4b1",
  "agentAddress": "0x...",
  "agentName": "mm-1 valid_until 1767225600000",
  "nonce": 1760000000000
}
  • Listing: extraAgents returns {address, name, validUntil} entries, or null (not an empty list) when there are none.
  • Identifying: userRole returns {"role": "agent", "data": {"user": "0x..."}}, naming the master.
  • From a contract: CoreWriter action 9, (address wallet, string name), approves an API wallet for the contract’s own account; an empty name makes it the main agent. An off-chain keeper can then do what CoreWriter is not proven to carry, such as a borrow.
  • CoreWriter acts for the sender: an agent’s key calling CoreWriter acts for the agent’s own address, not its master.
  • Multi-sig: the submitting leader can be an authorised user’s API wallet; its nonce is the one checked (multi-sig).
  • Builder fees: an app can’t approve its own builder fee through a user’s agent (builder codes).
  • Unknown signer: an unapproved or replaced agent, or a malformed signature, fails with User or API Wallet ... does not exist, naming the recovered address (debugging).

For signing and replay protection in depth, see Nonces, expiry and API wallets. For L1 versus user-signed actions, see Signing from first principles.