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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

Sub-accounts

Practitioner

A 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.

A sub-account separates your strategies without splitting your fee tier or adding a key. On one address, two strategies share collateral, liquidation risk, a rate limit and a nonce set. A second wallet separates them but splits your fee-tier volume and adds a key to guard.

Say your master and one sub-account each trade 5M USDC of perps. Your fee tier sees 10M, and both pay at that tier. Each keeps its own address rate limit: 10,000 + 5,000,000 = 5,010,000 requests.

One master key signs for every sub-account

Section titled “One master key signs for every sub-account”

A sub-account has its own address and no private key. The master, or an API wallet the master approved, signs for it by naming it in the request.

  • Separate state: balances, positions, margin and liquidation. Under portfolio margin it’s its own portfolio, and it has its own account mode.
  • Transfers between master and sub-account name the sub-account and appear in the ledger as subAccountTransfer.

The numbers

Section titled “The numbers”
Item Value
Unlock $100,000 of volume
Sub-accounts at unlock up to 10
Each further sub-account 1 per additional $100M of volume
Maximum 50
API wallets start at 3 per master, plus 2 per sub-account (see API wallets for the conflicting figures)
Fee tier the master’s; sub-account volume counts toward it (fees)
Referral discount none: the clearinghouse treats sub-accounts as independent accounts (referrals)
Address-based rate limit separate: each counts as its own user, with a buffer of 10,000 requests plus 1 per 1 USDC traded (rate limits)

The docs give two conflicting API wallet allowances, and a live account has held 14.

What a sub-account separates, and what it doesn’t

Section titled “What a sub-account separates, and what it doesn’t”

Strategies. A sub-account’s liquidation can’t touch the master or a sibling. Unlike isolated margin, the whole balance is separate, not one position’s margin.

Modes. Market-make in standard mode, with no daily action cap, beside a unified or portfolio margin account for discretionary trades.

Books. Fills, funding and PnL history live per address.

Not separated: the fee tier, by design, and the master key. Losing that key loses every sub-account. Vault volume, by contrast, counts separately from the master for fee tiers.

Signing, reading and funding from code

Section titled “Signing, reading and funding from code”
  • Signing: master key or approved API wallet, with vaultAddress set to the sub-account (the field vaults also use). userSetAbstraction takes a sub-account as user (nonces and agents).
  • Nonces are per signer, not per account. One API wallet for several sub-accounts shares one nonce set and parallel processes collide; the docs recommend one API wallet per sub-account.
  • Reading: query the sub-account’s own address. An API wallet’s address returns an empty result.
  • Creating: createSubAccount returns the new address as data.
Request Returns
{"type": "subAccounts", "user": master} each sub-account’s name, subAccountUser, master, clearinghouseState and spotState
{"type": "userRole", "user": address} {"role": "subAccount", "data": {"master": "0x..."}} for a sub-account 
{"type": "sendAsset", "hyperliquidChain": "Mainnet", "signatureChainId": "0xa4b1", "destination": "0x...", "sourceDex": "", "destinationDex": "spot", "token": "USDC:0x<32 hex token id>", "amount": "100", "fromSubAccount": "0x...", "nonce": 1760000000000}

fromSubAccount is the sub-account address, or an empty string from the master. usdClassTransfer appends subaccount:<address> to the amount, but it’s disabled on unified and portfolio margin accounts: use sendAsset with fromSubAccount. CoreWriter action 13 (send asset) has a subAccount field; a non-zero value sends from that sub-account.

For moving value between accounts, see Transfers and withdrawals; for the keys that sign, see API wallets and agents.