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LearnStart here4 pages
How these docs workFoundationHow the site is organised by what you came to do, how every page runs from first principles to engineering detail, and where every fact comes from.Hyperliquid in five minutesFoundationHyperliquid is a set of financial primitives and protocols that combine into one financial system. Build a financial system from nothing, and each Hyperliquid protocol takes its place in it.The house of finance, layer by layerFoundationHyperliquid drawn as a house: one consensus, two engines joined by two bridges, an accounts layer, six financial pillars, a distribution layer that pays others to build, and Hyperliquid itself on top.Traditional finance, pillar by pillarFoundationEvery part of Hyperliquid has a traditional finance counterpart, and each analogy breaks in a specific place that shows what is actually new.
LearnFirst principles5 pages
Why Hyperliquid runs on its own chainFoundationHyperliquid built its own chain so that order books, margin and matching run fully on chain, in one consensus order, fast enough to trade on and with no off-chain book.One chain, two execution environmentsFoundationHyperCore holds the markets as native state and the HyperEVM runs contracts; one HyperBFT consensus orders both, joined by precompiles and CoreWriter.What an on-chain order book actually meansFoundationEvery order, cancel and fill is a transaction ordered by consensus and executed by every node, so the book is public chain state, not a private database.Ordering, finality and fairnessPractitionerHyperBFT gives every honest node one ordered list of committed rounds, a committed block is final, and each block runs cancels before GTC and IOC orders.HYPE: what the token doesFoundationHYPE pays HyperEVM gas, secures consensus, discounts fees, bonds deployers, backs borrowing, and is what the Assistance Fund converts fees into and burns.
LearnConsensus and validators4 pages
HyperBFTPractitionerHyperBFT is Hyperliquid's HotStuff-derived proof-of-stake consensus: stake-weighted validators commit rounds that every honest node executes in the same order.Validators and delegationPractitionerValidators run HyperBFT, ranked by stake; delegators choose them, pay commission, earn nothing while one is jailed and face no automatic slashing yet.Staking HYPE, rewards and the unstaking queueFoundationStaked HYPE is delegated to validators for compounding rewards and fee discounts; getting it back to spot takes a 7-day queue on mainnet.Running a nodeExpertA non-validating node follows consensus and writes every committed transaction, fill, order status, book change and HyperEVM block to local disk.
LearnHyperCore8 pages
HyperCore overviewFoundationHyperCore is where Hyperliquid's order books, margin, clearing and settlement run as native protocol state, applied by every validator in one order.The clearinghouse: one margin enginePractitionerHyperCore's clearinghouse holds balances and positions and checks margin on every trade; in standard mode each perp dex has its own balance and cross margin.The order book and matchingPractitionerEach HyperCore asset has one on-chain book matched in price-time priority, with cancels and post-only orders sequenced ahead of orders that take liquidity.Oracles, mark prices and robust price indicesPractitionerValidators publish perp oracle prices every 3 seconds; the mark price used for margin and liquidation is a median that no single book or venue can move.Quote assets: USDC, USDH, aligned and permissionlessPractitionerAny token can become a HyperCore quote asset if its issuer stakes 200k HYPE against a peg and liquidity standard; aligned issuers also share reserve yield.Vaults: HLP, protocol vaults, user vaultsFoundationA vault pools depositors' USDC into one HyperCore account run by one strategy; HLP is the protocol vault that makes markets and performs liquidations.Multi-sig accountsPractitionerHyperCore can make any account a native k-of-n multi-sig with no smart contract, but CoreWriter stops working for it and its HyperEVM side keeps the old key.API servers and how state reaches youPractitionerAPI servers follow a node, keep a local copy of HyperCore state, answer reads from it, and reply to a transaction only once it executes in a committed block.
LearnResearch5 pages
What one HyperEVM transaction can and cannot doExpertOne HyperEVM transaction can read HyperCore and emit a perp order and an outcome operation, but it only enqueues them, so the legs are not atomic.Options on the borrow rateExpertA research track priced the HyperCore USDC borrow rate with HIP-4 scalar bands, listed them on somebody else's perp, and found owning the perp does not pay.Composable creditExpertA research track tokenised HyperCore lending positions as HyperEVM ERC20s, proved a contract can supply on testnet, and found the vault must be a queue, not a wrapper.Collateral underwritingExpertA research track found the protocol refuses a deployer stake posted by somebody else, and rebuilt underwriting as two-of-two co-custody of the deployer's own bond.Where the chain and the docs disagreeExpertEvery place where measured behaviour on Hyperliquid contradicts the official docs: what the docs say, what was measured, the sample and the covering page.
LearnFor the press4 pages
Start here: press and analystsFoundationFor people writing about Hyperliquid: what it is, how to measure and name it correctly, and the stories behind the numbers.Measuring Hyperliquid: volume, open interest, usersFoundationPublic Hyperliquid figures disagree mostly because each counts the same fills differently; a number means something only with its rows and units.Common misconceptionsFoundationTwelve common claims about Hyperliquid that the official docs or on-chain measurement contradict, each with what is true and where it is explained.Naming and style guideFoundationWrite HyperCore, HyperEVM, HyperBFT, CoreWriter and HIP-1 to HIP-4 exactly, never shorten HyperCore to one word, and do not cite a HIP-5, because none exists.
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

HyperCore overview

Foundation

HyperCore is where Hyperliquid's order books, margin, clearing and settlement run as native protocol state, applied by every validator in one order.

When you trade on Hyperliquid, your orders, balances and positions live in HyperCore. They are chain state, not an app’s records, so every interface sees the same account and the same book. An app adds a fee only with your approval (builder codes).

An order is matched and settled in one execution

Section titled “An order is matched and settled in one execution”

Say you buy 1 ETH of perps from a co-located client.

  1. You sign the order and send it to an API server.
  2. HyperBFT commits it, and every validator applies it in the same order.
  3. The book matches it and both accounts update in that same execution. There is no separate settlement step.
  4. The reply reaches you after commit: median 0.2 s, 99th percentile 0.9 s.

That’s the docs’ principle: no off-chain order books, one order for everyone (why it matters). Think of an exchange’s matching engine and clearing house in one, except that consensus, not an operator, sets the order.

What HyperCore holds

Section titled “What HyperCore holds”

HyperCore and the HyperEVM are two execution environments on one chain, both secured by HyperBFT (why). HyperCore’s state changes only through signed actions. It holds:

Component What it holds Owning page
Order books One book per asset, matched in price-time priority The order book
Clearinghouses Perp balances, positions and margin; spot token balances and holds The clearinghouse
Oracle Validator-published prices, and the mark price built from them Oracles
Staking HYPE delegated to validators Staking
Vaults HLP and user vaults, each trading as one account Vaults
Lending Supplied and borrowed balances Borrowing and lending
Multi-sig Accounts controlled by several keys Multi-sig accounts
Market deployment HIP-1 tokens, HIP-3 perp dexes, HIP-4 outcome markets What a HIP is

Reaching HyperCore from code

Section titled “Reaching HyperCore from code”

From outside the chain, /exchange takes signed actions, /info serves reads and /ws streams. Start with your first request.

From a HyperEVM contract there are three paths, none a function call that returns a result.

HyperEVM general-purpose contracts chain id 999 on mainnet HyperCore order books clearinghouses oracle and mark prices staking, vaults, lending HIP-1, HIP-3, HIP-4 markets CoreWriter action, executed later precompile read, latest block only assets through system addresses
Reads are synchronous but only at the latest block; writes are queued and never report back.
  • Read through precompiles at 0x800 to 0x814.
  • Write through CoreWriter. An order (action 1) carries price and size as 1e8 times the human value; the HTTP API takes decimal strings.
  • Move tokens through system addresses.

Keep matching, margin and liquidation in HyperCore; put custom logic, tokenised positions and composability on the HyperEVM. Four rules catch contracts out:

  • A refused CoreWriter action does not revert: gas is spent, nothing happens.
  • Precompiles read only the latest block; there is no historical HyperCore state from the HyperEVM.
  • A contract must be a HyperCore account before the EVM block that uses CoreWriter.
  • Multi-sig accounts cannot use CoreWriter.

The numbers

Section titled “The numbers”
Parameter Value Source
End-to-end order latency, co-located client median 0.2 s, 99th percentile 0.9 s official docs
Throughput about 200k orders per second; execution is the bottleneck official docs
Oracle publication every 3 seconds, by validators official docs
Consensus batches per block usually 1 to 2 official docs
Unstaking queue 7 days official docs
Authorised users per multi-sig account at most 10 official docs
USDC decimals 8 on HyperCore, 6 on the HyperEVM measured

For balances, positions and margin, see The clearinghouse. For the environment on the other side, see The HyperEVM.