Margin: cross, isolated and margin tiers

Margin rules decide how much of your USDC a position locks up, and when it is closed for you. A loss beyond your collateral would fall on the liquidator and then the other side (auto-deleveraging). The perps clearinghouse on HyperCore holds every address’s balance, positions and margin state.

A 10,000 USDC position, worked

Say you buy 10 contracts at 1,000 USDC with 10x, on an asset with 20x maximum leverage.

position value       = 10 * 1,000                = 10,000 USDC
initial margin       = 10,000 / 10               = 1,000 USDC   locked to open
maintenance margin   = 10,000 * (1/20) / 2       = 250 USDC     liquidated if equity falls below
transfer requirement = max(1,000, 0.1 * 10,000)  = 1,000 USDC   must stay behind

At 20x, initial margin drops to 500 USDC; the transfer requirement still holds 1,000.

Initial margin sets your leverage

initial_margin = position_size * mark_price / leverage

• Leverage is checked only when you open; after that, health is your job. You can raise an open position’s leverage without closing it.
• Margin is checked at placement and again when a resting order is matched, covering oracle moves in between.

Maintenance margin is half the maximum initial rate

At 20x, that’s 5 per cent initial and 2.5 per cent maintenance.

• Cross: the account is liquidated when account value, including unrealised PnL, falls below maintenance margin times total open notional.
• Isolated: the same test on the position’s own margin and notional (liquidation).

Cross shares collateral, isolated ring-fences it

Deposits credit the cross balance first; positions open in cross by default.

Mode	Collateral	Add margin	Remove margin	Where it applies
Cross	shared by all cross positions (per dex in standard mode)	deposit	only above the transfer requirement; initial margin in use cannot be withdrawn	default
Isolated	ring-fenced to one position	yes	yes, above the transfer requirement	any asset that allows it
Strict isolated (strictIsolated)	ring-fenced	yes	no; released pro rata as the position closes	some assets, including AMM-priced perps
No cross (noCross)	ring-fenced	yes	yes, above the transfer requirement	HIP-3 assets whose deployer turned cross off

In cross, unrealised PnL counts as initial margin for new positions; in isolated, it stays in the position. An isolated liquidation touches no other position or the cross account, and no other liquidation touches it.

What this means for you:

• In cross, leverage doesn’t move your liquidation price. It only locks more collateral as initial margin. In isolated, it sets the position’s margin, so it does.
• Cross for a book, isolated for a bet. Cross lets a winner support a loser; isolated caps one idea’s loss at its margin.
• Strict isolated margin is locked in: choose leverage before you open.

Taking margin out

Removing margin other than by trading must leave:

transfer_margin_required = max(initial_margin_required, 0.1 * total_position_value)

That covers withdrawals, transfers to spot and isolated margin transfers, including of unrealised PnL. In cross, closing a position that showed 1,000 USDC of margin can free less than that: freed margin first covers other positions whose losses put them below initial margin.

Margin tiers for large positions

For tiered assets, maintenance margin is piecewise in notional:

maintenance_margin = notional * maintenance_margin_rate(tier) - maintenance_deduction(tier)

maintenance_margin_rate(n) = initial_margin_rate_at_max_leverage(n) / 2
maintenance_deduction(0)   = 0
maintenance_deduction(n)   = maintenance_deduction(n - 1)
                           + notional_lower_bound(n) * (maintenance_margin_rate(n) - maintenance_margin_rate(n - 1))

The deduction keeps it continuous: each dollar in a higher tier pays that tier’s rate, dollars below keep the lower one. Rates and deductions depend on the tier, not the asset. BTC (40x up to 150M USDC, 20x above):

tier 0: rate = (1/40)/2 = 1.25%   deduction = 0
tier 1: rate = (1/20)/2 = 2.5%    deduction = 0 + 150,000,000 * (2.5% - 1.25%) = 1,875,000

at 150M: tier 0 gives 150,000,000 * 1.25%            = 1,875,000
         tier 1 gives 150,000,000 * 2.5% - 1,875,000 = 1,875,000   (continuous)
at 200M: tier 1 gives 200,000,000 * 2.5% - 1,875,000 = 3,125,000

Ids of 50 and above are defined in meta.marginTables. Crossing into a tier your leverage does not allow is refused with Order would cause position to exceed margin tier limit at current leverage.

Cross margin across dexes

In standard mode each perp dex has its own balance and its own cross margin; under unified account and portfolio margin, cross positions on dexes sharing a collateral asset share margin (account modes).

On a HIP-3 dex, enabling cross on an asset is irreversible and subject to validator eligibility rules, including a slashing review each time externalPerpPx moves over 50 per cent from its start-of-day price.

The numbers

Parameter	Value
Leverage setting	integer, 1 to the asset’s maximum
Initial margin	position_size * mark_price / leverage
Maintenance margin rate	half the initial margin rate at maximum leverage
Maintenance range, validator-operated	1.25% (40x) to 16.7% (3x)
Transfer requirement	max(initial_margin_required, 0.1 * total_position_value)
Margin table ids below 50	single tier, maximum leverage = id
HIP-3 margin table	at most 3 tiers; maximum leverage 1 to 50; tiers sorted by increasing lower bound and decreasing leverage

Mainnet tiers, from the docs:

Assets	Tier 0	Tier 1	Table id, mainnet read
BTC	0 to 150M: 40x	above 150M: 20x	56
ETH	0 to 100M: 25x	above 100M: 15x	55
SOL	0 to 70M: 20x	above 70M: 10x	54
XRP	0 to 40M: 20x	above 40M: 10x	53
AAVE, ADA, APT, AVAX, BCH, CRV, DOGE, ENA, FARTCOIN, HYPE, kBONK, kPEPE, LINK, LTC, NEAR, PUMP, SUI, TRUMP, UNI, WLD, ZEC	0 to 20M: 10x	above 20M: 5x	52
ARB, BNB, DOT, JUP, kSHIB, MKR, ONDO, PAXG, TON, TRX, XPL	0 to 3M: 10x	above 3M: 5x	51

Notional in USDC. The mainnet meta read on 28 September 2026 returned tables 51 to 56 with exactly these boundaries, plus table 50, a single 50x tier no listed validator-operated asset used.

Leverage and margin from code

{ "type": "updateLeverage", "asset": 0, "isCross": true, "leverage": 10 }
{ "type": "updateIsolatedMargin", "asset": 0, "isBuy": true, "ntli": 1000000 }
{ "type": "topUpIsolatedOnlyMargin", "asset": 0, "leverage": "5" }

Action or request	Notes
updateLeverage	integer leverage; isCross picks cross or isolated
updateIsolatedMargin	adds or removes isolated margin; ntli is an integer with 6 decimals (1000000 is 1 USD); isBuy has no effect until hedge mode exists
topUpIsolatedOnlyMargin	targets a leverage, as a float string, not an amount
clearinghouseState	pass dex for HIP-3; marginSummary, crossMarginSummary, crossMaintenanceMarginUsed, withdrawable; per position leverage {type, value, rawUsd}, marginUsed, maxLeverage, liquidationPx
insertMarginTable, setMarginTableIds, setMarginModes	HIP-3 deployer actions; table ids must be non-zero (operating a perp dex)

Under unified account or portfolio margin, per-dex states are not meaningful: read spot balances.

Fields and defaults to double-check

• onlyIsolated is deprecated: true for both strictIsolated and noCross, which differ on removing margin. Read marginMode.
• HIP-3 cross margin is mostly off. On 28 September 2026, 116 of 138 non-delisted assets on three HIP-3 dexes were noCross; the other 22 had no marginMode set. An earlier read of listed rate and volatility perps (a US 10-year Treasury yield perp, volatility indices, a dominance ratio) found cross off on every one.
• The discontinued DEX abstraction mode makes HIP-3 cross margin behave unintuitively, per the docs: move such accounts to a current mode.
• The docs’ tier lists are slightly stale: in the same read every listed asset sat on the matching table, but MKR and TON were delisted.
• Unified account and portfolio margin allow 50,000 user actions a day; standard mode has no such limit.
• The sign convention for removing margin with updateIsolatedMargin is undocumented: probe it on testnet first.

For what happens below maintenance margin, see Leverage and liquidation; portfolio margin has its own rules. The risk playbook turns margin rules into pre-trade checks.