What a perpetual future is
A 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.
A perp lets you go long or short an asset’s price with a USDC deposit, and hold it as long as your margin lasts. It never expires; hourly funding keeps it near the asset price instead.
A 10x long, worked
Section titled “A 10x long, worked”Say you buy 10 contracts at 1,000 USDC with 10x leverage. A contract is 1 unit of the asset, so you hold 10,000 USDC of exposure on 1,000 USDC of margin.
- Price rises 5 per cent → you gain 500 USDC, half your margin.
- Price falls 5 per cent → you lose 500 USDC. It’s linear: 10 USDC per point.
- Funding comes on top of trading fees: the interest component alone is 0.00125 per cent of 10,000 = 0.125 USDC an hour, 10.95 per cent a year (0.00125% x 24 x 365), paid to shorts.
Margin, leverage and two prices
Section titled “Margin, leverage and two prices”- Margin is the USDC behind a position; leverage is position value over margin. When losses reach the maintenance margin floor, the position is liquidated (margin, liquidation).
- The index, which Hyperliquid calls the oracle price, is a weighted median of spot prices on major exchanges, published by the validators (oracles).
- The mark price, a robust blend of the oracle price, Hyperliquid’s own book and other exchanges’ perp prices, runs PnL and liquidation, not the last trade.
Funding pulls the perp to its index
Section titled “Funding pulls the perp to its index”Each hour, the average premium (how far the perp trades from the oracle price) sets the rate. Positive, longs pay shorts; negative, shorts pay longs. Each position pays or receives size x oracle price x rate, with no protocol fee.
Above the oracle price a long costs money to hold, so sellers collecting funding push the price back; below it, the reverse. With a small premium the rate is just the fixed interest component, hence “or near” in the figure (funding).
Funding is a thermostat set to the oracle price, except that it moves cash, not the price (the gap closes only if traders respond), never switches off and is capped at 4 per cent an hour.
Above the oracle price a long costs money to hold, so sellers collecting funding push the price back; below it, the reverse. With a small premium the rate is just the fixed interest component, hence “or near” in the figure (funding).
Funding is a thermostat set to the oracle price, except that it moves cash, not the price (the gap closes only if traders respond), never switches off and is capped at 4 per cent an hour.
The numbers
Section titled “The numbers”| Parameter | Value |
|---|---|
| Expiry | None |
| Contract size | 1 unit of the underlying asset |
| Collateral, validator-operated perps | USDC |
| Index | Oracle price, published by validators about every 3 s |
| Funding interval | 1 hour |
| Funding payment | position size x oracle price x funding rate |
| Interest component | 0.01% per 8 hours (0.00125% per hour), longs pay shorts |
| Funding cap | 4% per hour, the same for every asset |
| Maximum leverage, validator-operated perps | 3x to 40x, by asset |
| Maintenance margin | half the initial margin at maximum leverage |
Perps in the API
Section titled “Perps in the API”A perp’s id is its position in the meta universe (asset ids). One metaAndAssetCtxs request returns every market’s markPx, oraclePx and current hourly funding (your first request).
Quanto pricing, hyperps and HIP-3
Section titled “Quanto pricing, hyperps and HIP-3”- Most perps are quanto: the oracle price is in USDT, margin and PnL in USDC, with no conversion. PURR-USD and HYPE-USD use USDC oracle prices, Hyperliquid spot being their most liquid source.
- A hyperp tracks a moving average of its own price until the asset trades spot elsewhere (hyperps).
- On a HIP-3 dex the deployer defines the oracle and can scale funding per asset (HIP-3).
For the funding formula, see Funding; to open a position, see Your first trade.