Hyperliquid perps, vaults and HYPE staking: what to record and why
Hourly funding, cross and isolated margin, liquidations, HLP and user vaults, and HYPE staking, with the evidence your books need.
If your entity trades perpetuals on Hyperliquid, deposits into its vaults or stakes HYPE, almost none of the accounting events show up as wallet transfers. Funding, realised profit and loss, fees and liquidations all happen inside Hyperliquid's own ledger, so your records have to come from the exchange's data, not from watching your wallet.
Getting in: USDC deposits
Hyperliquid's onboarding guide lists USDC (with ETH for gas) on Arbitrum as the standard collateral route, and says USDC sent from several networks arrives as USDC on HyperCore, the exchange layer [8]. USDC deposited this way can back cross margin positions [2]. Moving USDC from your wallet into Hyperliquid is not an expense and not a trade. Most teams treat it as a transfer of an asset they still control, into a margin or exchange-collateral account.
Margin: cross, isolated and strict isolated
Cross margin is the default and shares collateral across all cross positions; isolated margin ring-fences collateral to one position, and some assets are strict isolated, where margin cannot be removed [2]. The margin to open a position is size times mark price divided by leverage [2]. You can withdraw unrealised profit only if remaining margin stays at least 10% of total open notional and meets the initial requirement [2]. That rule matters for cash planning: collateral posted is yours, but not all of it is free.
Funding: paid every hour
The funding rate formula is set on an 8-hour basis, but Hyperliquid pays it every hour at one-eighth of the computed rate [1]. When the perp trades above the oracle price, longs pay shorts, and the reverse when it trades below [1]. Funding is peer-to-peer with no fee taken, it is capped at 4% per hour, and the payment uses the oracle price rather than the mark price to compute notional [1]. Funding is credited to or debited from your balance directly [1], so a position held for a month can produce over 700 separate funding entries.
- Position: long 10 BTC; oracle price 60,000 USDC
- Hourly rate: 0.00125% (the baseline interest component alone, with zero premium)
- Payment = 10 x 60,000 x 0.0000125 = 7.50 USDC, paid by the long to shorts
- Over 24 hours at the same rate: 180.00 USDC
Profit and loss and liquidations
Hyperliquid's own docs say entry price, unrealised PnL and closed PnL are front-end conveniences; the underlying accounting is margin and trades [4]. Closed PnL on a closing trade includes the fee [4]. Reconcile from fills and ledger updates, and split fees out yourself rather than booking closed PnL as one number.
When equity falls below maintenance margin, the exchange first sends market orders to the book, and any collateral left after a successful close stays with the trader [3]. Below two-thirds of maintenance margin, a backstop liquidation passes positions and margin to the liquidator vault, part of HLP, and the maintenance margin is not returned [3]. For a cross account with no isolated positions, that leaves zero equity [3]. Record a liquidation as its parts: realised loss on the position, fees, and any forfeited margin.
| Account | Debit | Credit |
|---|---|---|
| Deposit USDC as margin | ||
| Exchange margin — Hyperliquid (USDC) | 100,000.00 | |
| Stablecoins — USDC (wallet) | 100,000.00 | |
| Hourly funding paid on a long | ||
| Funding expense | 7.50 | |
| Exchange margin — Hyperliquid (USDC) | 7.50 | |
| Close the position at a gain Price gain 2,000.00; trading fee 30.00 | ||
| Exchange margin — Hyperliquid (USDC) | 1,970.00 | |
| Trading fees expense | 30.00 | |
| Realised gain — derivatives | 2,000.00 | |
Vaults: HLP and user vaults
Depositors in a vault share its profits and losses pro rata [5]. User vaults pay the vault leader 10% of profit; Hyperliquid's worked example shows a depositor whose 100 USDC share grows to 200 USDC withdrawing 190 USDC [5]. HLP has a 4-day lock-up after your latest deposit and user vaults have 1 day [5]. Hyperliquid now labels these HyperCore vaults as legacy, so check whether a vault you use is one of these or a newer tokenised vault. A vault deposit is an investment in a strategy, not cash; changes in your share's value are gains or losses, not interest.
HYPE staking
HYPE is staked to validators inside HyperCore. Delegations lock for 1 day, and moving HYPE from staking back to spot takes a 7-day unstaking queue [6]. Rewards accrue every minute, are distributed daily and are automatically restaked, so they compound without any claim [6]. Hyperliquid says there is currently no automatic slashing [6]. Because rewards are auto-compounded, you need the reward history to measure income at receipt.
Evidence, not inference
Hyperliquid's info API documents endpoints for a user's fills, with fee and closed PnL fields, for vault deposits and for staking rewards; its perpetuals section adds funding history and a separate stream of non-funding ledger updates covering deposits, transfers and withdrawals [7]. Use those records as your source. A wallet-only view shows the deposit and the withdrawal and nothing in between.
Tax treatment is less settled. As of October 2026 we did not find IRS or HMRC guidance written specifically for on-chain perpetuals, funding or exchange vaults, so classification depends on general rules and your facts. Agree the approach with your tax adviser before filing.
What to do
- Pull fills, funding history and ledger updates from the info API for every address and subaccount, every period.
- Book collateral as an asset on an exchange-margin line, and keep funding, fees and realised PnL on separate accounts.
- Treat backstop liquidations as three parts: position loss, fees and forfeited margin.
- Value vault shares from the vault's reported equity at period end, and note lock-up periods in liquidity reporting.
- Record HYPE staking rewards from the daily distribution history, and flag the 7-day unstaking queue as a restriction.
Sources
- Funding (Hyperliquid Docs)
- Margining (Hyperliquid Docs)
- Liquidations (Hyperliquid Docs)
- Entry price and pnl (Hyperliquid Docs)
- For vault depositors (legacy) (Hyperliquid Docs)
- Staking (Hyperliquid Docs)
- Info endpoint (Hyperliquid Docs)
- How to start trading (Hyperliquid Docs)
General information for finance teams, current as of publication. Not legal, tax or accounting advice.