How to stake HYPE on Hyperliquid

Quick steps

1. Get HYPE into your spot balance. Buy HYPE on Hyperliquid spot, or transfer it in. If your HYPE is on HyperEVM, move it to HyperCore first.
2. Transfer to your staking balance. On the staking page, move HYPE from spot to staking. This transfer is instant.
3. Choose a validator. Pick a validator and delegate. Compare its commission, uptime and whether it has ever been jailed.
4. To exit, reverse the steps. Undelegate (after the 1-day lockup), then transfer from staking to spot. That transfer sits in a 7-day queue.

What staking HYPE does

Hyperliquid's L1 is secured by proof of stake. Validators run the HyperBFT consensus and must have HYPE delegated to them; the active set is the top validators by stake. When you stake (Hyperliquid's docs use "stake" and "delegate" interchangeably), you add your HYPE to a validator's weight. In return you earn a share of staking rewards, minus the validator's commission.

Staking HYPE has a second, practical benefit for traders: it unlocks trading fee discounts from 5% (more than 10 HYPE) up to 40% (more than 500,000 HYPE).

Key numbers

How rewards are calculated

The reward rate is inversely proportional to the square root of the total HYPE staked: the more HYPE is staked network-wide, the lower the rate per token. The docs give an example of roughly 2.37% a year when 400M HYPE is staked. The actual rate you see depends on the current total stake and your validator's commission, so check the staking page rather than relying on a fixed APR. Rewards are paid in HYPE, so their dollar value moves with the token price.

Rewards come from the future emissions allocation set aside at the token launch (see HYPE token).

Choosing a validator

• Commission: the cut a validator keeps from your rewards. Validators cannot raise their commission unless the new rate is 1% or less, which protects delegators from sudden hikes.
• Jailing: a validator that performs poorly can be jailed. A jailed validator stops taking part in consensus and earns no rewards for its delegators until it is unjailed. Jailing is not slashing: your HYPE is not taken.
• Decentralisation: spreading stake away from the largest validators helps the network. Critics have pointed out that a large share of stake sits with a few validators, including Foundation-run ones. See is Hyperliquid safe.

The validator set changes in epochs of about 90 minutes (100,000 rounds), so rankings move during the day.

Liquid staking alternatives

Third-party protocols on HyperEVM offer liquid staking: you deposit HYPE and receive a token representing your stake, which you can use elsewhere without waiting for the 7-day queue (you sell it instead). These add smart-contract risk and the token can trade below the value of the HYPE behind it. Read each protocol's own documentation and audits before using one. See HyperEVM.

Risks of staking HYPE

• Price risk: rewards of a few percent a year can be wiped out by a fall in HYPE's price.
• Liquidity risk: it takes at least 1 day to undelegate plus 7 days to get HYPE back to spot. You cannot use staked HYPE as trading margin.
• Protocol risk: automatic slashing is not live today, but the rules are set by the protocol and could change.
• Phishing: only stake through app.hyperliquid.xyz or a wallet you trust. There is no such thing as a "staking airdrop" that needs your seed phrase.

Frequently asked questions