Venues / Hyperliquid

Is Hyperliquid legit?

The checklist

Custody: who holds your money

Users trade from their own wallet against onchain order books on the Hyperliquid L1. Deposits from other chains are bridged; some (BTC, ETH, SOL and others) are handled by Unit Protocol per the support docs.

Who backs Hyperliquid

• Self-funded (Hyperliquid Labs states it has not taken any external capital) source

Incidents

• 2025-03-26: JELLY market manipulation and validator delisting. A trader used the thinly traded JELLYJELLY perp to push liquidation losses onto the HLP vault. Validators voted to delist the JELLY perpetual and settled positions at $0.0095; the Hyper Foundation said non-flagged affected users would be compensated. ForkLog reports the platform ended about $700,000 in surplus. source
• 2025-11-12: POPCAT manipulation; deposits and withdrawals paused. An onchain analyst alleged a trader built a roughly $30M POPCAT long across 19 wallets, pulled the buy wall, and left HLP to absorb the liquidation for an estimated $4.9M loss. Deposits and withdrawals were shown as paused for maintenance the same day. source
• 2025-07-29: API outage of about 37 minutes. API servers were overwhelmed by a spike in traffic between 14:10 and 14:47 UTC, delaying orders reaching the nodes. Hyperliquid said it was not a hack or exploit. source
• 2026-05-28: Faulty oracle data crashes Ventuals SPACEX perp by about 45%. On Ventuals, a third-party market deployed on Hyperliquid, the pre-IPO SpaceX perp fell from about $2,277 to about $1,254 within minutes after an offchain data provider returned incorrect prices, then partly recovered. The Block reports 484 users liquidated; Ventuals said it would compensate affected traders. This was the market deployer's feed, not Hyperliquid's core markets. source

Real downsides

• The Terms bar US and Ontario residents and prohibit VPN use to get around that.
• The HLP vault has absorbed manipulation losses, including a reported $4.9M on POPCAT in November 2025.
• Validators delisted the JELLY market and settled it at a fixed price in March 2025, an intervention critics questioned.
• Third-party front-ends using builder codes can add up to 0.1% per perps trade on top of protocol fees.

Can you use it where you live?

Terms of Use (last updated 2026-06-15) section 1.6: the Interface is not available to 'Restricted Persons', defined as persons or entities residing, located, incorporated or registered in the United States or Ontario, Canada, or in sanctioned jurisdictions, plus citizens of sanctioned territories. Section 3.1.5 prohibits using VPNs or proxies to conceal location. Section 1.7 separately blocks outcome markets for 'Excluded Persons' in jurisdictions the company designates from time to time. The UK and EU are not named as restricted in the Terms; local rules may still apply. Status 'unknown' for unnamed regions means the Terms do not list them as restricted; the venue does not affirmatively confirm availability there. (source)

We report what the venue's own terms say. Don't use a VPN to get around restrictions; venues can freeze accounts that do.

How to use Hyperliquid without getting scammed

• Only open app.hyperliquid.xyz — fake lookalike sites and "support" DMs are the most common way people lose funds on any trading venue.
• Never share a seed phrase or private key. No real support agent will ask for one.
• A referral code only changes your fee and who gets a share of it. It never needs your keys.
• Treat every new memecoin as able to go to zero. A legit venue does not make the coins on it safe.

Comparing options? See the full Hyperliquid sheet or Lighter, Paradex, Ostium.