Perpetual futures
Perpetual futures are derivative contracts that track an asset's price without an expiry date, letting you take long or short positions with leverage. You trade a contract, not the token itself, and you can lose your margin quickly.
What a perp is
Ethereum.org notes that decentralized exchanges can offer perpetuals alongside limit orders and margin trading. Hyperliquid's documentation shows what a venue lists: more than 100 perpetual assets, each with its own maximum leverage between 3x and 40x. You post margin as collateral and the position's profit or loss is settled against it.
Funding and margin
Because there is no expiry, perps use a recurring funding payment between longs and shorts to keep contract prices near the underlying price. Our funding rate explainer covers it. Margin rules matter just as much. Hyperliquid says maintenance margin is half the initial margin at an asset's maximum leverage, so higher-leverage markets have thinner buffers before liquidation.
Before you open one
Check the venue's fees, the maximum leverage on the specific market, how the mark price is set, and what happens in a liquidation. Perps are volatile and leverage works in both directions. This explainer describes mechanics only and is not trading advice. Some jurisdictions restrict access to these products, so check the rules that apply to you.
Common mistakes
Opening a position without knowing the liquidation price is the most common error. Hyperliquid and other venues show it before you confirm, so read it. Another is ignoring fees and funding payments, which add up on positions held for a long time.
Also avoid using a perpetuals venue before you understand how its mark price is calculated. Hyperliquid states that liquidations use a mark price that combines external exchange prices with its own book, which is why your liquidation can differ from the last traded price on the chart.
Where this shows up
- Hyperliquid — Perps traders outside the US who want onchain order-book trading from their own wallet, with fees that drop by volume and HYPE staking.
- dYdX — Non-US, non-UK, non-Canadian traders who want an open-source, order-book perps venue with volume-tiered fees.
- GMX — Traders who want oracle-priced perps on Arbitrum or Avalanche, including gold, oil and US index markets, without an order book.
- Drift — Former Drift users and Solana perps traders evaluating Velocity, the post-exploit relaunch of Drift.
- Jupiter Perps — Solana users already on Jupiter who want high-leverage SOL, ETH or BTC perps against the JLP pool.
- Lighter — Non-US, non-UK retail perps traders who want zero trading fees and can accept slower taker execution than paid accounts.
Sources
Last checked . Fees and terms change often; the venue's own page wins if it disagrees with ours.
- Decentralized finance (DeFi) (ethereum.org) — checked 2026-10-17
- Perpetual assets (Hyperliquid docs) — checked 2026-10-17