What is HIP-1, Hyperliquid's native token standard?
Verified against Hyperliquid docs: HIP-1 native token standard and Hyperliquid docs: HIP-2 Hyperliquidity · by Hyperliquid Academy
The idea in one line
Most token standards define a balance and leave the trading to someone else. HIP-1 defines the token and its market in the same object.
A token deployed under HIP-1 is a capped-supply fungible token on HyperCore, and it arrives with a native spot order book quoted in USDC already attached. No pool to create, no liquidity to bootstrap by hand, no separate venue.
That is the whole design idea, and everything below follows from it.
The auction, which is the interesting part
There is no listing application, no committee and no approval. The right to deploy a ticker is bought at auction.
| Parameter | Value |
|---|---|
| Auction duration | 31 hours |
| Starting price | Twice the last winning price, or 500 HYPE if the last auction did not complete |
| Decay | Falls linearly to a floor of 500 HYPE |
| Paid in | HYPE |
It is a Dutch auction: the price starts high and falls until someone accepts it. Whoever takes it first gets the ticker, and their price sets the starting point for the next auction.
What that mechanism is actually doing
Two things at once. It prices scarcity, because tickers are finite and a free-for-all would exhaust the good ones instantly. And it removes discretion: nobody decides what deserves to be listed, so nobody can be lobbied.
The cost is the obvious one. A listing means someone paid, and nothing more. On an exchange with a listing committee you can at least argue that somebody looked. Here, the filter is price. Read a new token as unvetted by default, because it is.
What a deployer has to specify
Three parameters define the token, and two of them constrain each other.
maxSupply — the initial and maximum supply. It can fall through fees and burns, never rise.
weiDecimals — how the raw integer maps to a human-readable unit.
szDecimals — the smallest tradable increment on the spot book. The standard requires szDecimals + 5 <= weiDecimals, so there is always room between the trading increment and the underlying precision.
The lot size on the book follows from those: 10 to the power of weiDecimals - szDecimals. Which is a detail that only matters when you are wondering why a token will not let you buy an arbitrary quantity.
HIP-2, and why the book is not empty on day one
A new order book with nobody quoting it is not a market. HIP-2 answers that.
It is an automated liquidity strategy that a deployer can initialise alongside the token, and its distinguishing property is that no operator runs it. The strategy logic is secured by the same consensus that runs the order book itself.
Mechanically it keeps orders spaced at 0.3% intervals across a range, rebalances filled tranches to the other side, and updates on every block at least three seconds after the last update. The effect is a 0.3% spread that is there continuously, without anyone choosing to provide it.
Ordinary market makers can quote alongside it in the same book. As real demand arrives, real liquidity displaces the automated kind, which is the intended path.
What this means if you are trading these tokens
The book is real, but it may be mostly automated. A tight spread maintained by HIP-2 is not the same as depth. Check volume and open interest before assuming you can exit in size. Judging depth honestly.
A listing is not a signal. Someone bought a ticker. That is the entire information content.
Supply can fall but never rise. Useful to know, and it says nothing about distribution — who holds the supply is a separate question the standard does not address.
Spot fees apply, and they are higher than perps fees. With the compensation that spot volume counts double toward your tier. How spot trading works here.
Where HIP-1 sits among the others
| Proposal | What it does |
|---|---|
| HIP-1 | Native token standard with a built-in spot order book |
| HIP-2 | Automated, operator-free liquidity for those books |
| HIP-3 | Lets anyone deploy a perpetual market, with their own parameters |
| HIP-4 | Outcome markets |
The pattern across all four is the same: take something an exchange normally decides behind closed doors, and turn it into a permissionless mechanism with a price attached.
Where to go next
Trading on the spot books these tokens create, and what HYPE does — including being the currency every one of these auctions is paid in.
Frequently asked questions
How are tickers allocated?
By Dutch auction, not by application. The auction runs for 31 hours, starting at twice the previous winning price and falling linearly to a floor of 500 HYPE. Whoever accepts a price first takes the ticker.
Can anyone list a token?
Anyone who wins an auction can deploy one. There is no listing committee and no approval step, which means the filter is price rather than judgement — and that a listing is not an endorsement of anything.
What is different about a HIP-1 token?
The order book is part of the standard. A token deployed under HIP-1 has a native spot book against USDC from the moment it exists, rather than needing someone to create a pool and seed it.
What is HIP-2?
An automated liquidity strategy that can be initialised with the token. It maintains orders at 0.3% intervals and updates at least every three seconds, secured by the same consensus that runs the order book, so no operator is running it.
Is HYPE a HIP-1 token?
Yes. It is the native token of the network and it is issued under the same standard as everything else on the spot side, which is a neater arrangement than most chains manage.
Does winning an auction make a token worth anything?
No. It means someone paid for a ticker. The auction is a spam filter and a revenue mechanism, not a quality assessment, and treating a listing as a signal is how people lose money on new tokens.
Sources
- Hyperliquid docs: HIP-1 native token standardhyperliquid.gitbook.io
- Hyperliquid docs: HIP-2 Hyperliquidityhyperliquid.gitbook.io
We link the primary source for every number on this page. If a figure here disagrees with the Hyperliquid documentation, the documentation is right and we want to know.