The Hyperliquid beginner course: ten lessons, in order

How this works

Ten lessons, in the order the steps actually need doing. Each one is a guide on this site, and each says what you should be able to do when you finish it.

Nothing to sign up for. The only thing worth doing in order is the first five, because each depends on the one before.

Part one: before you deposit anything

Lesson 1 — What Hyperliquid actually is. An on-chain order book with its own network, rather than a pool-based swap venue or a company holding your money. Read it.

Afterwards you can explain why “on-chain order book” is different from both a centralised exchange and a typical DEX.

Lesson 2 — Whether you may use it, and what no-KYC means. Restricted jurisdictions are a real constraint, and no identity check is not the same as anonymity. Availability and the KYC question.

Afterwards you can say whether the exchange is available where you live, and why your trading will be public rather than private.

Lesson 3 — Choosing and securing a wallet. The account is a wallet address, so this is the security decision and everything after it depends on getting it right. The options.

Afterwards you have a wallet with its recovery phrase written on paper, and you understand why that phrase is the whole account.

Lesson 4 — Opening the account. Four prompts, not one, and knowing that in advance stops the third feeling wrong. Each prompt, with a screenshot.

Afterwards you have a connected account and you know what each signature authorised — and, importantly, that none of them can move your funds.

Part two: money in, first position

Lesson 5 — Funding the account. The route, the fee, and the one mistake with no recovery. The deposit guide.

Afterwards you have a USDC balance, and you sent a small test amount first.

Lesson 6 — Your first trade, and the arithmetic behind it. This is the most important lesson in the course. Size comes from the distance to your stop, not from what your balance allows. The five decisions.

Afterwards you can work out a position size from an acceptable loss and a stop distance, and you have noticed that the answer is smaller than you expected.

Lesson 7 — Order types and what each flag does. Limit versus market, post-only, reduce-only, and the trigger orders. The full list.

Afterwards you attach reduce-only to every exit without thinking about it.

Part three: the things that actually cost you money

Lesson 8 — Leverage, margin and liquidation. Leverage is not the size of the bet; it is the distance to the floor. Leverage, isolated versus cross and how liquidation works.

Afterwards you can say where your liquidation price is and why, before you open a position rather than after.

Lesson 9 — What a position really costs. Three separate costs, and the one on the fee schedule is usually the smallest. Fees, funding and slippage.

Afterwards you can explain why a cheap fee on a thin market is more expensive than a higher fee on a deep one.

Lesson 10 — Getting out. Closing properly, and proving the exit works before you scale up. Closing a position and withdrawing.

Afterwards you have withdrawn something successfully, which is the cheapest test you will ever run and the one nobody does until they need it to work.

The four things this course is really trying to teach

Everything above collapses into these, and they are what separate an account that survives from one that does not.

Size from your stop, not your balance. Lesson 6, and it is the whole game.

Leverage is distance to liquidation, not size of position. Lesson 8. High leverage does not increase profit per dollar of price movement; it removes the room you have to be wrong.

The exchange fee is the smallest of your costs. Lesson 9. Spread and funding are larger, and neither appears on a fee schedule.

Prove the exit before you scale the entry. Lesson 10. A withdrawal that works is worth more than any amount of reading.

After the course

Stops and targets in more depth, then shorting once funding makes sense to you, then the execution tools — TWAP and scale orders — when your size starts to move a book.

If you would rather have the whole thing as a single list to tick off, the beginner checklist is the same ground in twelve lines.