A contract that never expires, tethered to spot by funding. Here is what that means for what you pay, what you can lose, and how far price can move before the venue closes you out.
A perpetual future — a "perp" — is a contract that tracks an asset's price without ever expiring. A traditional future settles on a date; a perp just keeps going. That is convenient, and it creates one problem the whole design exists to solve: with no expiry to force convergence, what stops the contract drifting away from spot?
The answer is funding.
At regular intervals, one side pays the other:
Funding is not a fee the exchange takes. It moves between traders. But it is a real cost of holding a position, and on a crowded trade it can dwarf the trading fee — which is why a position's funding is shown alongside its unrealised PnL in the trade dock rather than buried. For real numbers, the Hyperliquid funding report for September 2026 covers every market's month, including an hour in which SOPH shorts paid 1.83% of their position's value. How much is riding on each market at once is its open interest, ranked live for every Hyperliquid perpetual.
Leverage lets you control a position larger than your margin. Hyperliquid lists around 180 perp markets, with maximum leverage set per market by how liquid it is (the full list, by asset):
| Market | Max leverage |
|---|---|
| BTC | 40× |
| ETH | 25× |
| SOL | 20× |
| DOGE | 10× |
Across all markets the cap ranges from 3× to 40×. The thing worth internalising: leverage does not change your profit per dollar moved — a 1% move on $10,000 of exposure is $100 whether you posted $10,000 or $250. What leverage changes is how far the price can move before you are liquidated. It buys exposure by selling you a shorter runway.
If your margin can no longer support your position, the venue closes it. That is liquidation, and it is a realised loss, not a pause.
Roughly: at 40× a ~2.5% move against you wipes out the margin behind the position; at 10× it takes ~10%. The exact level depends on maintenance margin and your other positions, which is why the order ticket shows an estimated liquidation price before you submit, and the chart draws the live one as a line once you are in.
Two habits that matter more than any indicator: set a stop so your exit is a decision rather than an accident, and size so that a normal day cannot liquidate you.
Isolated is the more forgiving default while you are learning the instrument, precisely because it caps the blast radius.
| Spot | Perpetual | |
|---|---|---|
| You own | The asset | A contract tracking its price |
| Can go short | Not without borrowing | Yes, natively |
| Leverage | None by default | Up to the market's cap |
| Ongoing cost | None | Funding, paid or received |
| Can be liquidated | No | Yes |