Guides · Guide 11
Hyperliquid vaults: copy trading on-chain, explained
A vault is one account, many depositors, every position on-chain. It removes the per-order minimum problem and adds a lock-up and a protocol risk.
- Leader profit share
- 10%
- Withdrawal lock-up
- 1 day
- Leader's minimum stake
- 5% of vault
What a vault is
On Hyperliquid, a vault is a trading account that many people fund and one leader trades. Depositors send USDC into the vault and receive a proportional share of its equity. The leader places orders from the vault's balance; profits and losses accrue to every depositor pro rata. There is no per-copier mirroring: the vault is a single book, and your share of it moves with the whole.
Because it is one account on a public chain, every position, order and fill is visible to anyone who looks. That is a stronger form of transparency than any leaderboard, and it is the reason a vault suits a strategy that publishes its record anyway.
The published terms
| Term | User vaults |
|---|---|
| Leader's profit share | 10% of depositors' profit |
| Withdrawal lock-up | 1 day after each deposit |
| Leader's stake | The leader must keep at least 5% of the vault at all times |
| Leader's access to funds | The leader trades the balance but cannot withdraw depositors' funds |
| Withdrawals | Proportional: a withdrawal takes a slice of every open position, so it does not change the vault's liquidation prices |
From Hyperliquid's vault documentation, which the project has marked as legacy pending a revised vault system. Terms may change; the vault page shows the terms in force.
Vault versus Binance copy trading
- No per-order minimum for depositors. Because the vault trades as one account, small deposits do not skip orders. On Binance, a $100 copy of our book could not place 68% of its orders; in a vault the same $100 is simply a share of the pool. This is the single biggest practical difference for small allocations.
- Custody. Binance holds your account; a vault holds pooled funds in a contract. Neither is your own wallet.
- Exit. Binance: stop copying at any time. Vault: withdraw after the 1-day lock-up.
- Leader alignment. A vault leader must hold at least 5% of the vault; a Binance lead trader must fund a lead portfolio but its size relative to copiers is not constrained.
- Transparency. Binance shows the lead portfolio's positions and history on its page; a vault shows everything on-chain, verifiable without trusting the venue.
The risks specific to vaults
- Protocol risk. The vault is a smart contract on an exchange chain. A bug or an exploit affects every depositor.
- Shared liquidation. The vault has one liquidation price per position. A leader who runs high exposure exposes every depositor to it. Ask for the vault's exposure history; ours averaged 0.30× equity in backtest.
- Thin markets. Hyperliquid's order books are thinner than Binance's on most assets. A strategy sized for Binance liquidity may move the market on Hyperliquid; our book caps each position at a small fraction of daily volume for this reason.
Our vault
The Swarm strategy runs on Hyperliquid as a paper account at live prices, tracked on the track record. A vault opens once the live record is long enough to judge; its terms will be published on the Access page before it does.