What are perpetuals on OpenSea?

OpenSea connects users to Hyperliquid perpetual futures markets on OpenSea token pages. Perpetual futures are commonly referred to as “perps.” Perps are available for select tokens and other assets that Hyperliquid supports.

Perps are derivative smart contracts that track the price of a cryptocurrency, and unlike traditional futures, they don’t expire; your position remains open until you close it or are liquidated. When you trade perps, you're speculating on whether the price of that cryptocurrency will go up or down, without owning the underlying asset.

Perps trading is risky, and the risk increases as the leverage you set for your position increases.

When you place a perp order using OpenSea’s interface, the action is confirmed in your wallet, and the resulting transaction is executed through the Hyperliquid protocol.

To trade a perp, you open a long or a short position:

The value of your position (PnL) changes according to the underlying current price of the cryptocurrency, multiplied by your leverage. Opening a position with leverage is putting up margin that represents only a portion of your total position size. Leverage increases your exposure to price movements, meaning your gains and losses compound more quickly than they would without leverage.

For example, you are “long” ETH with 5x leverage, and ETH’s price moves +2%, your position moves +10% (5 x 2%). If you are “long” ETH and its price moves -2%, your position moves -10%. Higher leverage increases your potential gains if the currency’s price moves in the direction you expect, but also compounds your risk if the price moves against you; the higher your leverage, the closer your liquidation price is to your entry price (the price at which you opened the position). This means that even small price movements can trigger liquidation.

Your margin is your collateral for your position. You’ll need a sufficient initial margin to open your position, and a maintenance margin to keep it open. The required amount of maintenance margin changes as the price of the underlying token changes. As long as you maintain the amount of margin required to avoid liquidation, your position remains open. You can hold a position for as long as you want.

Perpetuals traded via OpenSea use isolated margin, meaning each position has its own dedicated collateral. If one position is liquidated, your other positions and remaining wallet balance are not affected.

Perps are intended to track the market price of the underlying asset. To maintain this, when a perp price is greater than the asset's market price, the long position holders pay the short position holders. If a perp price is less than the spot price, a payment is made in the other direction, from short holders to long holders. These payments are determined by the funding rate, and they are exchanged every hour.

Liquidation is the automatic closing of your position when your unrealized losses become too large relative to your margin, as determined by Hyperliquid’s liquidation mechanics. When liquidation occurs, your margin is taken by the Hyperliquid protocol to cover your losses.

For each open position, a liquidation price is displayed. This is the price at which your position will be liquidated, based on the current amount of margin you’ve provided.

As leverage increases, smaller price movements against you can trigger liquidation. To reduce liquidation risk, you can:

Higher leverage increases liquidation risk because it creates a larger position relative to your margin. For example, with a $10 margin at 10x leverage, you control a $100 position. A 10% adverse price move produces a ~$10 loss, which is enough to trigger liquidation once maintenance margin is breached. A $10 margin with no leverage means that a 10% adverse price move produces only a $1 loss, leaving most of your margin intact.

To trade perps, Hyperliquid requires the use of an API or “agent” wallet that’s authorized by you to programmatically perform actions on your behalf, like placing a perps order and closing a position. You will see a prompt to approve an API wallet on OpenSea. This approval expires after 7 days, and will need to be re-approved to take further actions using your Hyperliquid funds.

Importantly, the API wallet is authorized only to manage the funds you’ve already placed on Hyperliquid. It cannot add more funds to Hyperliquid or withdraw funds from Hyperliquid. To take those actions, you must sign an order in your connected wallet. You should never send funds to the API wallet address, because they may not be recoverable.

OpenSea never takes custody of your Hyperliquid funds or assets.

When you trade perps, Hyperliquid charges trading fees. For positions opened through OpenSea, OpenSea receives a builder fee that’s 0.01% of the position size.

OpenSea's perpetual pages display data about current market conditions. The charting interface is powered by TradingView, and chart data is supplied by Hyperliquid. You can customize the chart style (e.g., switching from bar chart to candlesticks) and timeframe.

You'll see the following stats:

On wider screens (web), you'll also see:

Below the chart, you can switch between these tabs:

You can add perpetual markets to your watchlist for quick access by clicking/tapping the watchlist (star) icon on the perpetual page header. Watchlisted markets make it easy to return to the markets you're tracking.