Perps on a launchpad: pump.fun x Hyperliquid, liquidation, fees and risks

What pump.fun launched on 17 October[2][1]

Perps, short for perpetual futures, are contracts with no expiry date that track an asset's price. You do not buy BTC or a token. You put up a deposit, the margin, and open a long or short position that gains or loses a multiple of the price move.

On pump.fun you can open perps on BTC with up to 40x leverage and on ETH with up to 25x. According to The Cryptonomist (17 October 2026), Hyperliquid handles order execution, margin balances, funding payments, liquidations and settlement using its existing order books. pump.fun supplies the interface, forwards signed orders to Hyperliquid and is not the counterparty.

Users in the US, Ontario and other restricted jurisdictions are blocked. The source does not give the full list of countries, so check pump.fun's terms for your country before you deposit.

Margin, leverage and notional value[3]

According to Hyperliquid's docs, the margin required to open a position is position size times mark price divided by leverage. A US$100 deposit at 10x gives a position with US$1,000 of notional value, and at 40x US$4,000. Profit and loss are counted on notional value: at 40x a 1% price move is 40% of the deposit.

The default mode is cross margin: all cross positions share one deposit. Isolated margin locks the deposit into one position, and its liquidation does not touch other positions or the rest of the account.

You choose leverage when you open a position and can raise it without closing the position. Hyperliquid only checks it at opening, so watching the position afterwards is up to you.

How liquidation works on Hyperliquid[4]

Liquidation starts when account equity falls below the maintenance margin. Hyperliquid measures this against the mark price, which combines prices from external exchanges with the state of its own order book. The maintenance margin is half the initial margin at maximum leverage: from 1.25% for assets with up to 40x leverage to 16.7% for assets with up to 3x.

The system first tries to close the whole position with market orders on the order book. If the maintenance margin requirement is met afterwards, the rest of the deposit stays with the trader. If equity falls below 2/3 of the maintenance margin without a successful liquidation on the book, the liquidator vault takes over the position and the maintenance margin is not returned to the user.

In cross mode all cross positions and the whole cross deposit go to the liquidator. A trader with no isolated positions ends up with zero account equity. In isolated mode you lose only that one position's deposit.

Fees: builder fee, bridge, Hyperliquid and funding[1][2][6][5]

The 0.45% platform fee of the pump.fun app does not apply to perps. Instead pump.fun charges a builder fee of up to 0.10% of the notional value of every order that opens, increases or closes a position, plus up to 0.25% on each transfer to and from Hyperliquid through the bridge in the app. The bridge operator charges its own fee separately.

Hyperliquid charges its own fees: at the base tier 0.045% for taker orders and 0.015% for maker orders. A one-time Hyperliquid account activation fee comes out of your first deposit.

Funding on Hyperliquid is paid every hour and goes directly between traders, with no fee taken. When perps trade above the spot price, longs pay shorts, and when below, the reverse. The interest component is 0.01% per 8 hours, and funding as a whole is capped at 4% per hour.

A worked example: US$100 on BTC at 10x and 40x[4][1][6][5]

The figures are hypothetical. BTC is at US$100,000, the deposit is US$100 in isolated mode, the position is long, entry and exit are market orders, and every pump.fun fee is at its maximum. We compute the liquidation price with the formula from Hyperliquid's docs, a 1.25% maintenance margin and no fees, which would move it even closer.

Why 40x on BTC is not a memecoin[4][5][1][7]

When you buy a memecoin, you hold a token. If the price halves, you still hold it and can wait. The token can lose all its value, but nobody closes it for you. A perps position has a liquidation price: at 40x a BTC move of about 1.27% against you is enough and the position is gone, even if the price comes back a minute later.

The second difference is the cost of time. A memecoin in your wallet costs nothing while you hold it. A perps position pays or receives funding every hour. The third is what fees are charged on: the builder fee is charged on the whole position, so the higher the leverage, the more the interface earns from the same deposit.

This is a wider trend. According to Memeburn (17 October 2026), perps on Robinhood Chain did US$7.33B of volume over 7 days against US$6.49B on spot DEXs, with almost all of it on Lighter and Arcus. Memecoin launchpads and the networks that host them are steering the same audience towards leverage.

Risks and a checklist before your first position[1][3][5]

If you still want to try, start with an amount you can afford to lose in full and with low leverage. Remember that the bridge and the Hyperliquid account are extra steps with their own fees and their own technical risk.

• Choose isolated margin so a liquidation does not take the rest of the account
• Before opening, read the liquidation price and work out how far the price has to move in percent
• Count fees on notional value, not on the deposit: entry, exit and the bridge both ways
• Check the current funding and whether your side of the position pays or receives it
• Do not raise leverage mid-position to win back a loss
• Check that pump.fun's terms allow users from your country