Funding bot

The Funding bot earns the funding rate that Hyperliquid's perpetual futures pay every hour. For each coin it holds, it buys the coin on Hyperliquid spot and shorts the same amount on its perp. When the price moves, the spot and the short move against each other and mostly cancel out; the short collects the funding while most traders are long, which is usually the case.

It holds up to three coins at a time and moves your capital to the coins whose funding is expected to pay most.

What you need

• A Hyperliquid account on unified balance: spot and perps share one USDC balance, so the spot you buy and the shorts' margin come out of the same balance. On a standard account the same rules earned about half. The builder offers Switch to unified balance: your wallet signs it, no network fee, no funds move. On an account that is on it already, One balance for spot and perps shows on. It changes the whole account: the spot USDC then also backs every cross perp position on it, your own trades and other bots included. Portfolio margin isn't supported (spot buys can borrow there, which the bot's margin rules don't model).
• USDC on the account: at least 300 USDC; three positions of a useful size need more. At most 300,000 USDC per bot: larger capital earns less (each position is capped at 5% of its coin's daily volume, and the funding comes mostly from thin coins), about 8.8–9.5% a year at $300k and 8.5% at $1M in the research against 9–10% up to $100k, and every Prow Funding bot shares those caps.
• Coins you already hold on the account's spot are skipped: the bot only sells what it bought.

How it works

1. It predicts each coin's funding

   From Hyperliquid's settled hourly funding: an average over the last day (Fast reaction) or week (Steady), recent hours weighted more.

2. It decides right after the funding is paid

   Fast reaction: every hour at :05. Steady: once a day at 00:05 UTC. It enters a coin when its funding is expected above 25% a year (Fast) or 20% (Steady) and the expected funding over two weeks pays for the round trip's fees; it leaves after at least 24 hours (Fast) or 3 days (Steady) once the funding is expected below 0. With three coins held, it switches the weakest for a better one only when the gain over two weeks beats three times the cost of switching.

3. It opens both sides together

   Both orders cross the order book at once, within your limits; if one side fills and the other doesn't within 5 seconds, the bot completes or unwinds it. A position is at most 2% of the coin's daily volume when it opens and 5% later, and all Prow Funding bots together stay within 5% of a coin's daily volume. A coin at Hyperliquid's open-interest cap (where new shorts are refused) isn't entered. Nothing opens without a fresh read of your account's margin, and each bot trades at its own minute between :05 and :20, so the bots don't all hit the same spot books at once.

4. It watches the margin every second

   The shorts are cross-margined on the bot's USDC: the smaller of its own bookkeeping and what your account can really back, read from Hyperliquid every few seconds. If the margin they need grows past 1.6 times that USDC (prices rose, or other uses of the account took it), it cuts every position by what the USDC carries; at 1.5 times the shorts' maintenance margin it closes them all, and also when the whole account's margin falls to 1.5 times its cross maintenance. These cuts buy the short back first and sell the spot only as the short is bought back, so a squeeze never leaves you short. Each short rests a stop on Hyperliquid a little before its estimated liquidation, from its first fill on, for when Prow is down. A delisted coin closes at once; a coin whose spot book is too thin isn't entered and, if held, closes when it stays thin for 6 hours; a coin whose spot stays 5% or more away from its perp for 10 minutes closes. If the account leaves unified balance, every position closes. If one side is liquidated, the other closes right away.

The two modes

What the research found

Prow tested the rules on 19 Hyperliquid coins with a spot pair, with hourly funding from February 2024 to October 2026, Hyperliquid's fees, Prow's fee and slippage by volume (taker on both sides for the shipped settings; the walk-forward priced one side as a maker order first, which the research's cost model prices about the same). The returns are on the whole capital, idle USDC included: only about 30–60% of it is in positions at a time.

How to read it: the walk-forward is the honest out-of-sample estimate, and its range is wide: its low end, about 4% a year, is about what idle USDC or T-bills earn. The shipped settings were picked on data up to March 2026, so Jul 2024 – Mar 2026 is the period they were chosen on (in sample); April – October 2026 came after the settings were fixed, but it was also used to check how the bot is built (topping positions up, taker orders, cross margin), so read it as a check rather than a clean test, and it is one six-month window. The builder says a window was not used to choose the settings or to build the bot only when it starts after October 2, 2026. The Apr – Oct 2026 rows price the spot side at Hyperliquid's real spot price, so the gap between spot and perp shows in the drawdown; with both sides at the perp price the drawdown looked 2–5 times smaller.

Returns fell over time. In the walk-forward by period: H2 2024 about 10% (Steady) and 13% (Fast), H1 2025 about 11–12%, H2 2025 about 7–9%, and Q1 2026 about 4% (Steady) and 2% (Fast), close to cash; then about 10% from April 2026 with the shipped settings. Most of the funding came from PURR and HYPE, then FARTCOIN and XMR; if you already hold one of them on spot the bot skips it and earns less. Funding on BTC and ETH rarely clears the entry level. The builder shows each mode's latest result on about the last 180 days, worked out again every 6 hours with real spot prices.

What these tests leave out: the coin list is today's (a coin that left Hyperliquid during the window still counts, but coins never listed in it don't), each coin's maximum leverage is today's, and the Prow service is assumed up (its margin rules act every second).

Start a Funding bot

1. Open the builder

   Press Start a bot on the Bots page and pick Funding: its pane shows the two modes and what the bot would hold now. Tap a mode, or press Set up myself. The builder's header shows the mode's yearly rate, Would hold now, Coins it picks from, the next decision and the next funding. The chart is the mode's result over the last days, and Funding now next to it lists each coin's expected funding, the entry line and the coins it skips.

2. Pick the account

   If you have more than one Hyperliquid account, pick it. If it isn't on unified balance, switch it first. If the account has other positions or bots, a line says they share margin with this bot; Why it matters explains.

3. Pick a mode and the investment

   Mode: Fast reaction (every hour) or Steady (once a day), each with its rate a year over the last days. Investment: from 300 to 300,000 USDC, with 25%, 50% and Max of what is free on the account. It would hold now shows the coins it would buy and short today, the size of each position, the perp leverage and what that pays at that rate. Manual adjustment lets you leave coins out and set the max loss (10% of the capital by default).

4. Press Continue, turn on the risk acknowledgement and press Sign and start

   One signature for the Prow Bots key if the account has none, one for the Prow fee if it's missing, one for the limits. The limits last 30 days; positions close 2 hours before they expire unless you renew.

The limits you sign

One Hyperliquid account; each coin's spot pair (bought) and perp (shorted); cross margin on your USDC; the capital, three positions and their size at most; the leverage; how much may be unhedged and for how long; the max loss; Prow's fee. The Prow Bots key can trade but never withdraw or move funds, and it can't change your account's settings.

Its page and how to stop it

A Funding bot's page opens on Earn: Funding rate now (what the open positions earn a year at today's rate, before fees), Funding collected, Total PnL and Margin health, with each position's spot and short. Positions, Orders, Settings and Log are the other tabs.

Stop closes both sides of every position at market, or keeps the positions with their stops: then Prow stops managing them (no more decisions, margin cuts or closes), each short keeps its stop on Hyperliquid and the spot an order that sells it when that stop fires. Pausing opens nothing new; open positions stay managed and close when their funding turns, and the margin guard keeps watching.