Hyperliquid builder codes, explained

What are builder codes on Hyperliquid?

On Hyperliquid, "builder" means a DeFi builder, a team or person building an app on top of Hyperliquid, not a block builder in the consensus sense. A builder code lets that builder receive a fee on fills it sends on behalf of a user. The fee is set per order and processed entirely on-chain, as part of Hyperliquid's own fee logic rather than a side payment.

Practically, this is what makes a third-party trading frontend a business. The frontend doesn't run its own matching engine or hold user funds. It routes orders to Hyperliquid’s order book and charges a separate, disclosed builder fee on eligible fills.

This matters because it separates the frontend from custody. A builder never touches a trader's deposit, never holds a position, and never sees a withdrawal. The fee is collected the same way Hyperliquid's own trading fee is collected, at settlement, on-chain, so there's no separate billing system for a builder to run or secure.

How the builder fee works

Every order can carry an optional builder parameter: {"b": builderAddress, "f": fee}. The f value is in tenths of a basis point, so f: 10 means 1 basis point (0.01%). The fee is capped, and it only applies to the quote or collateral asset.

Builder codes apply the same way to outcome markets (prediction markets): the builder fee is charged on sells, on its own fee schedule separate from perps. See prediction markets for how that works.

How users approve a builder

A user has to approve a maximum builder fee for a given builder address before that builder can collect anything, via the approveBuilderFee action. It must be signed by the user's main wallet, never an agent or API wallet, and the user can revoke it at any time. It's a signed Hyperliquid action, not an EVM transaction, so there's no gas to pay for the approval itself. A user can have at most 10 active builder approvals at once.

In practice a frontend prompts this approval once, the first time a user places a trade through it, and the wallet shows exactly what's being approved: a maximum fee, for one address, revocable at any time. Nothing about it looks or behaves like a token approval or a transfer, because it isn't one.

A brand-new HyperCore account also pays a one-time 1 USDC activation fee on its first inbound transfer. That's unrelated to builder codes specifically, but it's often the first cost a new trader on any Hyperliquid frontend runs into, so it's worth knowing it isn't a builder fee.

What a builder needs to collect fees

The builder address has to hold at least 100 USDC of perps account value and use the standard account abstraction mode. From there, builders claim accumulated fees through the same claim process Hyperliquid uses for referral rewards.

To track revenue, Hyperliquid exposes a few read endpoints: maxBuilderFee returns what a specific user has approved for you, total collected builder fees show up in the referral info response, and per-day fills that used your builder code are published as compressed CSVs keyed to your (lowercase) builder address. Most builders end up wiring these into some kind of builder codes dashboard so they can see revenue and approvals without polling the API by hand.

Why builder codes matter

Our 14-day builder-fee study publishes observed USDC fees and daily address counts from September 10–23, 2026, with downloadable data and methodology. The sample measures gross fees across observed builders, not expected earnings for a new frontend.

This isn't a niche mechanism. Blockworks reported that nearly 40% of Hyperliquid's daily active users trade through third-party frontends rather than the native app ("Hyperliquid: The frontend wars," Dec 4, 2025). Builder codes are the reason that's sustainable: a real chunk of Hyperliquid's volume is already routed through frontends that get paid this way.

How to earn builder fees without writing code

Everything above, the approval flow, the fee parameter, the claim process, is what floatout handles for you. You get your own Hyperliquid trading frontend, live at your own subdomain, with your own builder fee going to a contract only you can claim from. Creating it is free: name it, connect a wallet, sign one gas-free message, and it's live in about a minute.

floatout never holds trader, builder or affiliate funds. See pricing for how the platform share works once you activate earnings, or explore a live demo first. For the other side of building on Hyperliquid, read how to launch a perp DEX or compare against running a white-label crypto exchange. Hyperliquid builder codes are the mechanism either way, floatout just removes the engineering.

Separate perps and outcome earnings

Do not apply a builder rate to all displayed prediction-market volume. The current Floatout outcome path earns builder fees from eligible sell activity, not settlement proceeds. Read the prediction fee guide. Try the builder fee calculator and use actual recorded receipts to validate your estimates.

Activated fees are claimed against roots published by Floatout. The publisher is trusted to allocate them correctly. An administrative timelock does not delay root publication. See the security model.