Buying & selling
How a trade works on the token page, and what every number on it means.
Where trades happen
Every token has one market: a HyperSwap V3 pool with a 1% fee, holding the whole supply in a one-sided position that is locked forever. Before the token bonds, all trades go through the init gateway, a contract that wraps your HYPE, takes the small init fee, swaps in the pool, and hands you the tokens. After bonding you can keep using the site or trade on HyperSwap directly.
The trade panel on the token page is the same in both cases. The only visible difference is the "init fee" line, which reads 0.25% (plus the guard if active) before bonding and 0% after.
Buying
- Enter an amount of HYPE. The panel fetches a live quote from the contract and shows how many tokens you will get.
- Check the fee lines and the slippage setting (below).
- Press Buy and sign one transaction. You pay in native HYPE; there is nothing to approve.
The tokens arrive in your wallet in the same transaction. The minimum you accept (from the slippage setting) is enforced by the contract, so if the price moves too much the transaction fails and you keep your HYPE minus gas.
Selling (no approve step)
On most DEXs, selling a token needs two transactions: an "approve" that lets the exchange move your tokens, then the swap. Here the gateway is the only address that is allowed to move a token without an allowance, and it can only ever move tokens belonging to the wallet that is calling it. So selling is one transaction: enter the amount, press Sell, sign. You receive native HYPE back.
Any other contract, including HyperSwap routers after bonding, still needs a normal approval. The exemption exists only for the gateway.
The fee you see before confirming
The panel always shows three lines before you sign:
| Line | Before bonding | After bonding |
|---|---|---|
| init fee | 0.25% of what you send, plus the sniper guard surcharge on buys in the first 60 s | 0% |
| HyperSwap pool fee | 1% of what reaches the pool (on sells, taken in tokens and burned) | same |
| Total fee | 1.25% normally, up to 49.51% at second 0 of a launch | 1% |
Fees are applied in that order: first the init fee comes off your HYPE, then the pool takes 1% of the remainder. That is why the total is 1.2475% rather than exactly 1.25%; the site rounds to 1.25%. Where each fee goes is on Fees, exactly.
The sniper guard countdown
A sniper is a bot that buys in the first block of a launch and sells to the humans who arrive seconds later. The guard is an extra fee on buys only, charged during the first 60 seconds after launch. It starts at 48.75% of what you send and falls in a straight line to 0 at second 60. Combined with the other fees, a buy at second 0 loses 49.51% to fees, at second 30 about 25.6%, and from second 60 the normal 1.2475%.
The token page shows a red guard Ns badge while it is active, and the trade panel folds the surcharge into the "init fee" and "Total fee" lines, so you always see the real cost before signing. If you are not a bot, wait for the badge to disappear.
The guard money is not kept by anyone in particular: 60% streams to RO0T stakers and 40% to the treasury. The creator gets none of it, so a creator cannot profit by sniping their own launch.
Slippage and price impact
Price impact is how much your own trade moves the price. On a bonding curve every buy raises the price and every sell lowers it, and the effect is larger when the pool holds less HYPE. Early buys have large impact: the first 1 HYPE moves the FDV from 30 to about 32 HYPE. At the bond target the same 1 HYPE moves it by well under 1%.
Slippage is the difference between the quote you saw and the price you actually get, caused by other people trading in the same second. The slippage setting (default 1%, adjustable from 0.1% to 50%) is the worst outcome you will accept. If the trade would give you less than that, it fails instead. During a busy launch you may need to raise it; during quiet periods 1% is plenty.
The quote says 31,900,000 tokens. With 1% slippage the transaction sets a minimum of 31,581,000 tokens. If a bigger buy lands just before yours and you would only get 31,000,000, your transaction reverts and you pay only gas.
"Market cap" on the card
The number labelled mcap on token cards in the list is the current price multiplied by the full 1,000,000,000 supply. Strictly this is the FDV (fully diluted valuation). It is the convention on launchpads, and it is what the bond progress is compared to. A token bonds at about 563 HYPE FDV.
The token page shows both: FDV (price × 1B) and mkt cap (price × tokens held outside the pool). Early on, mkt cap is much smaller than FDV because most of the supply is still in the curve.
Reading the chart
Prices of a 1B-supply token are tiny fractions of a HYPE, so the chart and the panel use a compact notation: 0.0₄2869 means 0.00002869, that is "0." followed by four zeros then 2869. The small subscript number is the count of zeros. Price is quoted in HYPE per token, with a USD conversion when a HYPE price is available.
Candles are built from on-chain trades. A candle with no trades repeats the last price. The bond progress under the chart is net HYPE in the curve: buys add to it (after fees), sells subtract from it. Fees and the guard surcharge never count toward bonding.
HYPE vs. WHYPE
HYPE is the native coin of HyperEVM, the one you pay gas with. WHYPE (wrapped HYPE) is the same value as an ERC-20 token, which is what pools and fee contracts can hold. You never need to wrap anything: the gateway wraps your HYPE on buys and unwraps on sells. Where you will meet WHYPE is on the receiving end of fees: creator claims and staking rewards are paid in WHYPE. It can be unwrapped to HYPE at any time, one-to-one, through any wallet or DEX that supports it.
Sending tokens to a friend
Before bonding, tokens can be sent between regular wallets freely. What is blocked is any transfer to or from a contract that is not part of init: other pools, bridges, contract wallets, lending protocols. After bonding, the token is a plain ERC-20 with no restrictions at all.
The trade that happens to be first after a token becomes eligible to bond (or to unlock) also performs that settlement. It costs that trader a little more gas and, as a small thank-you, that trade pays no init fee. Nobody has to press a "finalize" button. Details on the next page.
Next: Bonding →