Funding-rate arbitrage and delta-neutral strategies on Hyperliquid

What is funding-rate arbitrage? It collects funding payments while holding two positions whose price moves cancel. On Hyperliquid, longs pay shorts every hour when funding is positive, so the classic trade buys the asset on spot and shorts the same amount on the perp: the price exposure nets to roughly zero and the short earns funding. A second version shorts the perp where funding is highest and goes long on another venue where it is lower. The catch is that funding is small and changes: at Hyperliquid’s default of 0.00125% an hour, about 11% a year, $10,000 earns about $3 a day, and fees to open and close both legs take days to earn back.

Funding on Hyperliquid vs Binance and Bybit

Predicted next funding payment on each venue, annualised so they compare. Hyperliquid pays every hour; Binance and Bybit pay every 4 or 8 hours, shown in brackets.

Gaps between venues are usually a few percentage points a year on the majors. The extremes are on smaller markets: among perps with $10M+ open interest, USELESS had the highest current funding on Hyperliquid at 24.1% a year (its predicted next payment, in the table, was 19.1%), and AVAX the lowest at −43.4%.

Collect funding with Senpi

Senpi publishes this guide. Its funding templates take a simpler route than a two-leg hedge: they hold the side the crowd is paying, with a stop attached instead of a spot leg, so there is no second position, bridged token or second venue to manage. They are not market-neutral, so the price can still move against the position; that is what the stop is for. Each template is open source:

• Ant finds the most heavily traded perps where longs pay shorts a rich funding rate and, once the long crowd looks tired, shorts them to collect the funding hour after hour, at low leverage (up to 4x).
• Pangolin waits for funding that has stayed extreme for hours, then fades the crowd and collects funding while the stretched position reverts. It is rated conservative, at up to 5x.
• Owl looks for one-sided crowding (extreme funding, lopsided four-hour leaders and concentrated open interest) and fades it once the crowd shows exhaustion.
• Camel takes the paid side of the most extreme funding as one position per side, at up to 10x, and is rated aggressive.

Senpi Signals ranks funding extremes across Hyperliquid, with each reading’s source, in the Senpi app and the free Chrome extension, so you can see where funding is stretched before you choose. Entries go maker-first with a taker fallback, and Senpi adds 0% on paid plans (0.03% on the free trial), which keeps more of the funding you collect. On Senpi, a strategy you confirm runs as code on Senpi’s runtime, and by default no AI model makes live trading decisions. Strategies built from a rule or a template carry the Dynamic Stop-Loss (DSL) from the first fill, and each can have its own daily-loss halt, which lifts at the next UTC midnight, or a drawdown halt, which waits until you resume it. Copy strategies carry at most a flat stop. Each strategy trades from its own strategy wallet; the agent holds no key and cannot withdraw.

How funding moved over 90 days

Funding is positive most of the time, which is why the trade exists, and it spikes in both directions around big moves, which is why it isn’t free money. Funding rates as a trading signal explains how funding is set.

Three ways to run it

The maths on $10,000

• Earnings at default funding: 10,000 × 0.0000125 × 24 ≈ $3 a day, about $1,095 a year.
• Costs to open and close as taker at the base tier: two perp fills at 0.045% and two spot fills at 0.070% ≈ $23. At default funding that takes about 8 days to earn back; maker orders cut it.
• Margin: the short perp needs collateral, and a rally of about 30% can liquidate a 3x short unless you add margin or rebalance from the spot leg.
• Funding can reverse: in the last 90 days ETH funding touched −67% a year for an hour, which a delta-neutral short pays instead of earning.

Checklist before you put it on

1. 01Confirm the spot asset is the same thing as the perp’s underlying, and understand how bridged tokens such as UBTC are backed.
2. 02Size the perp leg with low leverage and know its liquidation price.
3. 03Model fees for all four fills and the break-even holding time.
4. 04Set a rule to exit when funding drops below your costs or turns negative.
5. 05Monitor both legs; rebalance when price moves change their sizes.

Hyperliquid charges 0.015% for maker orders and 0.045% for taker orders at the base tier on crypto perps. Senpi adds 0% on paid plans and 0.03% on the free trial or without a paid plan.

This is educational material, not financial advice. The market readings are data, not trade signals, and leveraged perps can lose money quickly.