Hyperliquid Points Farming in 2026: Season Two Pace and What Still Works

Season one’s HYPE airdrop was the largest and cleanest community distribution of the last three years, that is settled consensus. Hyperliquid’s season two points program formally opened in March 2026 and is now (late May) about one third in. The repeated questions in the market are: is it too late, how do I farm it, what does it cost? This guide breaks the answers down based on what is actually observable today.

Season one and season two are designed for different goals

Season one’s goal was to pay real early users a fair amount of money. The snapshot anchored on 2023 through November 2024, the median user got 1,500-2,500 USD in HYPE, and top users took home several hundred thousand to over a million.

Season two’s goal has shifted to using the token to push volume into the top tier of perpetual DEXs. Two implications you need to internalize:

• Per-point value in season two will be lower than season one, because total allocation grew but participant count grew at least 3x.
• Season two rewards real market-making and HLP liquidity much more than raw fill volume.

If you have never used Hyperliquid itself, start with /en/tutorial/hyperliquid-perpetuals-introduction.html before continuing.

How the points formula actually works in May 2026

The team has not published the full formula, but community-collected sample data converges on four buckets:

1. Perpetual volume, taker and maker weighted differently, maker coefficient is roughly 1.6x taker.
2. HLP net inflow and holding duration, the headline change of season two.
3. Spot volume, weight is small, but new listings get a one-week bonus.
4. Bridged capital duration plus minimum balance, days that funds sit on Hyperliquid carry a non-trivial multiplier.

The big bonus sits in bucket two. HLP holding duration is the newly introduced central dimension, and it crushed the marginal return for pure volume farmers.

A simple cost-per-point table

The best return is not from volume, it is from HLP capital plus duration. That is the biggest break from season one.

What HLP is and how to use it

HLP (Hyperliquid Liquidity Provider) is essentially a public vault. Users deposit USDC and the vault makes markets on Hyperliquid on their behalf, earning spread and liquidation rebates. Season two pushed HLP weight to a very prominent position.

• Deposit and withdrawal go through a 4-day delay queue, so you cannot move in and out instantly.
• HLP delivered 15-25% APR in 2024-2025, dropped to roughly 8-14% in H1 2026 as competition intensified.
• Including expected points value, HLP is still one of the best venues for idle USDC capital right now.

The simplest implementation: bridge 5k-50k USDC onto Hyperliquid, deposit into HLP, hold for at least six weeks. You do nothing and the points accrue.

“Am I too late” depends on which bucket you are in

Three honest profiles:

• If you have $100k+ in stablecoins looking for a venue: HLP is clearly not too late, and is the largest dividend of season two.
• If you are an experienced perpetual trader: the maker route is still open, as long as your daily volume sits in the 500k-1M range. There is still meaningful allocation at the tail of season two.
• If you only have $1-2k to test farming: to be honest, season two is not friendly. The HYPE you can collect will not exceed your trading friction. Use that capital to learn real trading instead.

Common mistakes

First, assuming multiple accounts multiply returns. The Hyperliquid team has been openly aggressive on sybil detection. A large number of addresses were cut in season one, including publicly reported cases where someone facing $800k of HYPE got zeroed. Read /en/tutorial/what-is-sybil-attack-airdrop.html.

Second, borrowing to farm HLP. HLP carries market-making risk. During an extreme tail (one BTC flash crash in August 2024) HLP had a single-day mark-to-market drawdown close to 5%. If your capital is borrowed, that drawdown can blow you up.

Third, only farming new-listing spot. New listings have pulse weight, but the weight is low and unstable. Treating it as the main line underestimates season two.

Fourth, ignoring maker rebates as real return. Season two’s maker rebate plus points combination has produced effective annualized returns above 15% for a few market-making accounts I have visibility into.

Should you buy HYPE in the secondary?

I keep a small spot position (1-2% of portfolio), not because of season two expectation but because HYPE is now the largest perp-DEX platform token outside US compliance walls, with a clear fee buyback and burn pipeline. It is not cheap any more, season two will not double the price the way season one did, and chasing is unnecessary.

For a cross-section view of Hyperliquid among perp DEXs, /en/tutorial/perp-dex.html is the relevant page.

My own current routine

Use this as a checklist for a 10k-50k USD profile:

• 75% capital into HLP, do nothing, hold 6-12 weeks.
• 20% in the perp account, run 5-10 maker fills per week, limited to BTC and ETH, no alt experiments.
• 5% in spot, target new-listing first week, small size for the points pulse.
• Do not bridge funds back to mainnet unless you need to, every points calc has a residence multiplier.
• Reconcile once each weekend, check whether point growth matches expectation, otherwise rebalance maker / taker ratio.

Total time: about 30 minutes per week.

HLP is the low-noise lane this season

The biggest difference between seasons one and two is that the reward center moved from “action volume” to “capital quality”. If you have USDC willing to sit inside a perp DEX system for a month or two, this is the cleanest play available right now. If you do not have that capital, season two genuinely is not for you, and the small principal is better preserved for the next program that fits small wallets. Airdrop farming as a discipline keeps changing shape, and if you want a refresher of the whole framework, see /en/tutorial/airdrop-guide.html.