FAQ

stHYPE is the premiere liquid-staking solution for the Hyperliquid network, poised to become the lifeblood of the Hyperliquid DeFi ecosystem, combining simplicity, security, and utility to redefine staking and amplify the potential of the Hyperliquid L1 and EVM.

Thunderhead has a belief that there should be an LST everywhere. Thunderhead is a team of entrepreneurs, builders, and academics who have created numerous public and private goods across multiple ecosystems. Thunderhead was founded 4 years ago and is proud to be owned and operated by the team. Thunderhead has never raised ANY capital, and this allows us to make agile decisions that are in the best interests of our end-users. To learn more about our various projects, our founders, and our team, please visit Thunderhead.xyz. Within Hyperliquid, we are solving the problems of illiquidity, immovability, and accessibility with HYPE staking. Our goal in sHYPE is to remove the barrier to entry for participation with HYPE and to bolster the security and performance of the Hyperliquid network. We are community-focused and community-driven. You'll find stHYPE well integrated into the various borrow/lend protocols on Hyperliquid, allowing you to unlock your stake. Stay liquid, my friends.

Hyperliquid is a performant L1 optimized from the ground up. The vision is a fully onchain open financial system with user built applications interfacing with performant native components, all without compromising end user experience. The Hyperliquid L1 is performant enough to operate an entire ecosystem of permissionless financial applications – every order, cancel, trade, and liquidation happens transparently on-chain with block latency <1 second. The chain currently supports 100k orders / second. The Hyperliquid L1 uses a custom consensus algorithm called HyperBFT which is heavily inspired by Hotstuff and its successors. Both the algorithm and networking stack are optimized from the ground up to support the L1. The flagship native application is a fully onchain order book perpetuals exchange, the Hyperliquid DEX. Further developments include a native token standard, spot trading, permissionless liquidity, etc.

A holder of HYPE who wants to participate in the security of the protocol can stake their HYPE to receive an equal amount of stHYPE in return. The stHYPE will automatically increase in number in your wallet as protocol rewards to the underlying validators. At any time, you may transfer or participate in DeFi with your stHYPE token. Users can unstake their stHYPE at any time, and once the protocol unbonding period has passed, may claim an equal amount of HYPE in return.

If you do not have any HYPE, you can purchase some via Hyperliquid, after acquiring HYPE, head to stakedHYPE.fi/stake Connect your wallet, enter the amount of HYPE you would like to stake, approve the amount and then submit the stake transaction. We've done our best to make it as easy as possible, but if you need help or have suggestions, feel free to reach out and we'll do our best to help. You can contact us via email, or come directly to our discord channel where you can submit a support ticket.

There are always risks associated with any blockchain endeavor and we do our very best to mitigate risk. We adhere to a few principles:

1. We open-source and continually review and optimize our code.
2. We hired a security firm to audit our code
3. We provide proof of reserves and full transparency.
4. We have internal controls for data and key management
5. We manage all of our infrastructure fully in house (nothing is outsourced)
6. We are in constant communication with the Hyperliquid team as it relates to any security releases, bugs or enhancements.

Yes, audit reports are currently pending and will be released soon.

There are a few potential risks when staking HYPE.

• Smart Contract Security - There is a risk that stHYPE contains a smart contract vulnerability. However, the code is open-sourced, audited and covered by a bug bounty program. While we do our best, we cannot guarantee that there is no risk.
• Slashing Risk - The Hyperliquid blockchain slashes the stake of validators that go offline or act maliciously. Although we have automated deployment tools, bespoke monitoring systems, and a multi region/datacenter redundancy setup, there is still the risk that these precautions fail and the protocol slashes the underlying validators.
• stHYPE discount risk - Due to the inherent nature of liquid staking, liquid staking representative tokens can trade at a discount due to the underlying asset being staked and thus illiquid. It is possible that the HYPE/stHYPE price could decline significantly due to market conditions. This is not a significant problem though since users can redeem their stHYPE for HYPE via an unstake.
• Custody Risk - Thunderhead maintains custody of the underlying HYPE. We have internal controls, dedicated key management software and employ encrypted disks among a variety of other measures. Although extremely unlikely due to the precautions we put in place, ultimately stHYPE is not trustless and it is possible that the underlying HYPE becomes lost to theft or exploit. Thunderhead is also a U.S registered LLC and the entire team is "doxxed."

A combination of the smart-contracts and a multi-sig. After the release of Hyperliquid pre-compiles, the protocol will be fully controlled by users.

Everything is on-chain and we highly recommend you utilize a third party tool to track your stHYPE address and use the chain to track all of your transactions.

You will need to work with your accounting professional on your taxes.

Yes. You can transfer your stHYPE to any ERC-20 support wallet. Please understand that we have zero capability to access your wallet, or any wallet you send funds to. We do not and cannot help you with an incorrect transfer nor any retrieval of funds.

We have a very active community on both Telegram and Discord. Please come join us, we'd love to have you.

If a user would like to unstake their stHYPE and receive HYPE, they have two options. First, they can sell their stHYPE for HYPE on an AMM (e.g Valantis, Hyperswap, Curve). This process happens instantly, but the user could possibly receive less HYPE than stHYPE sold. Alternatively, users can unstake their stHYPE. This process first involves burning stHYPE to enter the redemption queue. After a certain period of time, the underlying HYPE will become claimable (7-8 days). Aggregators will optimize this process for users

The fee is a delegation fee charged by the underlying validators, which ranges between 0 and 5% of rewards and a protocol fee which is 3% of rewards.

The protocol rewards generated from the underlying validators minus a fee go to the stakers. This is currently around 2% APR.

Thunderhead stakes the HYPE onto validators to serve the network and earn protocol rewards. The HYPE are never used for extraneous activities. You can observe this with our proof of reserves.

Staking is the act of locking a crypto asset within a protocol in order to receive the privilege of doing a certain behavior, such as validating. In return for performing this behavior, the protocol rewards the staker. The stake also serves as a form of collateral to disincentivize malignant behavior.

Traditionally, while funds are staked they are not transferable or instantly redeemable. First, one would have to unstake them and wait for a certain period of time before they could transfer or sell their crypto assets. Liquid staking is the act of creating a token that represents staked funds which allows users to circumvent this unstaking process to be able to sell or transfer a representation of their staked assets at any time.

Liquid staking allows users to transfer their stake at any time. Users can also participate in DeFi to earn extra rewards on top of the protocol rewards.

Here are a few links. Please do your research, ask questions in our community and only participate once you feel 100% comfortable with stHYPE.

• What is Liquid Staking & How Does It Work? (moralis.io)