HyperBFT

HyperBFT is Hyperliquid's custom consensus mechanism, a variant of HotStuff consensus. It was purpose-built for the specific requirements of a high-performance L1.

How It Works

  • Validators earn block production rights proportional to their staked HYPE
  • A quorum is any validator set controlling >2/3 of total stake
  • Consensus requires a quorum of honest validators
  • Operates in discrete rounds containing transactions and validator signatures
  • Rounds become committed when quorum conditions are met, then move to execution
  • All honest nodes agree on the ordered list of committed rounds

Epochs

  • An epoch spans 100,000 rounds (~90 minutes on mainnet)
  • Validator sets and consensus stakes remain static within each epoch
  • Validator set transitions happen at epoch boundaries

Performance

Both the consensus algorithm and networking infrastructure were designed from scratch. The consensus and networking stack can already scale to millions of orders per second — execution is the current bottleneck.

Finality

Single-block finality: once a block is committed by the quorum, it is final. No probabilistic finality or reorg risk.

See also: Validators, Staking, HyperCore