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Hyperliquid Validators: Top 27 by Stake, Votes, Jailing
Facts verified against Hyperliquid's official docs on 2026-09-15. This page does not list or rank individual validators.
Every price your position is marked at, every funding payment and every delisting on Hyperliquid is an act of its validators. The docs describe the set in a few sentences and the consensus in a few more; together they say who can join, what a validator decides, and what happens when one misbehaves.
Who can validate
"Running validating and non-validating nodes is permissionless, meaning anyone can choose to do so. The active set of validators is determined transparently based on the top twenty-seven by stake." To become active a validator needs "a self-delegation requirement of 10k HYPE", "locked for one year"; if self-delegation ever drops below that, the validator "enters undelegate-only mode" and its stake can only shrink. Validators "may charge a commission", which "cannot be increased unless the new commission is less than or equal to 1%" — a rule the docs explain as preventing a validator from attracting stake and then raising its cut on "unaware stakers".
How consensus runs
HyperBFT works in rounds, "a fundamental discrete bundle of transactions along with signatures from a quorum of validators", where "a quorum is any set of validators that has more than ⅔ of the total stake in the network". The validator set and stakes are fixed for each epoch of 100k rounds, "approximately 90 minutes on mainnet". Because safety depends on an honest quorum, the docs make it "an essential responsibility of every staker to only delegate to trusted validators" — the delegation mechanics are on the staking page.
What validators decide
- Prices. They publish spot oracle prices "every 3 seconds"; the clearinghouse uses "the weighted median of each validator's submitted oracle prices, where the validators are weighted by their stake". See the mark-price page.
- Listings and delistings. "Validators vote on whether to delist validator-operated perps", with settlement at the one-hour oracle TWAP; index perps depend on validators publishing "the value of the index formula". See the delisting page.
- Quote-asset discipline. A permissionless quote asset's 200k HYPE stake is "subject to slashing based on validator vote for poor quality quote assets", and aligned-stablecoin off-chain conditions are "enforced through onchain quorum of validator votes". See the spot page.
- Each other. Validators "may vote to jail peers that do not respond with adequate latency or frequency".
Jailing versus slashing
"Upon receiving a quorum of jail votes, a validator becomes jailed and no longer participates in consensus. A jailed validator does not produce rewards for its delegators." It can unjail itself "subject to onchain unjailing rate limits". The docs draw the line explicitly: "jailing is not the same as slashing, which is reserved for provably malicious behavior such as double-signing blocks at the same round", and "there is currently no automatic slashing implemented". For a delegator, jailing means paused rewards, not lost stake.
The Foundation delegation programme
The Hyper Foundation delegates to validators it selects, aiming to "enhance network security", "promote diversity across the validator network" and support committed operators, with testnet performance as a criterion where mainnet data is missing. Eligibility as published: 10k HYPE in one address, legal compliance, completed KYC/KYB, residence outside the programme's restricted jurisdictions, and — "if your application is accepted" — running "at least two non-validator nodes with 95% uptime" whose static IPs are listed publicly as seed nodes. The Foundation "reserves the right to cease delegation at any time", and its validators "will strongly consider participation in the Delegation Program as a factor for trusting peer validators".
FAQ
How many validators are there?
The active set is "the top twenty-seven by stake"; the docs do not publish a count of candidate nodes outside it.
Can a validator take my staked HYPE?
Staked HYPE stays in your own staking account per the staking docs, and no automatic slashing exists. A jailed or poorly performing validator costs you rewards; you can undelegate after the 1-day lockup.
Who runs the Foundation validators?
The docs name the Hyper Foundation and its non-validator peer as reference infrastructure; they do not list operator identities, and this site does not add them.
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