fomo perps explained

What a perp is

A perpetual future, or perp, is a contract that tracks the price of something (bitcoin, a stock index, gold) without you owning it. You bet on direction: long if you think the price will rise, short if you think it will fall. Unlike ordinary futures, a perp has no expiry date, so you can hold it as long as your collateral lasts.

Perps are usually traded with leverage: you put up a smaller amount (the margin, or collateral) and control a bigger position. fomo’s own example: “At 10x leverage, 100 USDC of collateral controls a 1,000 USDC position.” A 5% move in your favour makes 50 USDC, half your margin. A 5% move against you loses the same 50 USDC.

Where your order goes: Hyperliquid

fomo does not run a perps exchange. Its markets “are the ones listed on Hyperliquid: crypto on the core venue, plus the xyz markets covering stocks, commodities, indices, currencies and pre-IPO companies.” Hyperliquid is a separate crypto exchange with its own blockchain; the xyz markets are run on it by Trade[XYZ]. fomo announced perps on June 11, 2026, “powered by Hyperliquid and Trade[XYZ]”.

fomo connects as a builder: an app that routes orders to Hyperliquid and adds its own fee to each one. Because builder fees are recorded publicly by Hyperliquid, anyone can see what fomo earns there. Hyperliquid’s records show fomo’s builder address has earned about $4.47 million in builder fees in total (read November 10, 2026). We track it on the perps bench.

When fomo last counted, on November 4, 2026, it listed 179 crypto markets, 101 stocks, 9 commodities, 5 indices, 3 currencies and 2 pre-IPO companies.

Your perps cash balance

Perps use a separate pot of money. You move USDC (a dollar stablecoin) from your normal token cash balance into a perps cash balance, and that becomes your collateral. fomo’s terms for this:

• No fomo fee on moving money between the two balances; it usually takes a few minutes.
• Minimum 5 USDC in, 2 USDC out, and a minimum position of 15 USDC.
• Hyperliquid charges a 1 USDC account creation fee the first time; fomo pays it for you.

Order types are market (fill now), limit (wait for your price) and TWAP (one order sliced into small market orders over 5 minutes to 7 days). fomo charges no fee of its own on a TWAP; Hyperliquid’s fee applies to each slice.

What it costs

fomo’s help centre: “fomo charges up to 0.05% of the position size per trade on perps. Hyperliquid fees also apply. Hyperliquid’s fee is a percentage of the full position size, not just the margin you put up, so with leverage the fee is on the leveraged amount.”

So the fee is paid on the whole position, when you open and again when you close. On a 1,000 USDC position opened with 100 USDC at 10x, fomo’s share at 0.05% is up to 0.50 USDC each way, and Hyperliquid’s fee comes on top. Hyperliquid’s rate depends on your 14-day trading volume and on the market; the order screen shows the combined rate before you trade. Current numbers are on our fee page, and fomo vs Hyperliquid shows what the builder fee adds compared with trading on Hyperliquid directly.

Funding is a separate, ongoing cost. Every hour, holders on one side pay the other to keep the perp price close to the real price; when the perp trades above it, longs pay shorts. A position held for weeks can lose more to funding than to trading fees. How fomo shows these costs in your profit and loss is explained in fomo PnL explained.

Leverage caps

fomo publishes the maximum per market: “BTC supports up to 40x, ETH up to 25x and SOL up to 20x. Most other markets cap at 3x, 5x or 10x.” You can only pick whole numbers.

Liquidation: how you lose the margin

Liquidation is the forced closing of your position when its margin can no longer cover a minimum buffer, the maintenance margin. fomo’s help centre is blunt: it is “automatic, irreversible, and costs you most or all of the margin backing that position.”

Higher leverage puts the liquidation price closer. fomo’s own figures: at 40x on BTC “a move of roughly 1.25% against you is enough to liquidate the position”; at 5x it takes roughly 18.75%. Liquidation is triggered by Hyperliquid’s mark price, a reference price built from other exchanges, which can differ from the chart you see.

By default each position is isolated: only its own margin is at risk. Cross margin, marked Advanced in the app, lets positions share your whole perps cash balance, so a loss on one can liquidate more than the margin you put in. “Liquidated funds are gone and cannot be recovered by fomo or anyone else.” Only trade perps with money you can afford to lose entirely.

Not for US persons

fomo’s terms (§10): “Perps functionality is not available to U.S. Persons… at this time, and may be restricted in additional jurisdictions at our sole discretion.” That covers US citizens and permanent residents even when abroad, and anyone in the US. The terms call using a VPN to reach perps a material breach. Spot trading is available in the US; see is fomo available in the US?. For the step-by-step outside the US, see how to trade perps on fomo.