Is it safe?

Hyperliquid legacy vaults: what the change means for your deposit

By NuWealth · Published 5 November 2026

The short answer: “legacy” means Hyperliquid has stopped adding features to its original vaults, not that it is closing them. If you hold a deposit in one, it stays where it is. Deposits, withdrawals, the 1 day lockup and the 10% profit share all work as before. New features, such as spot and the newer HIP-3 markets, go to a different kind of vault built on HyperEVM.

Key points

• Hyperliquid’s docs call the original HyperCore vaults “legacy” and say they “do not support HIP-3 or spot trading” (Hyperliquid docs).
• The docs mention no shutdown, no deadline and no migration of deposits.
• The label was on Hyperliquid’s docs by 8 April 2026. Between 13 and 17 April, the fee to create a vault rose from 100 USDC to 10,000 USDC.
• On 5 November 2026, 3,054 legacy user vaults were still open, holding about $94 million.
• Our own legacy vault, RockSteady, still takes deposits and pays withdrawals: the latest deposit by a depositor came on 3 November 2026, the latest withdrawal on 26 October.

We run RockSteady as a public legacy vault, so the “does it still work” part below comes from a vault we operate, read from Hyperliquid’s public data.

What does “legacy” mean on Hyperliquid?

It means the original vault design is finished. Hyperliquid now points builders somewhere else for anything new.

Hyperliquid’s main vault page now describes vaults that builders create on HyperEVM, Hyperliquid’s own blockchain, with “fully customizable accounting” and “full access to Core features including spot and HIP-3 in all quote assets”. It calls this “a strict improvement over the ‘legacy’ HyperCore vaults, which were introduced in 2023” (Hyperliquid docs).

The old pages are still there, renamed: HyperCore vaults (legacy), For vault leaders (legacy) and For vault depositors (legacy). The legacy page says HyperCore “supports a limited set of functionality for onchain vaults”, and that more features “should be built permissionlessly by builders on the HyperEVM”.

What the docs do not say matters just as much. There is no closing date, no notice to withdraw and no plan to move deposits into HyperEVM vaults.

When did it change?

In April 2026. 2 records pin it down: copies of the docs saved by the Internet Archive, and the fee Hyperliquid records each time someone creates a vault.

So the label came first, and about a week later the fee to open a vault went up 100 times. Hyperliquid’s own vault list shows the effect: 220 new vaults were created in March 2026, 83 in April and 10 in May. Since then it has been 2 to 6 a month. The month-by-month table is in our guide to how Hyperliquid vaults work.

Is my legacy vault being shut down?

No sign of it. On 5 November 2026, Hyperliquid’s public vault list showed 3,054 open user vaults holding about $94 million, plus HLP, the exchange’s own vault, with about $151 million. HLP is a protocol vault, with its own page in the docs apart from the legacy pages.

Under the docs, a vault is closed by its leader, and “all positions must be closed before the vault can close” and “all depositors will receive their share of the vault when it is closed” (Hyperliquid docs). That was true before the label and is still true now.

Hyperliquid has not promised that legacy vaults will run forever, either. If that changes, the docs are where it will show first. They are worth a look every few months.

What still works, shown on a real vault

RockSteady has been a legacy vault since it opened on 3 February 2026. Read from Hyperliquid’s public data on 5 November 2026:

You can check every line on the vault page on Hyperliquid. Its returns, monthly results and deepest fall are on our live record.

What legacy vaults cannot do

3 limits, all from Hyperliquid’s docs:

1. Only the main perpetual futures markets. A legacy vault “can trade validator-operated perps” and “cannot trade spot or HIP-3 perps”. If a leader’s strategy needs those markets, it has to move to a HyperEVM vault.
2. The name and description are permanent. Leaders write them at creation, and “this cannot be changed later”. So a description can be months out of date. Read it as the leader’s opening statement, not as current facts. Ours is no exception; our check page explains what RockSteady’s says and lists its official addresses.
3. New ones are expensive to open. The 10,000 USDC fee means very few new legacy vaults appear. The list you browse is mostly older vaults, which our census of 9,478 Hyperliquid vaults looks at in detail.

The upside of a frozen design

For a depositor, “legacy” has one real advantage: the rules are set by Hyperliquid and are the same for every user vault.

• The fee is fixed. The leader keeps 10% of your gains and cannot raise it.
• The leader has to stay in. They must keep at least 5% of the vault in their own money and cannot withdraw below that line.
• The exit rules are fixed. After the 1 day lockup you can withdraw. If the vault lacks spare margin, Hyperliquid cancels its open orders, then closes 20% of its positions at a time until it can pay you. The leader’s only choice is to close positions in proportion on every withdrawal instead.

On a HyperEVM vault, those rules come from the platform’s contracts instead, and they differ from platform to platform. On Buoy, for example, the fee is set per vault, there is no lockup, and the platform’s admin can change a vault’s fee or leader. None of that is better or worse on its own; it is simply more to check. Our guide to Hyperliquid vaults compares legacy vaults, HyperEVM vaults and HLP side by side.

What to check if you hold a legacy vault

1. Is it still open? Open the vault page on Hyperliquid. A closed vault has already paid everyone out.
2. Is the leader still in? The leader’s share should be at least 5%. A leader near the line has less of their own money at stake than one well above it.
3. Is it still trading? Check the trade history. A vault with no trades for weeks may have a leader who has moved on.
4. Has the leader moved on? If a leader opens a new vault somewhere else, your legacy deposit is not moved for you. You decide whether to follow.
5. Can you withdraw? If the lockup has passed, the Withdraw button on the vault page works as before. Hyperliquid charges a flat $1 to send USDC off the exchange.

FAQ

Are Hyperliquid vaults being shut down? No. Hyperliquid calls its original HyperCore vaults “legacy”, which means no new features. Its docs mention no closing date, and 3,054 user vaults were still open on 5 November 2026.

Can I still deposit into a legacy vault? Yes, unless the leader has turned deposits off. RockSteady’s latest deposit by a depositor came on 3 November 2026.

Can I still withdraw from a legacy vault? Yes. After the 1 day lockup (4 days for HLP), use the Withdraw button on the vault page. RockSteady paid a depositor’s withdrawal on 26 October 2026.

Will my deposit be moved to a HyperEVM vault? Not by Hyperliquid, as far as its docs say. Your share stays in the vault you deposited into until you withdraw or the leader closes it.

Is HLP a legacy vault? Hyperliquid does not call it that. HLP is a protocol vault on HyperCore, with its own page in the docs, no fees or profit share and a 4 day lockup. It still takes deposits.

Why are so few new Hyperliquid vaults created now? Creating a legacy vault now costs a 10,000 USDC fee, up from 100 USDC until mid April 2026, and new features only go to HyperEVM vaults. New vaults fell from 220 in March 2026 to 2 to 6 a month since June.

Are HyperEVM vaults safer than legacy vaults? Not by default. They can trade more markets, but each platform writes its own rules for fees, lockups and who can change what. Read those rules before you deposit, the same way you would check a legacy vault’s record.

Is RockSteady a legacy vault? Yes. It opened on 3 February 2026 as a HyperCore vault and works the same way today.

Sources

• Hyperliquid docs: Vaults, HyperCore vaults (legacy), For vault leaders (legacy), For vault depositors (legacy), Protocol vaults (opened 5 November 2026)
• Earlier versions of the docs: Internet Archive copies of For vault leaders (9 February 2026), Protocol vaults with the docs menu (8 April 2026) and For vault leaders (legacy) (11 May 2026)
• Creation fees: the vaultCreate entry Hyperliquid records for each new vault, read from its public API for the vaults created on 13 and 17 April 2026. The $1 fee to send USDC off the exchange is in the same records for withdrawals.
• Buoy: Buoy docs, risks
• Vault counts: our own count of Hyperliquid’s full public vault list (stats-data.hyperliquid.xyz/Mainnet/vaults), read on 5 November 2026. It covers HyperCore vaults only, not Buoy or other HyperEVM vaults.
• RockSteady: Hyperliquid’s public API (vaultDetails and the vault’s ledger of deposits and withdrawals), 5 November 2026. Depositor dates leave out our own test transactions from the leader account. Vault and leader addresses are on our check page.

How this was made: written by NuWealth with AI assistance from the sources above, and checked by the NuWealth team. Past results are not a promise of future results; see our Risk Disclaimer.