Documentation

Get started with HAWK

Everything you need to set up and run HAWK — from installation to understanding how the trading engine works.

Overview

HAWKis an algorithmic grid bot that trades crypto perpetuals on Hyperliquid. You deposit USDC into a Hawk vault, your funds pool with other depositors' capital, and the bot runs the grid strategy on the pool. Your share of the vault tracks pro-rata with deposits, trading P&L, and withdrawals.

The grid strategy buys dips and sells bounces around a moving center price. It earns from oscillation — small profits per cycle, hundreds of cycles per month. No directional prediction.

Three vault variants run the same strategy at different leverage levels. Pick the one whose risk profile fits you.

The Vault

One vault is live: the production strategy. Pooled USDC traded on Hyperliquid via the grid bot. The smart curator picks the coins to trade and rotates them daily.

3× leverage

Hawk

Layered protections: per-buy stop closes individual losing rungs; drawdown breaker pauses new grids on account-level losses; peak filter blocks entries near recent highs; trailing exit locks in profits on retrace.

Past backtest performance doesn't guarantee future results. Additional risk tiers may open after they've been tuned and stress-tested against the current strategy.

How the Bot Works

The bot runs three loops on a fixed schedule. Each loop has a single job and never overlaps with the others.

Curator (daily)

Scores every supported coin and assigns capital only to the top performers — not the loudest names, the ones the strategy actually works on right now. Coins that fade out of the ranking get rotated out within 3 days so their capital can redeploy.

Grid bot (every cycle)

For each active coin, holds a ladder of buy and sell orders around the current price. Each filled cycle (a buy + matching sell) realizes a small profit into the vault. When price drifts too far from the grid center, the bot closes and rebuilds at the new price.

Drawdown breaker (continuous)

Watches the vault's drawdown from peak. If it crosses a calibrated threshold sustained for the confirmation window, the bot pauses all new entries until drawdown recovers. The breaker auto-resumes when it's safe — no manual action needed.

Deposit & Withdraw

Deposits are USDC sent on Arbitrum to the operator's Hyperliquid deposit address (shown on each vault page). Your USDC bridges into HL and joins the pool that the bot trades.

Deposit flow

  1. Visit the vault page on hawkish.app and copy the deposit address.
  2. Send USDC on Arbitrum from your wallet to that address.
  3. Paste the transaction hash into the verification field on the vault page.
  4. Once verified, you're issued vault shares at the current NAV per share. Your share count + entry NAV become your high-water mark for fee calculation.

Withdraw flow

  1. Wait for your lock period to elapse (shown on your /me page).
  2. Request a withdrawal from the same page.
  3. The operator processes the request manually — typically within 48 hours. USDC is sent back to your wallet on Arbitrum, minus the 10% performance fee on any profit above your high-water mark.

The performance fee is only charged on profit. If you withdraw at a loss or at the same NAV you entered, the fee is zero. The per-depositor high-water mark means you never pay fee on the same gains twice.

Risk & Drawdown

Crypto trading is risky. Grid bots are not exempt. Losses can and do happen. Here's what could go wrong, and what mitigates it.

What can go wrong

  • A coin trends hard in one direction — buys fill on the way down, no bounces fill the sells.
  • Sharp drawdowns + leverage combine to liquidate positions before the breaker trips.
  • HL or the operator's infrastructure goes offline mid-cycle — open orders sit until restart.
  • Operator custody risk — see the Trust Model section below.

What mitigates it

  • Curator rotation: coins that stop oscillating get rotated out within 3 days, so stale capital doesn't sit in dead grids.
  • Drawdown breaker: sustained drawdown above threshold pauses all new entries until recovery — validated across historical bear windows to roughly halve volatility.
  • Reposition: grids that drift too far from the center are closed and rebuilt at the new price, instead of leaving stale orders.
  • Leverage choice: you pick the risk band on deposit. 1× has no liquidation risk; 2× and 3× do. Choose accordingly.

Backtests

Every parameter change is validated on a realistic historical replay before it ships to live. The harness runs 15-minute OHLC replays across the same coin set the live bot uses, with realistic fees and slippage.

Past performance does not guarantee future results — but it establishes a baseline. The current strategy has been tested across 700+ days of historical data covering bull, bear, and sideways regimes. The drawdown breaker, reposition threshold, leverage choice, peak filter, per-buy stop, and coin-curator parameters were all selected from comparing variants on the same backtest harness, including 3-fold walk-forward validation.

Trust Model

Read this carefully — the trust model is different from typical DeFi vaults.

Custody is single-signer. Your USDC joins the pool in the operator's personal Hyperliquid account alongside their own capital — there's no smart contract abstraction enforcing the rules. The model relies on the operator's public commitments below, on alignment (the operator is also a depositor), and on transparency (every cycle, every trade, every drawdown is publicly visible).

Operator's commitments

  • No theft. The operator will not move depositor funds to a personal wallet.
  • 10% performance fee on profit only. Charged at withdrawal, with a per-depositor high-water mark — you never pay fee on the same gains twice. The operator's seed sits in the same pool with no fee on their own withdrawals.
  • Public performance. Every cycle, every trade, every drawdown is visible on this site and verifiable on Hyperliquid.
  • Manual withdrawals within 48h. After your lock period elapses, withdrawal requests are processed manually — typically within 48 hours.

Why this model?

A native HL vault would custody funds on-chain, but the leader fee is $10k upfront and the vault primitive doesn't support a per-depositor high-water mark fee. Running on a personal HL account with off-chain accounting trades on-chain custody for fairer fee math and lower friction. Pick the trade-off knowingly.

FAQ

How does the fee work?

10% on profit at withdrawal, with a per-depositor high-water mark. If you deposit at NAV $1.00 and withdraw at NAV $1.10, you pay 10% on the $0.10 gain. If you withdraw at NAV $0.95, fee is zero. Withdraw at NAV $1.05, then deposit more, then withdraw at $1.07 — your HWM ratchets fairly so you don't double-pay.

How long does it take to withdraw?

After your lock period elapses, withdrawal requests are processed manually by the operator — typically within 48 hours. The lock period is set per vault and shown on the vault page.

Can I deposit into multiple vaults?

Currently only one vault is live. Additional risk tiers may open later — each would be a separate vault with its own deposit address and lock period.

What if the bot stops running?

The vault stops trading. Your shares stay the same; NAV stays at the last snapshot. You can request a withdrawal whenever your lock allows, and the operator processes it manually. Bot uptime is monitored separately from withdrawal processing.

What if the operator disappears?

This is the central trust risk in the single-signer model. Funds sit in the operator's HL account; if the operator becomes unavailable or malicious, depositors have no on-chain recourse. Mitigants: the operator is also a depositor with their own capital at risk; performance is publicly visible; the operator has publicly committed not to steal.

Why three vaults instead of one?

Risk tolerance varies. Some depositors want spot-only exposure; some want amplified swings. Three discrete leverage bands cover the common preferences without offering a confusing dial.

Ready to deposit? Browse the vaults and pick one that matches your risk profile.

BROWSE VAULTS