The same coin trades on two exchanges at slightly different prices. The bot sells it where it is momentarily expensive and buys it where it is cheap — at the same instant — then later does the reverse. It never bets on where the price goes; it only collects the gap between the two venues.
One exchange is the maker seat (Aster): the bot rests a limit order there and waits to be filled. Resting orders pay no fee on Aster. The other is the hedge seat (Hyperliquid): the moment the resting order fills, the bot fires the opposite trade there, so it is never exposed to the coin's price for longer than the hedge takes (about 0.7 s on the first real round).
After the hedge the bot is short on Aster and long on Hyperliquid by the same amount (or the reverse). The coin can double or halve and the two legs cancel out. The only things that now move the money are the basis — the price gap between the two venues — and funding, the small hourly payment perpetual contracts exchange between longs and shorts.
That is also why this is not free money: a perp-vs-perp pair never turns into cash by itself. It only pays when the bot gets out the same way it got in, on the other side of the basis. In-and-out is one round; the bot's profit is the sum of the two legs plus funding.
The edge of a seat is what the bot would make, in basis points of the trade size, if its resting quote filled this instant and the hedge landed right away — after both fees (Aster maker 0, Hyperliquid taker 4.3 bp) and the depth the hedge has to eat. 1 bp is 0.01%: +5 bp on a $50 trade is 2.5 cents. The bot rests a quote only when the edge is at or above the gate (+5 bp) and pulls it when the edge drops more than 2 bp under.
Aster usually trades a little below Hyperliquid on HYPE (about −3 bp: one is quoted in USDT, the other in USDC, and the crowds differ). A gap that is always there is not profit — you would collect it on the way in and give it back on the way out. So the gate is measured against that usual gap, the norm: the bot sells on Aster when Aster is unusually high against Hyperliquid, and buys back when it is unusually low. Both the scanner's verdicts and the bot's gate count only these excursions; the raw figures are shown beside them.
| adverse fill | The price jumps while the quote rests; a big taker sweeps the level and the hedge lands worse than the quote was priced for. The entry loses, and the close line shows how much the exit has to make back. The 2 bp cancel rule limits this; a faster Hyperliquid feed would limit it more. |
| hedge does not land | The IOC is re-sent within its slippage allowance; if the venue refuses or goes silent, the bot unwinds the maker leg at taker rather than stay naked. Never naked is the rule. |
| holding costs money | Funding can turn against the position. The bot compares a day of that carry with what leaving at taker would cost against the exit it is waiting for, and leaves only when holding is the dearer of the two. |
| the bot dies | Aster's dead-man switch cancels every resting order 120 s after the last heartbeat; Hyperliquid only ever holds immediate orders. |
| too much loss | The kill switch: a realized loss beyond the limit, a round count beyond the limit, or a venue reporting a position the bot does not expect. New rounds stop; open ones finish. |
| lost or duplicated messages | Every order reply carries the venue's executed amount; the bot acts on a terminal state only when the fill receipts add up. Reconnects re-query every open order by our own id; fills already seen are dropped. |
All of them share the same machinery — two books, a maker seat, an instant hedge, venue receipts driving every step — and differ only in when they enter and leave.
| XEMM · perp / perp | The default, described above. Enter when a seat's edge net of the norm clears the gate; leave when the reverse seat brings the round to +5 bp. Because both legs are perpetuals the round only pays on the way out, so the pair must have a basis that swings both ways — the scanner's "gate opens per hour" measures exactly that. Runs live on HYPE, Aster against Hyperliquid. |
| XEMM · spot / spot | The same rule on spot markets where the coin itself is the same on both venues (Aster spot against Hyperliquid spot, e.g. BTC and ETH via Unit). Here a fill plus hedge is realized cash — a coin bought cheap on one venue and sold dear on the other — so a round trip is not required. Spot fees are higher (Aster 0.5 / 4 bp, Hyperliquid 4 / 7 bp), which is why it is scanned and not yet traded. |
| Band · basis mean-reversion | --mode=band. Ignores the join edge and trades the basis itself: when Aster's gap to the other venue is more than two standard deviations from its rolling hour-long mean, sell on the rich side and hedge; leave when the gap is back at the mean. Made for pairs whose basis never crosses zero but wanders around a level (Aster/Extended ASTER: mean +16 bp, sd 4 bp, about 11 excursions a day, 55 minutes back to the mean). Its profit is the excursion, less two maker legs' worth of fees; it stacks with funding when the carry points the same way. |
| Carry | Not a separate mode, but the bot accounts for it in every round: the funding difference between the two legs is booked to the position each settlement, shown as carry per day, and decides the hold-or-leave rule. A pair can be held for carry alone only where the basis is stable; the bot does not open positions for carry by itself. |
| Scanner | Not a strategy: the always-on program that watches every pair and coin at the account-size clip, never places an order, and writes the evidence the Edges tab shows — average edge net of norm, gate openings per hour, maker flow, hours observed, verdict. Targets rotate once two or three weekdays of evidence are in. |
| Paper | The testing mode of any strategy (orange PAPER badge): quotes and hedges are simulated from the live tape with queue position, latency and fees, on the real books. It is for validating a rule before money is put behind it, never run beside a live bot, and its figures are never shown as pnl while one runs. |
The clip is the size of one leg in dollars. Each venue holds one leg, so the clip is the smaller of the two account balances, re-read on every balance receipt; a venue below the clip is flagged refill in the top card. On Hyperliquid the account is unified: the USDC in spot backs the perp hedge, so the balance shown is spot + perp.
Realized profit is only ever counted on closed rounds. While a live bot reports, the page shows real money only — no paper figures anywhere.