Hyperliquid Trading Bots: Secure Setup with OneKey Wallet

Why onchain trading bots matter in 2026

Onchain perpetuals have moved from “niche DeFi” to a major market segment. Industry dashboards and reports show record activity through 2025, with perpetual DEX volume accelerating sharply (see the DeFiLlama perps dashboard and a recap of the trend in Cointelegraph’s coverage).

As liquidity and execution quality improve, more traders are automating:

• Market making / liquidity provision
• Signal-based execution (momentum, mean reversion, breakouts)
• Funding-rate and basis strategies
• Risk management (auto-reduce, hedging, kill-switches)

If you’re running a bot, your real edge is often operational: key management, permissions, monitoring, and failure handling. That’s where a hardware wallet + delegated “bot key” model becomes extremely practical.

Hyperliquid’s key model (and why it’s bot-friendly)

A core concept is the separation between:

• Main wallet: holds authority for critical actions (think “root account”).
• API / agent wallet: a delegated signing key used for programmatic trading.

The official developer docs explain how API wallets (agent wallets) work, how nonces are handled, and why you should avoid reusing agent addresses in automation (Nonces and API wallets).

What this means for bot security

• If an agent key leaks, an attacker may be able to trade (and potentially grief your positions), but the system is designed so that withdrawals require the main wallet (review the onboarding and account flow in the official onboarding guide).
• You can rotate agent keys and isolate strategies by giving each bot process its own agent.

This is the ideal place to introduce a hardware wallet: keep the main wallet isolated, and only expose a scoped bot key to your server.

Trading strategies and techniques (practical patterns for bots)

Below are common bot approaches that map well to an onchain order book venue. These are not financial advice—think of them as engineering patterns.

1) Market making with tight inventory controls

Goal: earn spread / rebates (where applicable) while managing adverse selection.

Techniques:

• Quote both sides with dynamic spread: spread = base + k * volatility.
• Cancel/replace on microstructure signals (imbalance, mid-price drift).
• Hard inventory caps (delta limits) and auto-hedge rules.
• Batch order updates to reduce churn and avoid nonce/throughput issues (aligned with the docs’ nonce guidance: one signing key per process is recommended) (Nonces and API wallets).

2) Momentum / breakout execution with bracket risk

Goal: catch expansion moves; survive false breakouts.

Techniques:

• Confirm with volume + volatility regime filters.
• Use reduce-only take-profit / stop-loss logic (bracket style).
• Enforce max slippage and “post-only” rules when appropriate.

3) Funding-rate aware positioning (carry-style)

Goal: avoid paying persistent funding; optionally harvest it.

Techniques:

• Only hold direction when funding is favorable or signal strength is high.
• Auto-flatten when funding flips or when basis compresses.

4) TWAP / scale-in execution (minimize impact)

Goal: enter/exit larger size without moving the market too much.

Techniques:

• Slice orders by time and liquidity conditions.
• Pause during sudden spreads / low depth events.
• Add a kill-switch if fills deviate from expected participation rate.

Secure setup: OneKey as the main wallet + agent wallet for the bot

Step 0 — Threat model checklist (don’t skip)

Before touching code, decide:

• Where will the bot run (local machine vs VPS)?
• What is the maximum capital at risk per strategy?
• What happens if the agent key is stolen?
• What happens if the strategy goes wrong (bug, runaway loop, bad config)?

A helpful lens is standard API security thinking: rate limits, secret handling, least privilege, and safe automation flows (see OWASP API Security Top 10 (2023)).

Step 1 — Prepare OneKey (main wallet hygiene)

Use your OneKey device as the main wallet used to authorize critical actions and manage long-term funds.

Recommended operational setup:

• Create a dedicated “trading main” account (separate from long-term storage).
• Enable strong PIN and (optionally) passphrase/hidden wallet workflows for compartmentalization.
• Keep the recovery phrase fully offline.

If you want to independently verify the open-source footprint and repo activity, OneKey maintains public code on GitHub (see OneKeyHQ on GitHub).

Step 2 — Create your account and fund it

Follow the official onboarding steps to connect and deposit collateral (How to start trading).

Notes that matter for automation:

• Keep only the capital you intend to trade available to the bot strategy.
• Ensure you have enough network gas for the deposit step when applicable (the onboarding guide links official bridging options such as Arbitrum Bridge).

Step 3 — Create and authorize an agent (API) wallet

In the UI, you can generate an agent key and authorize it under your account. The official SDK documentation references the same flow and the exact page used to generate/authorize the API wallet (Hyperliquid Python SDK README).

Operational best practices (directly aligned with the official nonce guidance):

• One bot process = one agent wallet
• Don’t reuse old agent addresses for long-running automation; rotate when you redeploy (Nonces and API wallets)

Step 4 — Install the official Python SDK

The official Python package is published on PyPI and maintained on GitHub:

• Package: hyperliquid-python-sdk on PyPI
• Source: hyperliquid-python-sdk repository

Example setup:

python3 -m venv .venv
source .venv/bin/activate
pip install -U pip
pip install hyperliquid-python-sdk

Step 5 — Configure keys safely (do this like production)

You will typically need:

• ACCOUNT_ADDRESS: your main account public address (used for querying your state)