Tickers and the auction
HyperCore sells tickers in a recurring Dutch auction with one winner per window. Symbolon waits for the price to come down to a Pot instead of setting a funding goal.
How the auction works
On Hyperliquid, tickers are sold in a recurring Dutch auction. Each cycle lasts about 31 hours, the price descends toward a floor, and winning the ticker locks its name and decimal spec. Ecosystem builders report a mainnet floor of 500 HYPE.
The testnet reproduces these rules in MockTickerAuction, with shorter windows and scaled prices:
| Rule | Testnet |
|---|---|
| Window length | 15 minutes, back to back |
| Floor | 0.05 test HYPE, standing for the 500 HYPE mainnet floor |
| Descent | Linear, from the window's start price to the floor at the end of the window |
| Start price after a window with a sale | max(2 x last sale price, 4 x floor) |
| Start price after a window without a sale | 4 x floor |
| Winners per window | One. After a sale, nobody can buy until the next window |
| Where the price goes | Sent to a burn address |
So on testnet each window starts at 0.2 test HYPE or more and reaches 0.05 at its last second.
The Pot is a ceiling, not a goal
A crowdfunding goal would force sponsors to guess the price in advance. Symbolon does not set one.
Each Pot states how much its sponsors are willing to pay. The auction comes down. The largest Pot it reaches goes first. A Pot that is too small simply waits: it might be reached later in the same window, in a later window, or never, and its sponsors can withdraw at any time while it is Open.
The 5% margin
A Pot is eligible when its total is at least the current price plus 5%: total >= price * 105 / 100.
The 5% pays the fees of a compliant Rite: 3% to the Officiant and 2% to the protocol. See Fees. The Officiant is repaid the price actually recorded by the auction's sale record, which is never higher than the price at which the Pot became eligible, as long as the Officiant buys in the same window. The Officiant's maxPrice parameter protects it from paying more than the Pot can repay.
Scarcity
There is one winner per window, whoever the buyer is. Symbolon runs one Rite at a time, and no Pot is eligible while the current window is already sold. A queue of many Pots therefore clears one ticker per window at most.
Anyone can still buy a ticker directly at the auction. If someone takes a Pot's ticker, the Pot is skipped by the queue. Its sponsors can withdraw, and a new Pot with another ticker can be opened after the old one is emptied and closed.
Reading the auction
The auction exposes currentPrice(), windowEnd(), available(), isTickerFree(ticker) and saleOf(tokenIndex). The widget on the queue reads them live and shows which Pot would win right now.