Is there a Papertrade airdrop?
No. Papertrade's FAQ says so in one line: "There is no pre-mint, no team allocation, no VC allocation, no airdrop, and no vesting schedule." We found no points program, no reward for depositing early and no referral scheme in its docs, app or posts.
The token, PAPER, reaches users in one way only. The docs say: "PAPER mints to your account whenever you close a trade at a loss or get liquidated. Nothing else mints PAPER." You get it by losing money.
Warning Posts on X have offered a "Founding tier" or a "Crate" that you reserve by connecting a wallet. We found no such offer in Papertrade's docs or app. A third-party archive attributes those posts to two lookalike accounts, @papertrede_xyz and @papertradehl, which X now shows as suspended. The official account is @papertrade_xyz and the official site is papertrade.xyz.
What Papertrade is
Papertrade calls itself "a fair-launched, fully on-chain perpetuals exchange built on Hyperliquid". It runs as contracts on HyperEVM and takes its prices from Hyperliquid's order book, but the docs are clear that "No perpetual contracts are traded on Hyperliquid itself." Every trade is a bet against one pool: "The counterparty on every trade is the LP."
The markets are BTC and ETH, "both with up to 1000× leverage". Pre-deposits opened on 8 October 2026. Live trading was set to follow a HyperEVM network upgrade on 10 October, and it has started. When we checked the PAPER contract on 12 October 2026, about 6.1 billion PAPER had been minted. At the starting rate of 100 PAPER per $1, that means traders had lost at least $61 million.
How the Papertrade PAPER token works
While the pool's tracked balance is under $2 million, a losing close mints "a flat 100 PAPER per $1 of eligible loss". Above that level the rate falls as the pool grows. Supply starts at zero.
You can't sell it yet. The docs say: "At launch PAPER can't be transferred between wallets; it can only be staked and unstaked." Papertrade says transfers "will be enabled after a sufficient period of time has passed" and gives no date. Staked PAPER earns USDC: half of the protocol's fees, plus pool gains above a $5 million cap.
Warning Other projects sell tokens that borrow the Papertrade name. Bankless has written about one of them, PaperStrategy. They are not PAPER, which can't be transferred at all for now.
Papertrade airdrop step-by-step guide
There is no airdrop to qualify for. These are the steps to use the exchange.
- Open papertrade.xyz and check the address in your browser. Several accounts on X imitate the project.
- Have an EVM wallet and at least 10 USDC on Hyperliquid, HyperEVM, Ethereum, Arbitrum or Solana.
- Press Connect and sign once. The signature registers a session key, so later trades don't open your wallet again.
- Press Deposit and follow the route the app offers. At least 10 USDC has to arrive after fees, and a first deposit also pays a 1 USDC activation fee.
Warning Deposit only through the app. On sending tokens straight to your deposit address, the docs say: "a raw ERC-20 transfer to the proxy is not monitored."
- Pick BTC or ETH, long or short, your margin and your leverage, then press Buy or Sell.
Warning At 1000x the docs say "liquidation fires after a move of about 0.052%", and a liquidation "forfeits the full isolated margin". That is your whole stake on the trade.
- Withdraw when you want. You can take out any balance that isn't committed as margin, with a minimum of 10 USDC.
Open PapertradeOpens papertrade.xyz
Papertrade costs and fees
Papertrade charges no fee on trade size, no spread and no funding, but trading there isn't free. The docs say the protocol "takes its cut from profitable closes". A winning trade loses a small price buffer, then a haircut on the gain, then "A 2% win fee on the gain after impact." At the launch settings, "a winning close never keeps more than 90% of its raw gain before the win fee", and on a 0.1% move in BTC it keeps about 74%.
A losing trade pays the loss and nothing on top. The docs say of the fees: "Half of each fee goes to stakers and half to the dev fee recipient." You need real USDC throughout.
Papertrade risks and eligibility
- The pool starts at $0 and is the other side of every trade. If it can't pay a winner in full, "the unpaid portion of the win goes into a FIFO queue". Your margin comes back at once, but the docs set no limit on how long the profit can wait.
- The developers are pseudonymous. Bankless names them as Jez and Blurr, and no company, legal name or investor is published.
- No audit report is published, and the docs' own page of contract addresses still listed them as "TBA" on launch day.
- The docs say: "The contracts are proxied, so in principle the owner can do anything the implementation can be rewritten to do."
- Prices come from Hyperliquid's order book with no circuit breaker for sudden moves, a risk the docs raise themselves.
- We found no terms of use, privacy policy, country list or age rule on the site, in the docs or in the app. Whether you may use it where you live is for you to check.
- Papertrade told users to "expect lengthy confirmation delays during launch".
Who is behind Papertrade?
The developer's launch post of 12 May 2026 introduces it as built "by @izebel_eth & @blurr". Bankless describes the two as "semi-pseudonymous" traders. No legal entity or funding round is published, and the docs say the pool started with no deposit from the founders and no upfront raise.
Sources
- FAQ Papertrade docs
- What is Papertrade Papertrade docs
- Quick start Papertrade docs
- PAPER emissions Papertrade docs
- Staking and dividends Papertrade docs
- Deposits and withdrawals Papertrade docs
- Liquidations Papertrade docs
- The LP queue Papertrade docs
- Asymmetric impact Papertrade docs
- Risk Papertrade docs
- Contract addresses Papertrade docs
- Papertrade launch details Papertrade on X,
- Pre-deposits are live Papertrade on X,
- Introducing Papertrade @izebel_eth on X,
- What to Know About Papertrade's Launch Bankless,
- How Papertrade Turns Liquidations Into Ownership Bankless,
- Papertrade Pre-Registration (archive of lookalike posts) YouMind,
This guide explains how the program works. It isn't financial advice, and no airdrop is guaranteed. Check Papertrade's official channels before you connect a wallet or deposit funds.
