Hassan Maishera
TL;DR
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Avail has launched ShieldTX, which opens each Hyperliquid perpetual futures position through a separate wallet.
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Positions remain publicly visible, but the service aims to make them harder to link to a trader’s original wallet.
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ShieldTX’s analysis estimated a median additional execution cost of 63 basis points for traders attracting suspected copy-trading activity.
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A private beta involving 75 traders generated approximately $50 million in volume and created more than 3,800 wallets.
ShieldTX Targets Wallet Tracking on Hyperliquid
Avail has introduced ShieldTX, a privacy service designed to make it harder for copy-trading bots to track traders’ activity on Hyperliquid.
The service creates a separate wallet for every perpetual futures position, reducing the direct connections that observers can use to identify a trader’s subsequent moves.
Publicly visible wallets allow bots to detect trades and open similar positions within seconds. Avail argues that this activity can worsen execution for the original trader and expose trading strategies or hedging activity to competitors.
ShieldTX does not conceal positions from Hyperliquid’s public ledger. Instead, it aims to prevent those positions from being directly linked onchain to the trader’s original wallet.
In research released before launch, ShieldTX examined 332,317 wallets active on Hyperliquid over a 30-day period.
The team randomly selected seven traders from the platform’s top 100 and examined 25 wallets that appeared to follow each trader. It flagged potential copiers that matched the same coin and trading direction within 60 seconds on at least 10 occasions.
According to Avail founder Anurag Arjun, the analysis compared execution prices and price movements for trades that attracted suspected copiers against those that did not, accounting for the asset, trade size and volatility.
ShieldTX estimated a median additional execution cost of 63 basis points, equivalent to 0.63%, per trade for the traders being followed. The estimate comes from the project’s own analysis and does not independently establish that copying caused every observed price difference.
The research also found that 29% of Hyperliquid’s top 150 leaderboard accounts used subaccounts. Although these allow trading through different wallets, their connections remain visible onchain, according to ShieldTX.
“We thought we had sufficient privacy by rotating wallets,” the founder of an unnamed digital asset fund using the service said. “We had no idea the wallets had already been linked to us and were being actively copied.”
Each Position Uses a New Wallet
ShieldTX holds deposited funds in a vault contract on Arbitrum. When a user opens a position, it creates a new Hyperliquid wallet and executes the trade through that address.
Once the position closes, proceeds return to the user’s shielded balance, where they can be withdrawn or reused.
Traders manage positions through one account and retain access to their full trading history for audits and compliance.
The service runs on Nightshade, Avail’s zero-knowledge privacy infrastructure. ShieldTX also offers a scanner that identifies wallets potentially copying a user’s trades.
Avail has tested ShieldTX with Hyperliquid whales, trading desks and funds since July. Arjun said the private beta involved 75 traders, processed approximately $50 million in volume and created more than 3,800 wallets.
He said beta users successfully avoided copy-trading bots, although he did not provide a comparison of execution costs before and after using the service.
ShieldTX is now expanding access through an invite-code model, with discounts for AVAIL stakers. It targets wallets trading $500,000 or more and applications using Hyperliquid builder codes.
Arjun said the project has undergone multiple internal audits with external security consultants, while a full audit is underway. Hyperliquid’s core team was not directly involved in development.
Privacy Features Expand Across Trading Platforms
ShieldTX joins a growing group of products seeking to limit the exposure of onchain trading activity.
Hyperliquid competitor Aster introduced a privacy-enabled blockchain for its derivatives platform in March. StarkWare launched OffMarket earlier this month to let Polymarket users trade without publicly linking positions to existing accounts.
For ShieldTX, broader use will provide a clearer test of whether separating positions across wallets reduces tracking and improves execution in practice.
