AQAv1 Fee Benefits vs AQAv2: What Changed
AQAv1 offered fee and volume incentives. AQAv2 removes those benefits and focuses on reserve-yield sharing and deployer obligations.
Older descriptions of Hyperliquid's aligned quote assets often highlight lower taker fees, larger maker rebates, and extra fee-tier volume credit. Those are AQAv1 mechanics. AQAv2 uses a different incentive model.
AQAv1 trading benefits
Hyperliquid's AQAv1 specification documents three trading incentives when an AQAv1 asset is used in qualifying contexts:
- 20% lower taker fees
- 50% larger maker rebates
- 20% more volume contribution toward fee tiers
AQAv1 also routes 50% of the AQA reference rate to the protocol.
AQAv2 removes the fee and volume incentive
The AQAv2 specification explicitly states that there is no trading-fee or volume-contribution benefit to AQAv2. Instead, v2 increases the reserve-economics alignment and separates responsibilities between a treasury deployer and a technical deployer.
The treasury deployer shares 100% of the AQA rate with the protocol, which Hyperliquid describes as approximately 90% of cost-adjusted reserve yield on the aligned stablecoin supply.
Why you may still see the old multipliers in documentation
Hyperliquid's general fees page still documents aligned-quote fee multipliers, while the dedicated AQA page explicitly assigns those benefits to AQAv1 and says AQAv2 has no such benefit. The safest interpretation is to treat the dedicated AQAv2 specification as authoritative for v2 assets and avoid hardcoding the older multipliers into an AQAv2 integration.
Builders should also inspect current API state and live protocol documentation before calculating effective fees.
What matters for USDC now
USDC is using AQAv2. Its alignment is therefore primarily about reserve-yield sharing, technical and treasury-deployer obligations, and future eligibility for market types that require an AQAv2 quote asset, not a universal fee discount.
For current fee tiers independent of AQA version, read Hyperliquid Fees, Makers, and Takers.