Relay Dependency

HyperQuote uses an off-chain WebSocket relay to coordinate RFQ broadcasts and quote delivery between takers and makers. While the relay does not custody funds or execute trades, it is a critical piece of infrastructure whose availability directly affects the ability to trade.

Single Point of Failure

The relay is a centralized service operated by the protocol team. If the relay goes offline, the following capabilities are affected:

Capability	Impact When Relay Is Down
RFQ broadcasting	Takers cannot send RFQs to makers
Quote delivery	Makers cannot send quotes to takers
Real-time matching	No new matches between takers and makers
On-chain settlement	Unaffected — previously signed quotes can still be submitted
Existing positions	Unaffected — options positions and collateral remain on-chain
Keeper settlement	Unaffected — keepers can still settle options on-chain

The relay is not involved in settlement. Once a taker has a signed quote from a maker, the settlement transaction can be submitted directly to the HyperEVM blockchain without the relay. Relay downtime blocks new quote discovery but does not affect the ability to execute already-received quotes.

Censorship Risk

Because the relay is centralized, it has the technical ability to:

Filter RFQs — Refuse to broadcast certain RFQ requests.
Filter quotes — Refuse to forward certain maker quotes to takers.
Selective service — Provide faster or slower relay service to different participants.
Data collection — Observe all RFQ and quote traffic flowing through the relay.

In a permissionless ideal, no single party would have this power. The centralized relay is a pragmatic design choice for performance (low latency, real-time WebSocket delivery) that comes with a trust trade-off.

Data Loss

The relay processes real-time messages and may not persist all historical data. Risks include:

Message loss — In rare cases (relay restart, network partition), an RFQ or quote message may be lost in transit and never delivered to the intended recipient.
No replay — Lost messages are not automatically retried. The taker must resubmit the RFQ if no quotes are received.
Historical data — The relay does not guarantee long-term storage of historical RFQ and quote data. On-chain settlement events are the authoritative record.

No Fund Risk

The relay never holds, transfers, or has access to user funds:

Users do not approve the relay to transfer tokens.
The relay does not have any private keys that can sign settlement transactions.
Quote signatures are generated by makers using their own keys, not by the relay.
The relay cannot forge, modify, or replay signed quotes (EIP-712 signatures would be invalid).

Even if the relay is fully compromised (e.g., an attacker gains control of the relay server), user funds on-chain remain safe. The worst an attacker could do is disrupt service (preventing new quotes from being matched) or observe trade flow data.

Mitigation

Protocol-Level Mitigations

Stateless settlement — The on-chain contracts do not depend on the relay. Any signed quote can be submitted by anyone directly to the blockchain.
No fund custody — The relay never touches user funds.
Decentralization roadmap — Future protocol versions may implement a decentralized relay network to eliminate the single point of failure.

User-Level Mitigations

Do not depend solely on HyperQuote — Maintain access to alternative trading venues (AMMs, HyperCore) for situations where the relay is unavailable.
Monitor relay status — If you are unable to receive quotes, check the relay connection status in the UI before assuming there is a market liquidity issue.
Cache quotes — Makers should cache signed quotes locally. If the relay drops a connection, previously generated quotes may still be valid and can be submitted out-of-band if the taker has the signed data.
Use the API directly — Programmatic traders can connect to the relay WebSocket endpoint directly, with their own reconnection logic, rather than depending solely on the UI.

Risk Overview — High-level risk summary
Smart Contract Risk — On-chain risk factors
Technical FAQ — Relay connection details