Tutorial: your first HAM position
This tutorial walks you from nothing to holding HAM and seeing a rebase change your balance. It is a learning exercise — we explain just enough to keep moving; the explanation pages cover the why in depth. By the end you will have acquired HAM and watched the scaling factor move your balance.
You will need: a wallet (MetaMask/Rabby/OKX) with HyperEVM added (chain
999, RPChttps://rpc.hyperliquid.xyz/evm), and a small amount of HYPE for gas and to buy with.
1. Add HyperEVM and connect
Add the HyperEVM network to your wallet using the details above, then open the HAM app and click Connect. You should see the network indicator show HYPEREVM and your address appear.
2. Acquire some HAM
On the dashboard, use Ape In (or trade the live WHYPE/wHAM pool 0x6cCA1C5a88A391f4e55f69E7BBA13e42A813BaD5 directly). Swap a small amount — say 5 HYPE — into HAM. When the swap confirms, your Your Bag panel shows a HAM balance.
The pool trades wHAM, the non-rebasing wrapper (24 decimals); the app wraps and unwraps for you, so what lands in your wallet is rebasing HAM. If you trade the pool directly you will hold wHAM until you unwrap. See the two token contracts.
You now hold HAM. Notice it's a normal token in your wallet — it just behaves differently at rebase time, which you'll see next.
3. Read your two balances
Look at two numbers:
- Your Bag (the big number) — this is
balanceOf, what changes on a rebase. - Underlying — this is
balanceOfUnderlying, your rebase-invariant share.
Write both down. The first will move at the next rebase; the second won't (you didn't transfer anything). This distinction is the whole mental model — see Elastic supply.
4. Watch a rebase
The dashboard shows Next Rebase In (rebases happen about twice a day). When the countdown reaches zero and a keeper triggers the rebase:
- The HAMS Scaling Factor changes.
- Your Bag changes by the same proportion — up if HAM was above $1, down if below.
- Your Underlying is unchanged.
That's a rebase: the protocol nudged HAM's price back toward $1.00 by resizing every balance, including yours, while your share stayed put.
5. (Optional) Provide liquidity
You can provide liquidity to the live WHYPE/wHAM pool and earn its trading fees — follow Provide liquidity.
What you learned
You acquired HAM, saw that your displayed balance is the scaling factor applied to your underlying share, and watched a rebase move the former but not the latter. Next, read The peg to understand what the rebase was actually responding to.