Hippius's referral program is live in the console, and it's a feature the community has been asking for since launch. Invite someone to Hippius, and you earn 5% commission on everything they spend, for as long as their account stays active. Not a one-time bonus for the sign-up: a commission that keeps landing every month they do, built the same way as everything else at Hippius, on-chain, so what you earn is something you can verify rather than something you have to take our word for.
This post covers how the Hippius referral program works, how to create your first link, and how commission is calculated and paid.
How the Referral Program Works
The referral program rewards you for bringing someone in, and gives them a welcome bonus of their own for joining.
| What they get | When | |
|---|---|---|
| You (the referrer) | 5% commission | Every charge, subscriptions and hourly usage, for as long as the account keeps spending |
| Your referral | 5% discount | First subscription purchase only. |
You keep earning as long as their account stays active. That's what makes it recurring: your commission doesn't stop after the first payment, it lands again every month they stick around.
It's a familiar idea if you've used a recurring affiliate or partner program before, where the incentive rewards bringing in people who stick around rather than people who sign up once and disappear. Word of mouth already does most of the heavy lifting in a decision like choosing a distributed cloud storage provider: people generally trust a recommendation from someone they know, rather than an ad. The referral program is Hippius rewarding that trust directly, and recording the reward on-chain instead of in a private ledger somewhere.
Creating Your Referral Link
Every Hippius account gets one on-chain referral code automatically, the first time it's needed. On top of that, you can create as many labeled links as you want, one for each place you plan to share it, so you can see which one is actually working. Anyone can use your link, too: they don't need a Hippius account first, and there's nothing they have to enter for you to be credited.
To create one, head to Referrals in the console and select + New Link. Pick the platform you'll be sharing it on, X, Discord, LinkedIn, Instagram, Telegram, YouTube, or Reddit, or choose Other to write your own label for anywhere else, like a newsletter or a conference talk. Hippius generates a unique link tagged to that platform label. That platform tag is only for the console's own reporting, so you can create a fresh link for every post, every video description, or every community you're active in, without any of them affecting your one underlying referral code.
The referral link box at the top of the page also has one-click buttons for X, Telegram, and Discord, each opening that platform with a share message already written, so posting doesn't mean composing something from scratch every time.
Attribution happens automatically the moment someone signs up. When a new user creates an account through your link, Hippius ties that signup to your referral code right then, no extra step from you or from them. That attribution locks in permanently at first signup: it can't be reassigned later, and it stays credited to you for as long as their account keeps spending, regardless of which of your links they came through.
Tracking Signups and Commission
Everything you'd want to know about how your links are performing sits on the same Referrals page:
- Referred signups: everyone who created an account through one of your links
- Active referrals: the people who've completed at least one top-up, which is what actually turns into commission
- Conversion rate: active referrals divided by total signups
- Commission earned: your lifetime total, shown in hAlpha
- Signups by platform: a breakdown so you can tell which channel is actually converting
- Recent referrals: your recent signups, with masked emails, so you can see activity without seeing anyone's identity
There's also a signups-per-month view covering the last year, useful if you're running a longer campaign rather than a one-off share. New signups can take a moment to appear on the page, so give it a few minutes after referring.
How Commission Is Calculated and Paid
Commission is calculated on what your referral actually gets charged, never a list price, and it applies to everything they spend, not just subscriptions. The rate lives on-chain at 5%, and it pays out on every charge: a new subscription purchase, a plan change (calculated on the net amount, so a refunded month is never paid twice), every recurring monthly charge for as long as the subscription runs, and ongoing hourly usage too, like S3. That last part matters if the person you refer never buys a subscription at all: as long as they're spending, on anything, you're earning on it. Commission follows what your referral actually spends, so it shows up after they pay, not the moment they sign up: someone who creates an account and never spends anything will count as a referred signup but never an active referral.
Commission settles the same way the rest of Hippius does: on the Hippius chain. Practically, that means your commission is paid in hAlpha, landing in your balance automatically with no threshold to reach and nothing to claim. What this means for the referral program is that nothing about your commission is calculated off-chain or reported to you after the fact: every payment is recorded on-chain, so you can search your own address on the Referrals page on Hipstats and see the same figures pulled straight from the network, rather than take a dashboard number on faith.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does the person I refer get a discount?
Yes, but only on their first subscription purchase. They get a 5% discount, one time, when they subscribe to a plan. If they only ever use pay-as-you-go pricing (like S3 billed hourly) there's no discount, since it only applies to subscriptions.
Does referral commission expire?
No. As long as the person you referred keeps spending, whether on a subscription or hourly usage, you keep earning 5% on their charges, including renewals, indefinitely. There's no 12-month cutoff or attribution window to track.
How many referral links can I create?
As many as you want. Each one is labeled by platform and gets its own tracking, but they all pay out against the same underlying on-chain referral code.
Are there rules to stop people gaming the program?
Yes, a few safeguards run automatically. You can't refer yourself, a matching code is silently dropped. Your referral's charge always goes through regardless of what happens on the referral side, so a failed commission never breaks their billing. Emails stay masked in your referral list too: you'll see that someone signed up, not who they are.
Start Earning
The referral program is live now in the console, under Referrals in the sidebar. Generate your first link, share it wherever you're already talking about Hippius, and watch your commission accrue in hAlpha as your referrals come online, verifiable on-chain the whole way. For the full walkthrough, see the Referrals docs, and if you run into questions setting it up, Discord and the community forum are both active and monitored by the team.
About Hippius
Hippius is a distributed cloud platform built to give users a verifiable alternative to providers like AWS and Google Cloud. Files are encrypted and distributed across an independent network rather than held in a single provider's data center. Every storage claim, payment, and miner action is recorded on Hippius's own blockchain, so instead of asking users to trust the platform, Hippius lets them check it for themselves. On top of that foundation sits a full product suite: personal cloud storage, S3-compatible object storage with no egress fees, confidential computing on secure hardware, and a container and model registry for AI. Hippius runs as Subnet 75 on Bittensor and was built by The Nerve Lab.
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