Going long means you profit when the price goes up. Going short means you profit when it goes down. Every market has both sides, and you can trade either one.
Most people only ever use the long side, because buying is all a normal brokerage account makes easy. Shorting a stock usually sits behind extra permissions and paperwork. On a perpetual future, the two sides work the same way, which is why the short side looks so different on Based.
Going long, the side everyone knows
A long position profits when the price rises and loses when it falls. Buy something at $50, sell it at $60, and the $10 difference is yours. If you've ever bought a stock or a coin, you've been long.
The long side has one comforting feature. A price can't fall below zero, so the most an unleveraged long can lose is what went in. That floor on losses doesn't exist on the short side, which is worth understanding before you get there.
How shorting works
Shorting is selling something you don't own yet, planning to buy it back later, cheaper. If the price drops from $50 to $40 after you short, you buy back at $40 and keep the $10. It's the same price move as a long, traded from the other direction.
At a stockbroker this is awkward. Shares are property, so to sell shares you don't have, the broker first has to borrow real shares from someone else. That means a margin account, which is a separate application with its own approval. It means a locate, the broker finding shares available to borrow, which for heavily shorted stocks can fail entirely. And it means borrow fees ticking the whole time the position is open, on top of margin interest.
None of that is a conspiracy against short sellers. It's the mechanical cost of selling property you don't own. But for most retail traders it makes shorting a stock effectively a different product with a different gatekeeper.
Why shorting a perp is one tap
A perp is a contract that tracks a price, not the asset itself. Nothing is borrowed, because nothing is owned. Going short on a perp means opening a position that gains when the tracked price falls, and it takes the same tap as going long. The perps guide covers how the instrument works.
That symmetry is one of the main reasons perps exist. Through Based you can long or short every market the same way: Tesla, Bitcoin, Micron, all from one self-custodial wallet. The markets live on Hyperliquid and run 24/7, so the short side is open on a Sunday too.
Risks on each side
Shorting carries a structural risk that longing doesn't. A price can rise without limit, so an unleveraged short's potential loss is theoretically unlimited, where a long's loss stops at zero. On a perp both sides are margined, so the practical limit is the same for each: if the price moves far enough against you, the position is liquidated and the margin behind it is gone. What is liquidation shows how close that point sits at different leverage levels.
Funding also runs on both sides while a position is open. When a market is crowded with longs, longs pay shorts, so a short can end up collecting; when shorts crowd in, it flips. Funding rates explained has the details. Either way you're holding a derivative, so there are no dividends or voting rights on either side of the trade.
Before opening either side, check the liquidation price on the trade screen. Every market on the full list has a long and a short button.