Over two months ago, when the $JELLYJELLY incident occurred, the market's view on Hyperliquid's future became highly polarized. Some said Hyperliquid would become "FTX 2.0," while others believed its future remained promising.

Just yesterday, $HYPE broke through $44, reaching an all-time high. Since the daring maneuvers of James Wynn, Hyperliquid, along with the soaring $HYPE, has shaken off its dark shadow and embarked on a new chapter.

Amid $HYPE's strong price performance, the HyperEVM ecosystem has quietly grown in strength. How do builders within the HyperEVM ecosystem perceive its development? What are the differences between Hyperliquid + HyperEVM and Binance + BNB? And in terms of market cap, is $HYPE overvalued or undervalued?

With these questions in mind, BlockBeats interviewed the co-founder of Hyperlend, @0xNessus.

The Journey of Building Hyperlend

BlockBeats: Can you briefly introduce Hyperlend to us?

Ness: Hyperlend is similar to AAVE within the Hyperliquid ecosystem—it’s the only project officially licensed to run the latest code on HyperEVM. We offer lending services, allowing users to borrow by using $HYPE as collateral. We also have flash loans, which give users the flexibility to execute any strategies they desire.

Hyperlend as the Banking Infrastructure, beyond these core money‑market primitives, Hyperlend is positioning itself as the banking infrastructure for the entire Hyperliquid network. Providing foundational liquidity rails, on‑chain risk management, and asset‑backed credit lines that every other dApp can plug into. By abstracting away complexity and offering deep, composable liquidity, Hyperlend aims to be the default layer where idle assets earn yield and where users source leverage for any strategy across Hyperliquid.

Our main focus right now is on introducing new features tailored to the Hyperliquid ecosystem, such as tokenizing HLP Vault deposits. Through Hyperlend, users can deposit into the HLP Vault, and these deposits are tokenized as proof of their vault holdings. This token can further be used on Hyperlend as collateral to borrow stablecoins, enabling users to leverage more capital for depositing into the HLP Vault to generate higher returns.

HyperLend as portfolio‑style margin, while Hyperlend does not provide a built‑in portfolio‑margin engine, the flexibility of its lend/borrow primitives lets sophisticated users assemble their own cross‑collateral strategies. Depositors can unlock stablecoin liquidity and redeploy it across Hyperliquid—achieving margin efficiency normally reserved for prime brokerage.

We’re also exploring how perpetual contract positions can be used as collateral, aiming to overcome the limitations of long‑term positions on CEXs that often lack further utility. Users will be able to open positions on Hyperlend, with these positions being truly created on Hyperliquid via our code while being represented by tokenized proofs. For example, if someone wishes to open a long Bitcoin position or a short one, they can keep the position open while using it as collateral to borrow stablecoins and pursue additional strategies.

BlockBeats: When the $JELLYJELLY incident happened over two months ago, did it shake your confidence in Hyperliquid? How did you view the incident at the time, and what do you think about Hyperliquid's response to it?

Ness: I think they might not have considered—or perhaps overlooked—the low-liquidity meme coins listed on Hyperliquid at the beginning. So, some clever users or entities exploited that loophole. However, overall, the team handled the situation very quickly and responsibly.

This actually strengthened my confidence in the HLP vault. Since its launch, the vault has been highly profitable—I think its total earnings have surpassed $60 million, which is unparalleled by any other market-making vault. Moreover, they’ve now introduced two distinct risk parameters for the vault, making it even more "invincible" than before.

All in all, I believe this team is highly professional, and their decisions consistently prioritize the interests of their users.

Comparison Between Hyperliquid and Binance, Along with Other On-chain Perpetual Protocols

BlockBeats: How do Hyperliquid + HyperEVM compare to Binance + BNB Chain? What similarities and differences exist?

Ness: Hyperliquid and Binance each pair a high‑performance exchange with a companion smart‑contract network, but that surface similarity masks a fundamental architectural split. Hyperliquid chooses radical transparency: every trade, funding event, and liquidation is executed directly on‑chain, leaving an immutable public audit trail. Binance, by design, keeps its order books and risk engine behind closed servers, meaning no outsider can independently verify its book depth or solvency. BNB Chain inherits that opacity because the exchange’s deepest liquidity never crosses the boundary into its on‑chain ecosystem.

Where Hyperliquid truly diverges is HyperEVM, a bespoke execution layer that bakes pre compiled contracts and builder codes. These pre‑compiles give any developer one‑call access to Hyperliquid’s full order book. Liquidity becomes a public good rather than a walled garden; on‑chain strategies no longer need to bounce through wrapped assets or fragmented AMMs to reach CEX‑grade depth.

That design choice unlocks a level of composability unavailable on BNB Chain. A BTC‑USDC perpetual, for instance, can be opened directly from a smart contract on HyperEVM and then tokenised as an ERC‑721‑like asset. The open position itself becomes portable collateral—transferable over‑the‑counter, depositable into lending markets like Hyperlend, or packaged into structured products, without ever closing the underlying trade. On Binance, a perpetual remains captive within the exchange; it cannot be withdrawn, transferred, or rehypothecated on‑chain.

Because HyperEVM routes orders into Hyperliquid natively, capital efficiency is preserved. A vault, a bot, or a retail wallet can source “as much as the book will provide” through a single contract interaction, eliminating basis risk and slippage that typically plague on‑chain derivatives. Builders on BNB Chain, by contrast, must simulate liquidity via AMMs or rely on off‑chain market‑makers, adding latency and complexity.

Taken together, these choices create two markedly different developer experiences. Hyperliquid collapses the gap between the provability of DeFi and the depth of a top‑tier centralized exchange. Binance and BNB Chain continue to separate those worlds, offering transparency only on the periphery and reserving true liquidity for the core exchange.

BlockBeats: Why are whales like James Wynn so keen on trading on Hyperliquid? Compared to other platforms like GMX or dYdX that also support on-chain perpetual contract trading, what sets Hyperliquid apart?

Ness: In Wynn’s case, the draw was less about spreads or funding rates and more about spectacle. Hyperliquid’s fully on‑chain order book broadcasts every large position in real time, turning a whale trade into a public drama that Crypto Twitter can follow tick‑by‑tick. Wynn embraced that visibility, by running an outsized long where anyone could track his liquidation price, he generated continuous engagement—memes, commentary, and millions of impressions that simply aren’t possible on semi‑opaque venues.

Some folks read the scheme as a cleverly staged marketing play. After amplifying the tension around his position, Wynn claimed that “market makers hunted” his size on Hyperliquid and urged traders to migrate to Binance; the timing is a bit off and I belive he was incentivised to deliver that message.

The Current State and Future Prospects of HyperEVM—A $BNB Contender?

BlockBeats: Some native assets have already gained traction on HyperEVM, such as the meme token $BUDDY and the NFT collection Hypio. Do you think HyperEVM can achieve the same level of popularity among degens as Solana or Base?

Ness: Honestly, I don’t play with meme tokens, so I wouldn’t know… But I believe that as HyperEVM's performance continues to improve, allowing it to handle more transactions or increase its gas limit, more people will be drawn to trading meme tokens or similar assets. For instance, a large part of Solana's success stemmed from that meme token boom, coupled with its network's capability to process thousands of on-chain transactions per second at extremely low gas costs.

Without meme tokens, user demand might not be as strong. I think Hyperliquid's community is very cohesive, and in the future, there will surely be meme tokens uniquely tied to HyperEVM that will emerge.

BlockBeats: What are your thoughts on HyperEVM's current state of development? Are there areas that need improvement?

Ness: Recently, more and more people have started trading meme coins on HyperEVM, which has led to a large number of transactions being sent into small blocks. However, these small blocks only have a Gas limit of 2 million, meaning the number of transactions each block can handle is very limited. Once these blocks are full, higher Gas fees are required.

At that time, Gas costs skyrocketed to around $20 per transaction, which was extremely high. Jeff and the entire team noticed this issue and acted quickly to make adjustments. They reduced the block time for small blocks from the previous 2 seconds to 1 second. This allowed more transactions to be processed faster and helped reduce the Gas pressure.

Whenever the community provides feedback like this, HyperEVM continues to improve and grow. The Hyperliquid team is always working hard to support the community as much as possible. Of course, they have their own development path and are focused on what they’re working on, while the community operates on its own. But when the community’s voice grows louder, the Hyperliquid team steps in to listen and help, and we are all very grateful for that.

BlockBeats: If we compare $HYPE with $BNB, do you think $HYPE is currently undervalued, overvalued, or fairly valued?

Ness: Undervalued.

Even if we simply compare blockchain-native tokens, $HYPE still has at least 5x upside potential. If we factor in Binance’s value as an exchange into $BNB, and simultaneously factor in Hyperliquid’s value as an exchange into $HYPE, I think the potential upside is even greater. Hyperliquid is currently buying back around $3 million worth of $HYPE every day, which equates to approximately $1 billion in annual buying pressure.

If this growth momentum continues, $HYPE’s market cap could reach a staggering level by the end of this year.

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