Original Title: "IOSG Weekly Brief | New Degen Arena: Hyperliquid #281"
Original Author: Mario, IOSG Ventures
· Hyperliquid is an ultra-fast on-chain perpetual contract DEX, running on its proprietary Layer 1, providing centralized exchange-level performance while maintaining on-chain transparency.
· Its native token $HYPE is responsible for network governance, reducing transaction fees after staking, and capturing value through listing auctions buybacks.
· The core liquidity of the protocol is the HLP Vault, a hybrid treasury combining liquidity provider and liquidator roles, accounting for over 90% of TVL.
· In March 2025, Hyperliquid experienced a severe black swan event: the $JELLYJELLY manipulation incident, which nearly triggered a cascade liquidation of the entire treasury.
· The event exposed centralization issues in validator governance: intervention by the Hyper Foundation averted a collapse, ensuring survival but sparking decentralization debates.
· However, post-crisis, Hyperliquid swiftly rebounded with whale stickiness and ecosystem expansion, setting new records for trading volume, open interest, and $HYPE price.
· Today, the platform (including HyperEVM) has onboarded over 21 new dApps, covering NFTs, DeFi tools, and treasury infrastructure, far surpassing a perpetual exchange's capabilities.
James Wynn is a renowned degen in the crypto community, an anonymous whale who turned $210 into $80 million in three years. His most famous feat was turning $7,000 of $PEPE into $25 million and consistently holding seven-figure positions with 40x leverage.[1]
Wynn often publicly displays his entry points, responds in real time to market fluctuations, and even shrugs off eight-figure liquidations. However, the key is not who Wynn is, but where he trades.
For Wynn and all high-leverage, high-position degen, Hyperliquid is the new arena. Anonymous whales (such as the "Insider") trade large positions on Hyperliquid, and their positions have now been seen by Chinese crypto media as a real-time market sentiment and platform dominance indicator.
So how did Hyperliquid get to this point? Why have high-risk traders chosen it?
Next, we will break it down step by step.
Hyperliquid is a decentralized exchange, but it does not use the AMM model like Uniswap.
It employs a fully on-chain order book mechanism, does not set prices through liquidity pools, but rather through on-chain matching, providing a real-time trading experience similar to a CEX. Limit orders, executions, cancellations, and settlements all occur transparently on-chain and can be settled within a single block.
Hyperliquid has built its own Layer 1 blockchain, also named "Hyperliquid," designed specifically for high performance. It is this feature that allows it to execute trades at the speed and stability demanded by high-frequency traders.
This performance is not just talk. By June 2025, Hyperliquid had a 78% share of the on-chain derivatives market, with a daily trading volume exceeding $5.5 billion.[2]
Hyperliquid is not just a trading platform but a complete on-chain financial system, with its core token being $HYPE.
Tokenomics and Philosophy
The total supply of $HYPE is 1 billion tokens, distributed in a large-scale airdrop (310M, 31%) to approximately 94,000 users in November 2024, making it one of the most evenly distributed projects in recent years.[3]
A total of 70% is allocated to community airdrops, incentives, and contributors: no VC. This is part of founder Jeffrey Yan's clear philosophy. He is a Harvard math graduate and former Hudson River Trading high-frequency trading engineer.
Yan has publicly stated: "Allowing VCs to control the network would be a scar." He aims to build a financial system that is "built by users, also owned by users".[4]
This "Community First + Protocol Performance" concept is also reflected in the $HYPE token's design: it serves not only as a governance tool but also as a practical utility token.
Utility
In addition to its governance function, $HYPE is also directly used to reduce transaction fees. Users can stake $HYPE to receive fee discounts.
Furthermore, $HYPE is also at the core of network security. Hyperliquid operates on a Proof-of-Stake consensus mechanism, where staking $HYPE is not just for fee reduction or earning rewards; it is the foundation of the entire block generation mechanism.
To become a validator, the following conditions must be met:
· Stake at least 10,000 $HYPE tokens
· Pass KYC/KYB identity verification
· Set up a highly available infrastructure (including multiple non-validator nodes)
Node performance is continuously monitored and stake distribution is managed through the Hyper Foundation's delegation program. The current annual staking rewards for validators are approximately 2.5%, following a reward curve similar to the Ethereum model design.
a. HIP-1 Auction Mechanism: Decentralized Listing Process
One of the most unique and often underestimated mechanisms of Hyperliquid is its auction-based listing system: HIP-1.
This mechanism uses an on-chain Dutch auction to determine the eligibility of a new token listing:
· Starting price is twice the last closing price;
· Linear price reduction over 31 hours, reaching a minimum of 10,000 USDC;
· The first wallet address to accept the current price gains the right to create and list the token.
Unlike centralized exchanges (such as Binance and Coinbase) that operate in a black box manner and charge high listing fees, HIP-1 listing is entirely transparent, requires no negotiation, and has no insider allocations.
For example, by the end of 2024, Moonrock Capital's CEO accused Binance of demanding 15% of a Tier 1 project's tokens as a listing fee (equivalent to approximately $50 million to $100 million). Coinbase was also rumored to require up to a $300 million listing fee.[6]
Even though Binance introduced the "Batch Vote to List" mechanism, there still exists an opaque issue where only 2 projects were voted in but 4 were actually listed.
Meanwhile, on Hyperliquid:
· The auction process is fully on-chain and executed entirely by smart contracts;
· 100% of the listing fee goes into the Assistance Fund and is used to buy back and burn $HYPE tokens;
· There is no team allocation or reserved quota.
Compared to other protocols where listing fees are mostly obtained by the team and VCs, Hyperliquid's fee distribution logic is as follows:
· All fees are community-owned: shared among HLP, the Assistance Fund, and spot issuers.
However, despite the transparent mechanism, Hyperliquid's spot market still faces significant challenges:
· Most auction closing prices are close to the floor price (e.g., 500 $HYPE), indicating limited interest in spot listing in the market;
· Very low trading volume of tokens after listing;
· New listing information is not prominently displayed on the official page, leading to low visibility;
· The current spot market only accounts for 2% of the total DEX spot trading volume, with 84% of it being the $HYPE/USDC pair.
If Hyperliquid wants to truly challenge centralized exchanges' listing status, it must enhance UI visibility, activity, and secondary market linkage.
b. Vault Mechanism
Hyperliquid not only serves active traders, but also provides users with a way to earn passive income through the vault system, allowing funds to participate in algorithmic trading strategies.
Currently, there are two types of vaults:
1. User-created Vaults: Anyone can initiate a vault and use the liquidity pool for trading. Investors share profits and losses proportionally, while vault managers can take 10% of the profits as a management fee. To ensure alignment of interests, managers must self-stake a minimum of 5% of the vault's Total Value Locked (TVL). This model is similar to "Copy Trading" on centralized exchanges.
2. HLP (Hyperliquidity Provider): HLP vaults operate market-making strategies on Hyperliquid. While the strategy execution is currently off-chain, their holdings, orders, trade history, deposits, and withdrawals are all transparently recorded on-chain and open to audit by anyone. Anyone can provide liquidity to HLP and share profits and losses proportionally. HLP does not charge any management fees, and all profits and losses are distributed proportionally based on each provider's share in the vault.
Currently, HLP represents 91% of Hyperliquid's total TVL. The strategies are divided into two categories:
# Market Making:
· Continuously provide buy/sell orders;
· Earn the bid/ask spread.
Liquidation:
· When a user's margin falls below the maintenance margin, the platform attempts to liquidate via limit orders;
· If a position falls below 66% of the maintenance margin, the system triggers the liquidation vault to take over the position;
· HLP attempts limit order liquidation to reduce slippage and risk;
· If the risk is too high and cannot be managed, the Auto-Deleveraging (ADL) mechanism is triggered for forced position reduction.
In summary, HLP = Liquidity Provider + Liquidator.
· As a Liquidity Provider, HLP continuously provides liquidity (by quoting both sides);
· As a Liquidator, HLP takes over the positions of liquidated users and handles the deleveraging process.
The revenue structure of the Hyperliquid platform is as follows:
· Trading Fees (Taker/Maker): allocated to HLP depositors;
· Auction and Spot Trading Fees: 100% goes to the rescue fund for $HYPE buyback and burn;
· No team commission/treasury fee cut, unlike most DEXs.
Performance of HLP
We measure the actual protocol revenue of HLP through "Hedged PnL." This data does not include unrealized PnL from market fluctuations and only includes:
· Taker/Maker trading fees;
· Funding rate income;
· Liquidation fees, etc.
Therefore, it reflects the protocol's true "Alpha" capability.
The data shows that during the bull market of 2025, HLP's daily net position is usually negative, indicating that it was predominantly shorting the market most of the time. This is because the platform had a large number of limit buy orders, causing HLP to passively take sell orders, resulting in an overall bearish exposure.
In March, we can clearly see a massive spike with a net nominal exposure close to -$50 million. This was on the day of the $JELLYJELLY event when Hyperliquid was almost breached.
As mentioned earlier, HLP accounts for over 90% of the TVL on Hyperliquid while simultaneously serving as the platform's primary source of liquidity and liquidation duties. Such a high level of concentration poses a systemic risk: if HLP fails, the entire platform could collapse.
We can see that the HLP TVL accounts for approximately 75% of the total TVL on the entire hypeliquid chain.
This was starkly exposed during the $JELLYJELLY Event in March 2025. The event was a carefully orchestrated exploit that nearly led to a systemic cascade liquidation of the entire HLP treasury.
The event unfolded as follows:
· $JELLYJELLY was a meme + ICM project on Solana, with a market cap that once reached $250 million but later plummeted to $10 million with very low liquidity;
· The attacker deposited 3.5 million USDC as collateral on Hyperliquid;
· They shorted $JELLYJELLY at a price of $0.0095, with a short amount of approximately $4.08 million;
· Simultaneously, they bought a large amount of spot, causing the spot price to skyrocket. They then withdrew the collateral, triggering a forced liquidation of the position, which was taken over by HLP;
· There were no buy orders on the market, leading HLP to passively hold a massive short position;
· The unrealized losses at the time were as high as $10 million, and if the price continued to rise, it would trigger a platform-wide chain liquidation.
Ultimately, Hyperliquid urgently issued a notice stating that they experienced "abnormal market behavior" and promptly coordinated with validators to vote to delist the JELLY contract and force liquidation.
However, the key point was: the liquidation price was not based on the on-chain price but an internal peg of $0.0095, effectively marking $JELLYJELLY down by 80% manually.
While this allowed HLP to escape with a small profit, it also triggered intense governance inquiries:
· Who can manually alter contract execution?
· Is Oracle pricing reliable?
· If a contract can be delisted, does decentralization still hold meaning? Is validator governance essentially meaningless?
This event not only challenged the stability of HLP but also shook the foundation of decentralization that Hyperliquid purported to uphold.
During the $JELLYJELLY liquidation process, the Hyperliquid validator group swiftly coordinated:
· Pause contract trading;
· Override oracle data;
· Manually delist assets and liquidate positions.
But here lies a fatal reality: most validators are directly related to the Hyper Foundation.
According to on-chain data at the time of the event:
· Hyper Foundation controlled 5 out of 16 validators;
· The total staking ratio reached 78.5%; [10]
· Even by June 2025, it still controlled approximately 65.3% of the staking ratio.
Therefore, the so-called validator governance is essentially more akin to an "internal emergency response mechanism" rather than true decentralization.
The community has also pointed out: since assets can be forcefully delisted and prices changed, is Hyperliquid merely a "DEX architecture + CEX execution"?
While this centralized governance avoided a systemic collapse, users have begun to question the long-term credibility of Hyperliquid. After the event, HLP's TVL experienced a significant decline, and users withdrew funds to hedge against risks.
In the crypto space, being questioned is not fatal, but being "replaced" is.
After the $JELLYJELLY short squeeze event in March 2025, Hyperliquid's HLP treasury was nearly emptied, and its governance mechanism was embroiled in centralization controversy. Many believed its time was over. On April 7, $HYPE briefly fell to $9, saturating the market with FUD and concerns about treasury risk.
However, just over a month later, $HYPE surged back to over $35, hitting a new all-time high and reclaiming its position in the top 20 FDV crypto assets.
What allowed Hyperliquid to turn the tide?
Even amidst the most intense moments of the $JELLYJELLY event, Hyperliquid still maintained around 9% of Binance perpetual contract trading volume, which is not just data but also a signal:
Despite a platform trust crisis erupting, institutional traders, whales, and KOLs continue to use Hyperliquid.
Why? Because it meets the core needs of the current market: high-performance derivative trading + no KYC required + extremely strong capital efficiency.
Unlike centralized exchanges like Binance or OKX, these platforms:
· Require identity verification;
· Restrict access from certain regions;
· Sometimes even freeze user assets.
Hyperliquid offers freedom while still maintaining matching speed and depth similar to a CEX.
Therefore, it is highly attractive to the following users:
· Whales seeking anonymity and leverage;
· Institutions requiring programmatic trading (e.g., Binance in the Hong Kong region unable to obtain API authorization Type 7);
· KOLs relying on transparent trade records to build influence: forming a "Capital + Discourse Power Flywheel".
Even after the crisis, these users not only did not leave but became even more active. The meme coin market driven by figures like James Wynn has made Hyperliquid the core battleground for on-chain speculation.
In fact, the $JELLYJELLY event proved one thing: Hyperliquid is the only on-chain platform that can "withstand a blow" like centralized exchanges.
Whales have nowhere to escape even if they are bearish because currently, the only platform with enough liquidity to support their operations is still Hyperliquid.
Hyperliquid has never touted itself as "pure DeFi"; its goal is to be a user-centric experiential DEX.
Therefore, it made a practical trade-off: sacrificing some decentralization for high throughput, low-latency execution performance.
While this point is controversial, it has clearly proven effective.
As Foresight News put it: [12] "To survive in a black swan event, someone has to wield the sword."
Hyperliquid explicitly stated its willingness to be the "sword bearer," and when the protocol faced a cascading crisis, it chose to preserve its life through manual coordination and top-down intervention.
This is not a review but rather operational resilience.
Take Sui Network, for example: On May 22, 2025, Sui's validators voted on a proposal to forcibly recover the $220 million stolen from the DEX aggregator Cetus due to an attack. The proposal allowed validators to override wallet control, revoke the hacker's access to $160 million of frozen funds, and the entire operation was referred to as "hacking the hacker," sparking intense debate.
This "hacker counterattack" triggered widespread controversy: some criticized it for violating DeFi principles, while others saw it as a necessary self-rescue measure for the system.
So, is Sui decentralized? Probably not.
But that's the point: every high-performance blockchain must make trade-offs.
Speed, liquidity, UX, protocol security—cannot all be maximized simultaneously.
The key is: are these trade-offs transparent and effective?
Hyperliquid's validators are mostly controlled by the Hyper Foundation, posing centralization risks. However, this is also the reason they were able to quickly respond to the $JELLYJELLY crisis.
Users voted with their wallets: despite facing FUD, Hyperliquid's open interest, TVL, and fee income reached all-time highs in May.
In a true emergency, most users do not care if the system is "perfectly decentralized"; they only care about one thing: can this system save me?
Although governance remains somewhat centralized, Hyperliquid is no longer just a derivatives platform.
According to Cryptorank data, in the past 3 months, 21 new projects have been deployed on Hyperliquid, bringing the total number of projects in the ecosystem to over 80, covering:
· DeFi
· GameFi
· NFT
· Development Tools
· Analytics Platforms
The NFT project Milady has also launched on its chain, named Wealthy Hypio Babies, with the floor price steadily rising, reflecting strong on-chain native liquidity and a highly engaged community.
Despite governance disputes and a large-scale liquidation crisis, developers and users continue to believe that Hyperliquid is a high-performance, promising Layer1.
Centralized exchanges (CEXs) frequently face insolvencies, leading to continued loss of user trust and accelerating the migration to DEXs.
· FTX's collapse in 2022 demonstrated that even leading exchanges could crumble overnight, freezing user assets;
· Over the past decade, CEXs have experienced 118 hacks, resulting in losses exceeding $11 billion, far surpassing on-chain attacks;
· Every withdrawal suspension and asset freeze serves as a reminder to users: custodial platforms come with inherent third-party risks.
With the improvement of payment infrastructure, many people in the future may not even need to cash out to fiat currencies.
By 2024, self-custody wallet users surged by 47%, with over 400 million active addresses; in January 2025, DEX trading volumes hit a historic high. Users vote with their feet, moving towards self-custody of assets and on-chain trading.
The original intention of blockchain was decentralization, self-control of assets, and trustless transactions. However, many people in the past used CEXs as wallets for convenience, disregarding the essence of "not your keys, not your coins."
Today, this perception is changing. With infrastructure maturing and more on-chain opportunities arising, self-custody is not only a secure measure but also an entry point for "early participation, high returns," such as airdrops and meme coins.
For example, when $TRUMP was listed on a CEX, it was already above $20, but on-chain users' early entry cost was much lower.
This trend indicates that convenience often means missing out, while control is being proactive.
The shift from centralization to on-chain in the future is no longer just a conceptual issue but a choice based on returns and efficiency.
Even after the $JELLYJELLY crisis, users still stayed on Hyperliquid, and DEXs like dYdX and GMX did not see user outflows.
Hyperliquid got three key things right:
A truly community-oriented token model
Hyperliquid is one of the very few DeFi projects launched with no VC investment.
· No early allocation, no private sale rounds;
· Over 70% of $HYPE is allocated to the community, with 31% airdropped to 94,000 addresses, averaging ~$45,000 per wallet.
This has led to three major effects:
1. Building a sticky user base through Season 1/2 point farming;
2. Having stable buybacks from the start (unlike dydx which lacks this mechanism);
4. No VC sell-off pressure (in contrast: dYdX has over 50% allocated internally, GMX over 30%).
In summary: Users are not just users but also "owners."
CEX-level trading experience with no CEX risk
Hyperliquid achieves: Binance's speed, on-chain deployment.
· GMX faces AMM inefficiency issues;
· dYdX v3 is off-chain matching;
· UI/UX latency is noticeable.
This has attracted whales (like James Wynn holding over a billion), liquidity providers, and HFT high-frequency traders.
Even after the crisis, Hyperliquid's depth and slippage control still lead the way (slippage is only ~0.05%).
Product Depth: More than Just Perpetual
By early 2025, Hyperliquid will launch several new modules:
· Launch of the spot market; release of HyperEVM for DeFi developers to use;
· Introduction of the HLP Treasury and copy trading system;
· Introduction of the meme coin standard (HIP-1), supporting spot + perpetual integrated trading;
· Establishment of a real-time rate-supported insurance fund (used for $HYPE buyback and burn).
These constitute the "all-in-one DeFi trading platform":
· A UI for simultaneous trading of BTC spot, ETH perpetual, meme coins;
· Participation in HLP or copy trading of top traders;
· A wallet that handles all operations, fast, cheap, gas-free.
In comparison, dYdX or GMX are more like a "single protocol," while Hyperliquid has long evolved into a multifunctional ecosystem.
HyperEVM is the smart contract layer launched by Hyperliquid, supporting EVM-compatible dApp development, forming a three-layer architecture with the core trading layer HyperCore and the consensus layer HyperBFT:
· HyperCore: Core assets and matching engine, all assets first enter here, equivalent to "exchange balance."
· HyperEVM: Smart contract execution layer, supporting DeFi, NFT, GameFi, and other modules.
· HyperBFT: BFT consensus mechanism based on HotStuff, optimizing low latency, high throughput transaction execution.
Assets must be manually transferred from HyperCore to HyperEVM to interact with smart contracts, with gas fees paid in $HYPE.
External Chain → HyperCore → HyperEVM
a. External Chain → HyperCore
Common supported chains include Ethereum, Arbitrum, Solana, Bitcoin, supported assets include USDC, ETH, BTC, SOL, etc.
b. HyperCore → HyperEVM
External Chain → Directly Deposit into HyperEVM (e.g., using deBridge)
DEX (Non-Perpetual)
· Hyperswap: Supports listing of new tokens, provides liquidity mining incentives
· Liquidswap: Aggregator-type DEX, routes across multiple pools
DeFi Protocols
· Hyperlend / Felix / Hypurr.fi: Support various composability such as lending, LP, etc.
#Launchpad
· Liquidlaunch: Early project launch platform
As DeFi, stablecoin, NFT protocols continue to deploy on HyperEVM, on-chain transactions become more active, and the consumption of $HYPE as the gas payment token continues to rise, forming a deflationary logic. All gas fees (including base fee and priority fee) will be burned.
In addition, future airdrops may also reference EVM activity, further driving user and developer migration.
This means that HyperEVM is not just feature completion, but brings true network effects and a narrative flywheel:
New project deployment → Increased gas consumption → Support $HYPE value → Attract more users → Attract more developers → Repeat
While $HYPE remains the core asset capturing the value of the Hyperliquid system, emerging tokens on HyperEVM (such as $LIQD, the governance and incentive token for the LiquidSwap ecosystem, distributed to stakers in $HYPE) provide higher Beta exposure to ecosystem growth. These tokens typically represent: a localized revenue-sharing model, DeFi foundational assets, early liquidity opportunities.
With the appreciation of $HYPE, these tokens may benefit in several ways:
· Increased trading volume and user inflow, enhancing token utility and fee-capture ability;
· Earnings rates (APY) pegged to $HYPE increase, as demonstrated in $LIQD staking;
· Speculative upside potential as traders rotate into smaller-cap ecosystem projects;
· Airdrops or governance incentives related to early usage.
In a fast-paced compounding ecosystem like HyperEVM, these "sell-water" type tokens (driven by $HYPE-fueled Gas fees but not strongly correlated in token design) may potentially outperform $HYPE itself in the early cycles.
For example, if $HYPE doubles, a sub $100M FDV $LIQD with growing paired liquidity could potentially see a 4x increase.
These tokens are not just vampire projects, but rather amplifiers of ecosystem growth—more usage → more gas → more $HYPE burn.
Creating a positive feedback loop.
While many see Hyperliquid as "just another DEX" or "emerging L1," fee data tells a different story:
Hyperliquid ranks seventh in fees across all protocols in the last 30 days ($69.15 million), surpassing Tron, Solana, and even the leading staking protocol Lido.
And this doesn't even include the revenue from the HLP Vault and HyperEVM, indicating that its revenue potential has not been fully unleashed yet.
From a valuation perspective, Hyperliquid's fundamentals can already rival mainstream L1s, but its true potential lies in becoming the first DeFi-native trading platform that can match CEXs in terms of trading experience, fees, and execution.
Most DEXs still rely on the swap model, with poor liquidity, while Hyperliquid has built a real orderbook + HLP2 mechanism, keeping cross-chain slippage under 0.3% and eliminating the need for frequent wallet switching.
We believe that Hyperliquid is becoming the one-stop on-chain trading platform, from spot to perpetual, and across the entire ecosystem.
In a sense, it's not about beating Uniswap; it's about aiming directly at Binance.[16]
Even if you want to go all in on the next "perpetual DEX explosion," I believe the DEX dividend has already ended.
Four main reasons:
1. Market Share Dominance: Holding 80% of on-chain perpetual trading volume, weekly volume>$600 billion, forming a liquidity → user → liquidity closed-loop flywheel. New projects looking to enter need to first make up for tens of billions in daily trading volume—an incredibly challenging task.
2. Irreplicable Economic Model: No VC, self-funded launch, not a meme, but rather built true trust and long-term consistency. New DEXs need fundraising, token issuance, reserved shares, due diligence disclosures, token incentives… the user structure is entirely different.
3. Top-tier Founding Team: Founders from HRT, MIT, Caltech, with high-frequency trading backgrounds directly designing CEX-level infrastructure. Founder "Jeff" has revealed that his network is made up of seasoned traders, who became the earliest users and sources of feedback, making it difficult for others to replicate this "moat."
4. Mature Product Ecosystem: Hyperliquid is not just a DEX, but a complete high-performance L1 - with its underlying architecture, user base, and governance model already self-consistent.
Welcome to join the official BlockBeats community:
Telegram Subscription Group: https://t.me/theblockbeats
Telegram Discussion Group: https://t.me/BlockBeats_App
Official Twitter Account: https://twitter.com/BlockBeatsAsia