Original Article Title: "In-Depth Analysis: PerpDEX Shakeup Moment, What's Next for Hyperliquid?"

Original Article Author: Biteye

Global Perpetual DEX Market Overview and Industry Transformation

The decentralized perpetual trading market is undergoing an unprecedented surge in growth and a reshaping of the competitive landscape. As of September 2025, the global perp DEX daily trading volume has exceeded $520 billion, representing a 530% increase from the beginning of the year, with a total monthly trading volume reaching $130 trillion. Behind this growth are breakthroughs in technological innovation, the growing demand from users for decentralized financial products, and regulatory pressure on centralized exchanges. The sector now holds approximately 26% of the cryptocurrency derivatives market, a significant leap from single-digit percentages in 2024.

Perp DEX Total Trading Volume Change https://defillama.com/perps

The rapid differentiation of the market is reshaping the competitive landscape. Traditional order book models (such as dYdX, Hyperliquid) dominate the professional trading sector with precise price discovery and deep liquidity, while AMM models (such as GMX, Gains Network) attract retail users through instant liquidity and simplified operations. Emerging hybrid models (such as Jupiter Perps) attempt to combine the strengths of both by seamlessly switching between an order book and AMM through a keeper system in a high-speed environment. In terms of data performance, the order book model is gaining more market share, with Hyperliquid processing a cumulative trading volume of $2.76 trillion through its CLOB architecture.

Aster DEX Rise and Market Impact

The protocol Aster, formed by the merger of APX Finance and Astherus, has rapidly risen to the top through a multi-chain aggregation strategy and the support of YZi Labs, especially CZ. On the token launch day, September 17, it saw a 1650% price increase, $3.71 billion in first-day trading volume, and 330,000 new wallet addresses, demonstrating its strong market acquisition capabilities.

Aster's technological innovation is mainly reflected in the improvement of user experience. Its Simple mode offers leverage of up to 1001x, far exceeding Hyperliquid's 40-50x. Although the risk is substantial, it is highly attractive to speculators seeking high returns. The hidden order feature borrows from the concept of dark pools in traditional finance, effectively protecting large trades from MEV attacks. The yield aggregator feature allows users to use interest-bearing assets like asBNB as collateral, earning 5-7% base yield while trading, maximizing DeFi's composability.

In terms of data performance, Aster's TVL surged from $370 million on September 14 to $17.35 billion, a 328% increase, with 80% of the funds coming from the BNB Chain. The daily trading volume has repeatedly exceeded $20 billion, surpassing Hyperliquid at one point to become the world's largest perpetual DEX, with 24-hour fee revenue of $7.12 million. More importantly, Aster has accumulated a total perpetual trading volume of $19.383 billion in just a few months, although there is still a gap from Hyperliquid's $27.6 trillion, the growth rate is remarkable.

In community discussions, traders have shown a clear preference for the two platforms. Professional traders tend to favor Hyperliquid, believing that its "one-block confirmation" and deep liquidity are essential for professional trading. In contrast, cross-chain users and newcomers prefer Aster for its multi-chain support without the need for bridging and its CEX-like user experience significantly lowering the entry barrier.

Hyperliquid: Technologically Advanced but Market Share Under Pressure

As a pioneer in the perpetual DEX sector, Hyperliquid has redefined the possibilities of on-chain derivative trading through its innovative HyperCore architecture. HyperCore has achieved a processing capacity of 200,000 orders per second and a delay of 0.2 seconds, performance metrics that even surpass many centralized exchanges. With a cumulative perpetual trading volume of $2.765 trillion, current open interest of $133.5 billion, and 24-hour trading volume of $15.6 billion, these data fully demonstrate the success of its technological architecture and user trust.

However, Hyperliquid is facing the challenge of continued market share decline. Its market share in the perpetual DEX market has dropped from 71% in May 2025 and 80% in August to the current 38%, mainly due to the rapid rise of emerging competitors and the success of its multi-chain strategy. Especially in terms of daily trading volume and fee revenue, Hyperliquid has been surpassed by Aster DEX multiple times, a change that was unimaginable in the past.

Perpdex Trading Volume Statistics perpetualpulse.xyz

Despite facing challenges, Hyperliquid's advantages remain evident. It has the deepest liquidity, with major asset spreads like BTC/ETH as low as 0.1-0.2 basis points; the most stable technological architecture, with one-block confirmation providing traders unparalleled certainty; the most mature ecosystem, with over 100 projects building a complete DeFi infrastructure on its platform. More importantly, its deflationary token model uses 99% of protocol revenue for HYPE buyback burn, with an annual revenue scale of $20.1 billion providing strong support for the token's value.

From a user quality perspective, Hyperliquid demonstrates higher user value. Among its 825,000 daily active addresses, the monthly active users reach 3.651 million, and the Open Interest to Volume ratio stands at 287%, far above the industry average. This metric indicates that Hyperliquid's users are more genuine risk hedging demand rather than short-term speculative trading. In contrast, Aster's ratio is only 12%, although its daily trading volume is higher, its user behavior tends more towards short-term arbitrage.

Facing competitive pressure, Hyperliquid is also actively adjusting its strategy. The upcoming HIP-3 (Permissionless Perpetual Market) will allow anyone to deploy custom perpetual contracts, which may bring innovative products such as RWA perpetuals, AI hashrate futures, and reignite ecosystem vitality. The launch of the USDH native stablecoin will further improve its financial infrastructure, expected to manage $5.5 billion in funds, with 95% of the revenue used for HYPE buybacks, significantly enhancing the token's value support.

In this intense market competition environment, Hyperliquid's true moat is not just the technology itself but the complete ecosystem built around the core protocol. From the original pure perpetual trading platform to today's comprehensive DeFi ecosystem with over 100 projects, Hyperliquid has formed a self-contained financial infrastructure. This ecosystem includes everything from infrastructure, DeFi protocols to application layer full-stack solutions, with each component contributing to the value accumulation and user stickiness of the entire network.

Based on this background, this article will delve into the core projects and innovative applications in the Hyperliquid ecosystem, exploring how these projects are building a sustainable competitive advantage for Hyperliquid in fierce market competition, and how they are collectively shaping the future of decentralized derivative trading.

Deep Dive into Hyperliquid Core Ecosystem Projects

1. Kinetiq - Liquidity Staking Ecosystem Pillar (TVL: $17.57 Billion)

Kinetiq's position in the Hyperliquid ecosystem is unshakable, with its $17.57 billion TVL accounting for approximately 78% of the entire ecosystem, becoming the core hub of ecosystem fund flow. As the ecosystem's "Jito," Kinetiq has redefined the validator delegation mechanism through its innovative StakeHub algorithm, achieving unprecedented efficiency and yield optimization.

The core of the StakeHub algorithm lies in the precise design of a multidimensional scoring system. This system conducts real-time scoring of over 100 active validators based on metrics such as Reliability (40% weight), Security (25% weight), Economic Performance (15% weight), Governance Participation (10% weight), and Operational History (10% weight), dynamically adjusting fund allocation strategies. The algorithm not only considers validators' historical performance but also predicts their future stability. Through a machine learning model that continuously optimizes weight allocation, it ensures that delegated funds always flow to the highest quality validators.

Kinetiq Node Performance https://kinetiq.xyz/validators

The protocol's reward structure is highly robust and market-leading in competitiveness. The base PoS reward offers an approximately 2.3% annualized return, putting it at the forefront among similar LST projects. StakeHub optimizes this by providing an additional 0.2-0.5% enhanced reward by avoiding underperforming validators. MEV income contributes about a 1% annualized return, derived from the MEV extraction mechanism of the Hyperliquid network. Furthermore, integration rewards with other DeFi protocols can provide a variable bonus of 6-8%, allowing the total yield to reach 10-12%, making it highly competitive in the current DeFi landscape.

In terms of user experience, Kinetiq has achieved the pinnacle of simplification. Users stake HYPE to receive kHYPE tokens with a slight premium of 1:0.996, reflecting the market's additional valuation of liquidity staked tokens and confidence in the protocol's security. The unstaking mechanism features a 7-day security delay and a 0.1% fee, ensuring network security while providing users with a reasonable exit strategy.

Kinetiq's Total Value Locked (TVL) has skyrocketed from $458 million in July to the current $1.81 billion, witnessing a threefold increase in just two months. This growth is primarily attributed to the integration effect of the Pendle protocol, which, through its PT/YT separation mechanism, has created additional liquidity demand and revenue strategies for kHYPE.

Kinetiq TVL Growth Overview  https://defillama.com/protocol/tvl/kinetiq

The upcoming $KNTQ governance token provides a key tool for the protocol's decentralized governance and long-term value creation. It is expected that 30-50% of the token supply will be distributed to the community through airdrops, with perks given to token holders, early users, and kHYPE stakers. The core features of $KNTQ include protocol upgrade voting, MEV route strategy decision-making, and HIP-3 market planning authority. This delegation of governance will further enhance the protocol's decentralization and community engagement.

Interaction: Users stake HYPE through kinetiq.xyz to earn kHYPE, supporting instant minting and a 7-day unlock period. The protocol also provides a kPoints points system, weekly points distribution in preparation for the upcoming $KNTQ airdrop, with points earned through various dimensions such as staking amount and duration held.

2. Based - Mobile Super App and Ecosystem Gateway

As the top-earning Builder app on Hyperliquid, Based24 has a 24-hour revenue of approximately $90,300, ranking first among all third-party apps. It has accumulated a perpetual trading volume exceeding $16.699 billion, with a 24-hour perpetual trading volume of $321 million, accounting for about 7% of Hyperliquid's total trading volume, reflecting the high net worth and deep engagement of its user base. Its revenue model is based on Hyperliquid's Builder fee-sharing system, offering up to a 0.1% perpetual trading fee and a 1% spot trading fee split, with most of the income returned to users through an affiliate marketing plan, creating a sustainable incentive structure for a win-win-win scenario among users, the platform, and Based. With a 7-day revenue of $2.22 million and a 30-day revenue of $6.71 million, these metrics not only demonstrate the robustness of its business model but also show its critical role as a revenue contributor in the Hyperliquid ecosystem.

Based Trading Interface https://www.basedapp.io/

Based's tokenomics design embodies a deep understanding of user behavior and innovative incentive mechanisms. The $PUP token, as an XP bonus tool, completed an airdrop on August 22, 2025, with a total supply of 100 million tokens, of which 5% is allocated to early users and community contributors. The primary role of $PUP is to enhance user XP acquisition efficiency, providing a 25-60% points multiplier boost, allowing holders to earn more rewards in activities such as trading and consumption. $BASED, as the main governance token, will be allocated based on the user's total XP, with a snapshot date of September 20, 2025, where perpetual trading contributes 0.06 XP for every $1 nominal trading volume, spot trading contributes 0.30 XP for every $1 trading volume (5x incentive), and Visa spending contributes 4-6 points for every $1 spent (converted to XP at TGE).

This dual-token mechanism cleverly combines short-term incentives ($PUP bonus) and long-term governance ($BASED allocation) together, with $PUP holders essentially receiving a "leveraged" airdrop of $BASED, further strengthening user loyalty and ecosystem stickiness. Within the community, the circulating market cap of $PUP is around $5 million, with a price stable around $0.05, demonstrating a robust demand for its utility, while $BASED has an expected total supply of 1 billion tokens, with a community allocation of up to 40%, expected to be fairly distributed to active users through the XP system.

Interaction: Users can download the mobile app or visit the web terminal through based.markets, register an account using an email, and support one-click deposit of multi-chain assets. The trading interface is designed similar to traditional financial apps, providing spot and perpetual trading functions. Users can also apply for a Visa debit card (existing users should note the November deactivation schedule) for fiat currency consumption. The XP system displays point progress in real-time, and $PUP holders can activate bonuses in their wallets to enhance reward efficiency.

3. Pendle - Yield Tokenization Protocol Giant

Pendle's successful deployment on HyperEVM marks the mature application of the yield tokenization concept in the Hyperliquid ecosystem, representing a new height of DeFi product complexity and innovation. The protocol separates interest-bearing assets like kHYPE into PT (Principal Tokens) and YT (Yield Tokens), providing investors with precise tools for fixed-income investments and yield speculation. In just a few months, Pendle's TVL on HyperEVM has grown from zero to $12.3 billion, with a 30-day growth rate of 76.27%.

Pendle TVL Distribution Across Chains: https://defillama.com/protocol/tvl/pendle

The synergy between Pendle and Kinetiq is a key factor in its rapid success within the Hyperliquid ecosystem. This synergy is not only reflected in complementary product offerings but more importantly, it has created a new value capture mechanism. By tokenizing kHYPE into PT and YT, Pendle offers liquidity stakers more diversified yield strategy options, while creating new avenues for earning Kinetiq points through the Kinetiq scoring system. Users holding YT-kHYPE can enjoy all the benefits of Kinetiq point rewards without being exposed to principal volatility, while PT-kHYPE holders enjoy the certainty of fixed income, enabling them to build stable yield strategies.

The Pendle product matrix continues to expand, showcasing its strategic intent for deep integration with the Hyperliquid ecosystem. In addition to the mainstream kHYPE market, the protocol has also gradually supported the yield tokenization of ecosystem-native assets such as feUSD, hwHLP, beHYPE, and more. Each new asset addition creates new yield farming strategies and arbitrage opportunities, further driving the activity and composability of the entire ecosystem. In particular, with the emergence of more LST and yield-bearing assets, Pendle has provided standardized yield separation tools for these assets, becoming a crucial bridge connecting different protocols.

Interaction: Users can access the protocol through app.pendle.finance, select the Hyperliquid network, and separate their held interest-bearing assets into PT/YT, or directly trade these tokenized yield products on the secondary market. The protocol provides an intuitive yield curve and maturity date information to assist users in making investment decisions.

Pendle's Yield Token on HyperrEVM https://app.pendle.finance/trade/markets?chains=hyperevm

4. HyperLend - Core Lending Infrastructure

HyperLend, as the "credit bank" of the Hyperliquid ecosystem, plays a crucial role in the entire DeFi infrastructure, providing core support for the ecosystem's liquidity circulation and capital efficiency enhancement. The protocol adopts the market-proven Aave V3 forked architecture but has been deeply optimized and innovated for the high-performance environment and unique asset characteristics of Hyperliquid. Its most significant technological breakthrough is prominently reflected in the HyperLoop feature, where this innovative mechanism enables one-click leverage cycling through flash loans, providing advanced users with unprecedented capital efficiency tools while maintaining operational simplicity.

The architecture design of HyperLend embodies a delicate balance between risk management and capital efficiency. The protocol innovatively adopts a dual-pool structure: a unified liquidity pool dedicated to efficient lending of core assets like HYPE, kHYPE, USDC, etc., significantly reducing transaction slippage and increasing capital utilization through a shared liquidity mechanism; the isolated risk pool specifically deals with assets with higher volatility or greater risk, supporting fully customizable risk parameter settings to ensure that a risk event of a single asset will not impact the overall system's stability.

The technological implementation of the HyperLoop feature showcases the ultimate application of DeFi composability and a significant improvement in user experience. Through a simple and intuitive interface, users can engage in a protocol that automatically executes a complex atomic operation sequence in the background: first, borrowing the target debt asset using a flash loan mechanism, then swapping it through the built-in DEX aggregator for the desired yield-generating asset that the user wishes to hold, supplying that asset as collateral to the protocol's respective pool, borrowing more debt assets based on the newly added collateral, and finally repaying the initial flash loan. This entire complex operation sequence is atomically completed within a single block, allowing users to easily achieve 3-5x leverage without the complexity, time costs, and gas fees associated with manual operations.

HyperLoop's one-click loop lending interface https://app.hyperlend.finance/hyperloop

From asset composition and operational efficiency data, HyperLend demonstrates a healthy and stable development trend and good market adaptability. Its total TVL of $5.24 billion is mainly composed of wstHYPE ($2.54 billion, 48%) and native HYPE ($2.06 billion, 39%), whereby this asset distribution clearly reflects the importance of LST within the ecosystem and the strong demand for native token liquidity. The current total borrowing volume is $2.67 billion, with an overall utilization rate of 48%, a level that falls within the healthy operating range of DeFi lending protocols, ensuring sufficient liquidity to meet withdrawal demands while optimizing fund utilization for reasonable yield returns.

HyperLend's protocol scale https://hyperlend.blockanalitica.com/

HyperLend's revenue model demonstrates a clear and sustainable business value creation capacity. The protocol's annual revenue is $15.89 million, with diversified and stable revenue sources, primarily including interest rate spread income, liquidation fee income, and flash loan fee income. Particularly noteworthy is its flash loan fee set at 0.04%, significantly lower than Aave's 0.09% standard fee rate. This competitive pricing strategy maintains market competitiveness while providing users with better cost efficiency, attracting more high-frequency trading and arbitrage activities. The protocol has also designed a robust governance points system, running continuously for 22 weeks, accumulating points in preparation for the upcoming $HPL governance token airdrop, with 3.5% of the token supply reserved for the Aave DAO.

Interaction: Users interact with hyperlend.finance through their wallet, supporting deposit to earn interest, borrowing, and the HyperLoop one-click leverage feature. The interface is designed to be clean and intuitive, providing real-time interest rate information and risk indicators to help users make informed lending decisions.

5. Hyperbeat - DeFi Super App (TVL: $3.87 Billion)

Hyperbeat is positioned as an all-in-one DeFi hub, offering a comprehensive solution that includes services such as staking, lending, yield optimization, and more. The protocol recently completed a $5.2 million seed funding round led by Electric Capital, with participation from Coinbase Ventures, Chapter One, DCF God, and other well-known institutions. This funding background reflects institutional investors' recognition of its business model and technical team.

Hyperbeat's product matrix reflects a deep ecosystem integration concept. The beHYPE liquidity staking module provides a slashable security model that supports governance participation; the Morphobeat lending market is optimized based on the Morpho protocol, focusing on interest-bearing assets like LST; the Yield Treasury achieves automated yield optimization through the Meta-Yield strategy, diversifying risk across multiple protocols. Its cross-chain integration capability allows it to deploy on multiple chains like Arbitrum, currently holding a $28.92 million TVL on Arbitrum, expanding its user base and asset under management.

Hyperbeat's technical innovation is mainly reflected in its automated yield optimization strategy. The protocol automatically monitors the yield rate changes of various DeFi protocols, dynamically adjusts fund allocation to maximize yield. This "set-and-forget" user experience significantly reduces the technical barriers to DeFi participation, especially suitable for users who want to earn DeFi yields but are not willing to operate frequently. The Meta-Yield strategy also includes a risk hedging mechanism, reducing single-protocol risk through diversified investments across multiple protocols and enhancing overall yield through arbitrage opportunities.

Interaction: Users access the multi-product dashboard through hyperbeat.org to perform all-in-one DeFi operations such as staking, lending, and yield farming. The interface design focuses on user experience, providing yield estimates and risk alerts. The Hearts point system is nearing its end, with less than 12% of the remaining distribution amount, totaling 51 million Hearts points to prepare for the upcoming $BEAT token airdrop. The design of this points system encourages users to stay active across multiple product modules, earning point rewards through activities such as staking, lending, and yield farming.

6. USDH - Native Stablecoin Infrastructure

As the upcoming Hyperliquid native stablecoin, USDH carries the important mission of building a robust ecosystem financial infrastructure. Native Markets emerged victorious in the community vote on September 14, 2025, obtaining the issuance rights for USDH. The launch of USDH will fill the void in the Hyperliquid ecosystem in terms of native stablecoins, providing a more comprehensive and autonomous financial infrastructure for the entire ecosystem.

USDH's technical architecture reflects deep considerations for compliance and scalability. This stablecoin will be backed by U.S. Treasury Bonds through traditional financial institutions such as Stripe Bridge and BlackRock, ensuring ample asset collateralization and regulatory compliance. More importantly, USDH will achieve dual compatibility with HyperEVM ERC-20 and HyperCore HIP-1, enabling the stablecoin to seamlessly flow throughout the entire Hyperliquid ecosystem, serving as collateral and liquidity in DeFi protocols and as margin in perpetual trading, achieving true ecosystem-native integration.

The expected launch timing for USDH is in Q4 of 2025, with specific progress depending on the completion of technical development and regulatory applications. As a critical infrastructure of the ecosystem, the successful launch of USDH will have a profound impact on the entire Hyperliquid ecosystem, enhancing user experience and capital efficiency, and more importantly, strengthening the ecosystem's independence and sustainability. Especially in competition with external stablecoins like USDC, USDH's native advantages and profit-sharing mechanism will provide it with unique competitiveness.

Ecosystem Data Overview and Development Outlook

The Hyperliquid ecosystem demonstrates strong growth momentum and a healthy development trend. The total TVL has reached $65.35 billion, with DeFi protocol TVL at $23.7 billion, perpetual trading holdings at $41.65 billion, and a 30-day perpetual trading volume of $6.516 trillion. User data exhibits high-quality characteristics: 308,000 monthly active users, an average holding size of $162,000, and a 30-day retention rate of 67%, far exceeding similar platforms.

The ecosystem's greatest strength lies in deep protocol coordination. The integration of Kinetiq with Pendle, HyperLend's capital efficiency amplification, Felix feUSD's internal ecosystem circulation, Based's mobile traffic importation have formed a powerful network effect. However, the decline in market share cannot be ignored. Hyperliquid's market share in the perpetual DEX market dropped from 48.2% in August to 38.1% in September, primarily losing ground to competitors employing multi-chain strategies and incentive mechanisms.

The launch of HIP-3 (Permissionless Perpetual Market) will be a key milestone, allowing anyone to deploy custom perpetual contracts, expected to bring innovations such as RWA Perpetuals and AI Hashrate Futures. The native stablecoin USDH is expected to manage $5.5 billion, with 95% of profits used for HYPE buyback, resulting in an annual profit of $150-220 million, significantly enhancing token value support.

The value capture mechanism of the HYPE token is well-designed: 99% of protocol revenue is used for buyback and burn, with the current annual buyback rate at around 8.7%. However, the linear release starting on November 29 will increase the supply by 71%, requiring strong fundamental performance to hedge against supply pressure.

The Hyperliquid ecosystem is currently at a critical development stage. Its success will depend on a combination of technological innovation and user experience, a balance between ecosystem openness and quality control, and the coordination of technical focus with diverse demands. The launch of HIP-3 and USDH will be a key test to validate its adaptability.

For investors, from the stable yield of the LST protocol to high-risk early-stage projects, the ecosystem offers a wealth of investment opportunities. The key is to understand the business models and risk factors of each protocol and devise a sensible strategy based on individual circumstances. The value of Hyperliquid lies not only in the success of individual protocols but also in the formation of the entire ecosystem's network effect. In this era full of opportunities and challenges, its ability for continuous innovation and creating value for users will determine its long-term development prospects.

This article is a contribution and does not represent the views of BlockBeats.

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