Alpha Recap #9: Native USDC on Hypercore, Hyena Launch, and Extended’s Pivot
December 12, 2025
In this new edition of the Alpha Recap, we look back at the most important insights of the week in the crypto market: major news, yield or airdrop strategies, key information, and quick analyses to help you cut through the noise.
The Alpha Recap highlights the most important Alphas of the week in the crypto market. Every Friday, we deliver a distilled selection of the most valuable information from our Alpha Feed.
Reserved for OAK Premium members, the Alpha Feed gathers insights, yield and airdrop strategies, and key market intelligence. In other words, everything that defines OAK Research’s DNA: filtered, high-quality content that goes beyond the noise.
USDC Is Now Fully Native on Hyperliquid
Back in September, Circle made its ambitions for Hyperliquid clear by introducing a native USDC and CCTP V2 on HyperEVM, along with a direct investment in HYPE.
At that time, the stablecoin issuer had also announced the upcoming arrival of a native USDC on Hypercore, the underlying infrastructure of Hyperliquid’s DEX, marking the final step toward full interoperability between the two environments.
This step has now been completed. USDC now circulates natively on both HyperEVM and Hypercore.
In practical terms, the legacy Arbitrum bridge is no longer needed. Until now, trading on Hyperliquid required depositing USDC into the bridge to receive a wrapped version on the DEX. Thanks to Circle’s Cross Chain Transfer Protocol (CCTP), transfers from compatible networks are now handled through a standardized burn and mint mechanism, offering a much smoother experience.
This announcement brings two major improvements. First, it simplifies the user experience through faster and more reliable transfers. Second, it strengthens the security of the ecosystem. Bridges have historically been among the main targets of some of the biggest hacks due to the volumes they hold and the attack surfaces they expose. By removing the Arbitrum bridge from the equation, Hyperliquid eliminates a key systemic risk.
A friction point removed, and a clear win for Hyperliquid across the board.
Hyena: Productive Collateral for Hyperliquid Users
Launched on Hyperliquid this week, Hyena is built on a simple thesis. Hyperliquid’s infrastructure is extremely efficient, offering market depth and trading volumes comparable to centralized platforms, with billions flowing through it seamlessly. Yet the collateral used, USDC, is entirely passive and generates no yield for users.
Hyena fills this gap by introducing productive collateral. Leveraging USDe, Ethena’s synthetic stablecoin, and the HIP-3 mechanism, the DEX enables collateral to generate native yield that traders can directly reinvest into their strategies. This gives traders the unprecedented ability to offset fees or funding rates, or to deploy strategies previously inaccessible by design.
Hyena also made the strategic choice to deploy its own community vault, HLPe. Similar in function to Hyperliquid’s HLP, the vault provides liquidity to markets relying on USDe. Users can deposit their USDe and receive the eHLP token in return, a composable asset that can be integrated throughout DeFi protocols on HyperEVM.
Ethena put significant incentives behind the HLPe. The vault targets an estimated annual yield between 15 and 20 percent. Depositing liquidity also grants access to two types of incentives: Upshift points, awarded by the vault operator, and Ethena points.
Trading volumes on Hyena are promising, especially considering the DEX supports only a limited number of pairs so far. User interest is evident, too. The first HLPe threshold of ten million dollars was reached in just over ten minutes. Based on our information, this threshold should be increased in the coming days.
→ (Re)read our full presentation of Hyena and its productive collateral thesis
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Trade on Hyperliquid and earn a 12% yield on your USDe collateral.
Extended Unveils Its XVS Token: Is Productive Collateral Becoming a Standard?
The perp DEX Extended is bringing its liquidity layer thesis to life with the introduction of XVS, a token representing deposits in its Vault.
This major innovation solves the problem of dormant capital locked as trading margin, which is precisely the same issue addressed by Hyena above. In practice, XVS allows the same capital to be used simultaneously. It serves both as a vital source of liquidity for the protocol (market making, liquidations) and as productive collateral for traders, generating a yield of around 15 percent.
The potential for Extended is significant. With fifty million dollars already deposited in the Vault for a TVL near one hundred million, XVS could act as a powerful catalyst. More liquidity brings better pricing, which attracts more traders, which raises the Vault’s yield, which in turn draws even more liquidity, and so on.
With Extended currently accounting for almost 44 percent of Starknet’s total TVL, the potential integration of XVS by other protocols in the ecosystem could position it as a central building block for composability and perhaps give new momentum to the Layer 2.
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