Cardano vs Hyperliquid L1

Cardano uses the Ouroboros Proof‑of‑Stake protocol and an Extended‑UTxO ledger that enables deterministic smart contracts in Plutus and Aiken. Its ‘Basho’ scaling era introduced Hydra Head sidechains capable of 1000 TPS per head, and Mithril light‑client proofs for mobile wallets. Over 1 500 stake pools secure the network and participate in on‑chain treasury governance.

Hyperliquid is a performance‑tuned Layer‑1 that employs HyperBFT consensus—an optimised HotStuff variant—to finalise blocks in 400 ms. Its on‑chain order book matches > 100k orders per second without gas, made possible by an in‑memory state machine replicated across 32 validators. Launched in April 2024, the chain settles $4‑6 billion daily volume in perpetual futures and supports CosmWasm smart contracts for third‑party dApps.