Hyperliquid L1 vs Stacks

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.

Stacks is a Bitcoin Layer‑2 secured by Proof‑of‑Transfer where miners commit BTC to mint STX and anchor blocks to Bitcoin every 10–15 minutes. Clarity smart contracts enable DeFi with Bitcoin finality, and the sBTC proposal aims to bring a two‑way peg for native BTC on chain. The Nakamoto upgrade scheduled for 2025 will reduce block times to five seconds and add probabilistic Bitcoin finality.