Hyperliquid (HYPE): S1 2025 Activity Report

Context on Hyperliquid

Hyperliquid has established itself as the leading decentralized perpetual contract exchange in the industry, with over 80% market share. Unlike most players in the sector, Hyperliquid is the first exchange to introduce a fully on-chain order book (CLOB).

Hyperliquid made the strategic choice to build its own layer 1 infrastructure, specifically designed to support the demands of high-frequency trading: on-chain order book, low latency, near-instant transaction finality, and a theoretical capacity of several hundred thousand transactions per second.

This infrastructure is based on two complementary layers, built on top of the Hyperliquid blockchain and thus sharing the same state:

• HyperCore: the native execution layer that manages all critical operations: order book, trade execution, risk and liquidity management, staking, etc.
• HyperEVM: the EVM-compatible execution layer, launched in February 2025, designed to allow any developer to deploy smart contracts.

The core of Hyperliquid’s architecture lies in the unification of state and total composability between its two layers, made possible in particular by technical components such as precompiles.

Beyond having built the most performant perps DEX on the market, Hyperliquid’s true achievement is becoming the infrastructure with the deepest liquidity, to the point of rivaling major centralized platforms: liquidity is Hyperliquid’s MOAT.

Hyperliquid’s vision is to transform this liquidity into a resource that any builder can use to build, distribute, and monetize their applications, ultimately becoming the back-end infrastructure for on-chain finance. This is the “AWS of liquidity” thesis that we have detailed in our latest research.

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Hyperliquid On-chain Metrics

With the first half of 2025 behind us, it is time to assess Hyperliquid’s growth trajectory based on the main available on-chain indicators. As the leading Perps DEX, we will analyze the evolution of TVL, inflows, open interest, volumes, trader activity, and protocol-generated revenue.

TVL and Inflows

The launch of HYPE and the success of the airdrop did not cause users to leave Hyperliquid. On the contrary, the last quarter of 2024 marked the start of Hyperliquid’s phenomenal growth, which continued throughout the first half of 2025.

To recap, inflows to Hyperliquid skyrocketed in November 2024, with daily peaks above 50 million dollars. TVL increased from 564 million dollars to over 2 billion dollars, a 269% surge during Q4 2024.

Along these lines, the first half of 2025 enabled Hyperliquid to consolidate its dominance in the decentralized perpetual exchange sector. As of June 30, 2025, Hyperliquid’s TVL reached 3.5 billion dollars, a net increase of +70.8% compared to the start of the year (2.1 billion dollars).

During the same period, net inflows averaged 58 million dollars per week, despite a particularly difficult March with a negative balance of 590 million dollars in outflows.

Note: At the time of writing, Hyperliquid’s TVL has surpassed 5 billion dollars.

Volume and Open Interest

During the last quarter of 2024, Hyperliquid crossed the 1 billion dollar mark in Open Interest for the first time, before reaching an all-time high of 3.27 billion dollars by year-end.

After an extremely positive first half of 2025, Hyperliquid set a new record with nearly 7.5 billion dollars in Open Interest on the platform. At the time of writing, just a few weeks after the semester ended, this figure has reached 15 billion dollars. This represents approximately 61% of ByBit, 105% of OKX, and 120% of Bitget.

Trading volume on Hyperliquid went from about 13 billion dollars per week in Q4 2024 to an average of 47 billion dollars during the first half of 2025, with an all-time high above 78 billion dollars during the week of May 12.

By the end of 2025, Hyperliquid accounted for around 56% of trading volumes on decentralized perpetual trading platforms. Dominance continued to increase, reaching more than 73% market share at the end of H1 2025. For comparison, this represents about 12% of Binance’s volumes.

In terms of users, Hyperliquid grew from 291,000 addresses at the beginning of 2025 to over 518,000 by the end of the first half, a 78% increase in six months. It is also noteworthy that this represents more than 53 billion dollars in liquidated positions, while the total PnL since the platform’s inception is unavailable.

Hyperliquid vs CEX

We have long been accustomed to seeing Hyperliquid dominate the perp DEX market, but what stood out most in the first half of 2025 was its growth relative to centralized exchanges, which are currently losing ground.

As of the time of writing, Hyperliquid accounts for 6.1% of CEX trading volume, up 3.9% since January and for 17.8% of CEX Open Interest, up 12.3% since January.

There are numerous factors behind Hyperliquid’s exceptional growth compared to both CEXs and DEXs.

Hyperliquid holds a set of competitive advantages that make it the most compelling venue to trade. First, it is one of the cheapest places in the ecosystem to trade both spot and perpetual futures. It also offers the deepest on-chain liquidity, with order book depth on certain assets now rivaling that of leading CEXs. For example, during the launch of pumpfun's PUMP token, Hyperliquid had the deepest market depth, the highest trading volume, and the tightest spreads on the asset, a milestone never before seen in the history of a DEX.

Another major strength is that, for several months now, and particularly since the launch of the Trump memecoin, Hyperliquid has consistently been the first venue to list new assets in perps and, since the launch of UNIT, in spot markets as well. This has become a powerful acquisition engine, reinforcing the perception among traders that Hyperliquid is the place to be for trading highly anticipated new coins.

The PUMP launch is a prime example. It was one of the most anticipated TGEs in history and one of the fastest ICOs ever, raising around $500M in just twelve minutes. Hyperliquid was once again the first venue to list the token in both spot and perp markets. Even more impressively, it became the first major platform to offer prelaunch PUMP trading.

Hyperliquid has now matched the speed, liquidity, and user experience of leading centralized exchanges while preserving the core strengths of decentralization. Unlike CEXs, it offers permissionless access, on-chain transparency and native composability, enabling any asset, position, or trade to integrate directly with smart contracts, dApps, or other protocols on HyperEVM. This evolution positions Hyperliquid not just as a trading venue but as a foundational layer for on-chain financial infrastructure.

HLP Performance

The Hyperliquidity Provider (HLP) plays a central role in the Hyperliquid ecosystem: it is a community USDC vault that provides part of the liquidity needed for the order book, market making, and automated liquidation management. The HLP pools the profits and losses generated by various strategies, including the liquidation module (Liquidator Vault), while offering users non-directional exposure.

In terms of metrics, HLP’s TVL soared at the end of 2024, especially following the HYPE airdrop to users, rising from 150 million dollars at the end of November to over 400 million dollars at the start of 2025. Despite a record peak at 512 million dollars, HLP’s TVL remained stable throughout the first half, ending at 372 million dollars.

Net profit for the HLP increased from 50 million to nearly 68 million dollars over the same period, providing users with an average annualized return of about 11%. Net performance stood at +5.2% for Q1 2025, with a drawdown below 3.5%, despite the JELLY incident.

As a reminder, in March 2025, a sophisticated attack targeted Hyperliquid, specifically certain limitations in the liquidation system. The aim was to force the HLP to assume a risky multi-million dollar position in an attempt to bring it down. For more details, see our full analysis of the incident and the solutions implemented by the Hyperliquid team:

Unit, the key to Hyperliquid's future

Launched on February 14, 2025, Unit is more than just another Hyperliquid project. It is a backbone component that will shape the protocol’s future. Only a few months after launch, its strategic importance is already undeniable.

Unit is Hyperliquid’s asset tokenization layer, enabling native deposits and withdrawals for a wide range of assets. Once deposited, Unit assigns the corresponding ticker through Hyperliquid’s auction system and lists the asset directly on the Hyperliquid spot market. It began with BTC and quickly expanded to ETH, SOL, FARTCOIN, PUMP, BONK, etc.

This represents a major breakthrough for spot trading in DeFi. Hyperliquid is now the only DEX where users can deposit assets as easily as on a centralized exchange. With Unit, traders receive a dedicated deposit address for their chosen asset, and within minutes the funds are ready for trading. There is no need to wrap or bridge assets.

Unit’s role goes beyond trading. It supports other protocols and products across the Hyperliquid ecosystem. For example, Liminal, a delta-neutral yield protocol, uses Unit to deliver sustainable and market-independent returns. More recently, Phantom integrated Unit in its backend to power Phantom Perps through the Builder Codes program.

Since launch, Unit has reached 800 million dollars in TVL, making it the second-largest project on Hyperliquid after Kinetiq. Assets onboarded through Unit have generated more than 15 billion dollars in trading volume during the first half of the year. Despite these achievements, Hyperliquid’s spot-to-perps volume ratio is still only 2 percent, compared to 15 to 30 percent on most centralized exchanges.

We will revisit these metrics in future reports. With upcoming crypto listings, the possible introduction of new asset classes, and more protocols building on Unit, the growth potential for both Hyperliquid Spot and Unit remains significant.

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HyperEVM On-chain Metrics

Launched in February 2025, HyperEVM is a major pillar of the Hyperliquid ecosystem. This EVM-compatible blockchain is built directly on Hyperliquid’s infrastructure and enables the deployment of smart contracts and decentralized applications.

Whereas many blockchains struggle to gain traction, HyperEVM benefits from a unique advantage: direct, native access to Hyperliquid’s liquidity and order book. This deep integration underpins its exceptional growth trajectory, which we will discuss in this section.

Technical Context and Innovations

The launch of the HyperEVM mainnet in February 2025 was particularly sudden and minimalist. First, no prior announcement was made (neither public nor to developers), with the foundation stating that it wanted to ensure "equal access and fair starting conditions" for everyone.

The network’s initial features were extremely basic and did not include the key elements that were meant to make it unique. In practice, users could only transfer HYPE via a specific smart contract. This deployment strategy was intentionally gradual in order to control HyperEVM’s impact on HyperCore, Hyperliquid’s infrastructure.

In March 2025, HyperCore and HyperEVM were connected for the first time, allowing users to transfer other asset types from the Hyperliquid spot market. In April 2025, read precompiles were deployed on mainnet, allowing HyperEVM smart contracts to read data from HyperCore (perps positions, vault balances, oracle prices, staking deposits).

In May 2025, the block time for HyperEVM’s “small blocks” was reduced to 1 second, improving network performance. For context, HyperEVM uses a dual-block architecture to balance speed and performance:

• Small blocks have a 1-second block time and a 2 million gas limit, enabling near-instant transfers.
• Big blocks have a 1-minute block time and a 30 million gas limit, supporting heavier tasks.

Finally, on July 5, 2025, CoreWriter (formerly called write precompiles) were deployed on HyperEVM mainnet. This marks the final step towards perfect composability between Hyperliquid’s two layers, as HyperEVM smart contracts can now write data to HyperCore, the infrastructure layer of Hyperliquid.

The value of HyperEVM lies precisely in this seamless compatibility with HyperCore. While other DeFi ecosystems must compete to attract liquidity, HyperEVM directly inherits access to the infrastructure, order book, and liquidity of Hyperliquid.

TVL and Growth

The launch of HyperEVM immediately triggered a wave of activity across the ecosystem: while the initial TVL was below 50 million dollars at the beginning of February, the 1 billion dollar mark was surpassed by mid-April, barely two months after the mainnet deployment. This rapid growth continued throughout the semester, with TVL doubling to reach 2.08 billion dollars as of June 30, 2025.

In the first half of the year, HyperEVM’s average weekly TVL growth was around 185 million dollars, with peaks during the launch or ramp-up of certain native protocols. This momentum allowed HyperEVM to establish itself, within just a few months, among the top 10 blockchains in terms of TVL and growth, ahead of established networks such as Avalanche, Aptos, Polygon, and Sui.

This dynamic was driven by several catalysts: firstly, the appeal of Hyperliquid and the success of HYPE on the market, but also the prospect of a second HYPE airdrop for HyperEVM users, as well as the multiplication of points campaigns launched by native protocols.

Activity and Users

Beyond TVL, on-chain activity experienced similar growth. The number of daily active users increased steadily to exceed 44,000 addresses during the most active weeks of June. The average for the first half of 2025 was around 33,000 active addresses per day, which remains a relatively modest figure.

The number of transactions followed the same trend, reaching up to 315,000 daily transactions at activity peaks, with an average of about 208,000 transactions per day over the first half of the year.

From an economic standpoint, applications deployed on HyperEVM generated an average of 1,926,550 dollars in fees per day, with a peak of 4,855,130 dollars on May 21, 2025, and a daily low of 537,935 dollars recorded on March 22, 2025. In total, since the launch of the blockchain, 256.2 million dollars in fees have been generated, positioning HyperEVM among the most profitable blockchains in terms of DeFi monetization.

The dApps of the Ecosystem

The distribution of VL on HyperEVM illustrates both the depth and diversity of an ecosystem structured in record time. At the end of the first half of 2025, several major applications stand out:

• Kinetiq: $1.2 billion in TVL

Kinetiq is a liquid staking protocol officially launched on July 15, 2025, on HyperEVM. Despite its late arrival, Kinetiq has experienced explosive growth, thanks in particular to its status as the “first native LST on Hyperliquid” and its integration with leading DeFi protocols, enabling it to surpass $850 million in TVL.

Kinetiq’s launch coincided with the deployment of CoreWriter, a crucial module allowing Kinetiq to interact natively with HyperCore and, more specifically, with Hyperliquid’s validators. This means Kinetiq can directly stake users’ HYPE and actively allocate funds among validators—something other liquid staking protocols were not able to do.

• Hyperlend: $421 million in TVL

Hyperlend is a decentralized lending protocol developed natively on HyperEVM. It allows users to access lending and borrowing services across a wide range of assets (HYPE and its LSTs, BTC, ETH, various stablecoins). The protocol is also connected to HyperCore, making it possible to borrow against assets held on the Hyperliquid application.

Hyperlend’s TVL exceeds $420 million, with total borrowed amounts surpassing $200 million. The main market is kHYPE ($183 million).

• Morpho: $408 million in TVL

Morpho is a decentralized lending protocol launched in 2021. Its V2 introduces a dual-layer architecture: Markets V2, a peer-to-peer lending marketplace based on intents, and Vaults V2, configurable vaults designed to generate yield.

Currently, two protocols leverage Morpho V2 to offer their services on HyperEVM: Felix, whose “Vanilla” lending markets use Morpho’s stack, and Hyperbeat, which provides yield-optimized vaults to users. Morpho currently records $408 million in TVL.

• Felix: $360 million in TVL

Felix is the first CDP (Collateralized Debt Position) protocol on HyperEVM. It allows users to borrow the feUSD stablecoin against various forms of collateral (HYPE, kHYPE, and BTC) and also provides access to classic Vanilla Markets for lending and borrowing various assets.

Felix’s Vanilla Markets leverage Morpho’s smart contract standard. With $360 million in TVL, Felix stands out as one of the main native protocols in the ecosystem.

• Hyperbeat: $286 million in TVL

Hyperbeat is a yield farming protocol operating through dedicated vault systems for various assets (HYPE, BTC, USDT, LST, and XAUt). User deposits are automatically deployed in DeFi strategies via partners such as Hyperlend, Hypurrfi, and Hyperswap. Additionally, Hyperbeat integrates Morpho technology to offer lending and borrowing vaults across a broad range of stablecoins and assets.

Hyperbeat also acts as a Hyperliquid validator, with more than $120 million in HYPE delegated. Recently, the protocol announced the launch of beHYPE (pre-deposits are now open), a liquid staking token for HYPE powered by CoreWriter and HIP-3, developed in partnership with Etherfi.

• Liminal, Hyperswap, and Others

Beyond this first circle, which is mainly focused on lending and liquid staking, other protocol types emerge: yield farming, thematic vaults, structured products, specialized DEXs, and more.

Hyperswap is the first decentralized exchange on HyperEVM, with close to $70 million in TVL. It offers classic AMM services, allowing users to provide liquidity on the main asset pairs. With CoreWriter, Hyperswap plans to expand its features by enabling swaps either via the AMM or through the HyperCore order book. The arrival of HIP-3 will soon make new markets accessible through the app.

Liminal is a protocol offering access to automated delta-neutral strategies without exposure to market volatility. Users’ USDC on Hyperliquid are used to buy an asset on the spot market and open an equivalent short position on perps, generating yield via funding fees. With HIP-3, Liminal is expanding to new types of markets and even more interesting strategies.

A Focus on Hypurrfi

HypurrFi is the partner of this semi-annual report on Hyperliquid. We thank them for their support of our work.

HypurrFi is not just a native lending protocol on HyperEVM, it is a complete debt servicing infrastructure. In addition to enabling users to borrow and lend, the protocol provides a comprehensive framework to manage, refinance, restructure, or optimize on-chain debt, while leveraging Hyperliquid’s growing liquidity.

Currently, HypurrFi offers pooled markets and isolated markets covering a wide range of assets (HYPE and its main LSTs, assets listed on Hyperliquid’s spot market, stablecoins). HypurrFi is also the issuer of USDXL, an overcollateralized stablecoin backed by user deposits and partially secured by U.S. Treasury bonds purchased with the protocol’s revenues.

At the time of writing, HypurrFi has $300 million in TVL (including borrowings) and approximately $2.7 million USDXL in circulation.

HypurrFi’s ambition for the second half of 2025 is clear: to become the leading debt servicing infrastructure on Hyperliquid. To achieve this, the protocol plans to deploy all the necessary tools to allow users to optimize their debt management (collateral swaps, refinancing at better rates, risk management, additional functionalities, etc.).

Several major developments are planned to reach this goal:

• pawSwap: an order flow auction mechanism designed to optimize liquidations and swaps on HyperEVM, including direct access to the Hyperliquid Core order book.
• Swype Card: a payment card that enables users to spend directly from their Hypurrfi positions without prior selling. Already usable at over 100 million merchants worldwide, it will expand into corporate offers, loyalty programs, and co-branded cards.
• New vaults and isolated markets: developed in partnership with an as-yet-undisclosed actor, offering new high-efficiency yield strategies for builders, funds, and end-users.
• Hyperscan: a planned revamp to provide a developer-focused environment, making it easier to create and integrate new products on HyperEVM.
• Institutional access: establishing compliant pathways for teams and foundations to deploy capital into HyperCore and Hypurrfi markets.

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HYPE Token Analysis

Holders, Volume, and Price

Launched on November 29, 2024, with what is considered the largest airdrop in crypto history, Hyperliquid’s HYPE token saw a bullish rally in December, reaching its first all-time high at $35, a gain of nearly 1,200%.

Let’s now assess how Hyperliquid and HyperEVM’s positive metrics translated to the HYPE token in H1 2025. Here are the key token metrics from January 1 to June 30, 2025:

• Number of holders: +100% (from 70,000 to 140,000)
• Weekly trading volume: +70% (from ~$1.4B in January to ~$2.4B in June)
• HYPE price: +64.8% (from $24.12 to $39.76)

HYPE closed the semester at $39.76, a new all-time high. This also reached the first price target set in our valuation model published on March 15, 2025, when the token was still trading at only $14.20. You can access the full investment thesis below:

Note: An updated valuation is in progress to incorporate the major developments observed on Hyperliquid since our initial analysis.

HYPE Outperforms the Market

Let’s now see how HYPE’s performance compares to major crypto assets. Over the first half of 2025, HYPE not only outperformed all other assets in its category but was the only large-cap token in positive territory alongside BTC, which rose 16%.

However, HYPE’s outperformance was entirely concentrated in Q2. In Q1, HYPE underperformed its peers, dropping -51%, while the benchmark group declined by an average of -30%.

This Q1 underperformance was mainly due to overall market weakness and macro uncertainty, including tariff concerns and increased geopolitical tensions. Additionally, HYPE had experienced a particularly strong Q4 2024, making a short-term correction fairly logical.

In Q2, however, market conditions improved, supported by a 90-day tariff moratorium, de-escalation of global tensions, and a more favorable regulatory context for crypto. HYPE fully capitalized on this new environment, surging +206% while its peers rose by only +25% on average.

This rebound was also supported by accelerated buybacks from the Assistance Fund, which played a key role in restoring confidence. Notably, in June alone, the Assistance Fund repurchased an average of $2.02 million of HYPE per day.

HYPE Revenue and Buybacks

Unlike most DeFi protocols today, the Hyperliquid team does not directly benefit from the platform’s activity fees. Instead, all fees are directed to the HLP and the Assistance Fund.

To recap, the HLP is the community vault that allows users to participate in Hyperliquid’s market making and earn yield, while the Assistance Fund is a HYPE-denominated fund designed to act as a liquidity reserve in times of need.

Currently, the team has not disclosed the exact fee split between the HLP and Assistance Fund. However, since data is public, we can observe that in recent months, around 92% of fees have gone to the Assistance Fund versus 8% to the HLP.

The Assistance Fund operates a HYPE buyback program, meaning that 92% of Hyperliquid’s generated fees are used to buy HYPE on the spot market. These revenues are thus directly distributed to token holders and help support HYPE’s price.

Within just a few months, Hyperliquid has become one of the most profitable protocols in the crypto industry. Since the beginning of 2025, revenues have reached $406 million—over $810 million annualized—placing Hyperliquid just behind Tether and Circle.

Note: At the time of writing, annualized revenue is around $1 billion based on the last 30 days which suggest a P/E ratio of around 15 based on circulating supply.

In H1 2025, Hyperliquid experienced significant growth in fees generated, rising from around $1 million per day at the beginning of the year to over $3 million on average today, with peaks above $5 million. The Assistance Fund now holds more than $1.22 billion in HYPE, acquired for a little over $400 million in total.

At the current pace, Hyperliquid’s buyback mechanism would allow for the repurchase of about 13% of HYPE supply each year. With the arrival of HIP-3 and the development of Builder Codes (currently represented mainly by Phantom), the fees generated by Hyperliquid will mechanically increase, further reinforcing this model.

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Hyperliquid’s Major Events

As you can imagine, many important events have marked the past six months. Here are the key highlights related to Hyperliquid and HyperEVM since January 2025.

• January 8, 2025: Validator Set Expansion

Hyperliquid operates on a Proof-of-Stake (PoS) consensus mechanism requiring validators to secure the network. The protocol initially started with only four validators, which raised decentralization concerns.

In response to criticism, the team announced in early January its decision to increase the number of validators to 16, with the goal of continuing to expand the base to improve decentralization.

As of this writing, Hyperliquid now has 27 validators, 25 of which are active—a significant improvement over the initial four.

• January 18, 2025: TRUMP Launch

On January 18, 2025, the listing of the TRUMP token marked a major moment in the crypto world. This highly controversial memecoin, launched by the team of the President of the United States, generated massive trading volumes. Shortly after, the equally controversial Melania token was also introduced.

The main takeaway from these events is the clear shift in trader sentiment. Hyperliquid was the first platform to list both memecoins as perpetuals, several hours ahead of major centralized exchanges. This resulted in two consecutive all-time high volume days: $21 billion on January 20 and $22 billion on January 21.

These events established Hyperliquid as the go-to platform for trading new token launches under optimal conditions.

• February 14, 2025: Unit Launch

One of the key milestones of H1 was the launch of HyperUnit (or Unit), Hyperliquid’s asset tokenization layer, in February 2025. Unit enables deposits, withdrawals, and trading of a wide range of assets, starting with BTC.

During the semester, Unit expanded its support to ETH (March 27), followed by SOL and FARTCOIN (May 13). By the end of June, more than $400 million in native deposits had been processed through Unit, with over $8.4 billion in spot trading volume.

Since the end of the semester, Unit has also integrated PUMP and continues to prepare for the launch of tokenized stocks. We’ll review these developments in Q3, as Unit is set to play an even greater role, especially with the launch of other types of perp markets in the future.

→ Find our analysis of Unit here:

• February 18, 2025: HyperEVM Launch

February 18 marked a turning point for Hyperliquid with the launch of HyperEVM, the network’s EVM-compatible smart contract layer. As previously discussed, HyperEVM allows developers to deploy decentralized applications while natively benefiting from Hyperliquid’s deep liquidity and high-performance infrastructure.

The launch sparked significant debate within the ecosystem, with many viewing it as abrupt or even risky. The team opted for a discreet rollout, with no marketing campaign or incentive program, unlike other blockchains.

Despite this unconventional approach, adoption has been remarkable. Since launch, over 340,000 accounts have been created and more than 8,000 smart contracts deployed. Without any incentives, HyperEVM has reached $2 billion in organic TVL, outperforming several ecosystems that spent millions to bootstrap activity.

• March 26, 2025: The Jelly Incident

It is also important to address the tough moments. March 26, 2025, almost marked a dramatic turning point for Hyperliquid with the Jelly incident.

On that day, Hyperliquid suffered a sophisticated attack exploiting the liquidation mechanism through manipulated positions on the JELLY memecoin. The attack resulted in an artificial loss of about $12 million in the HLP vault and represented a serious threat to the protocol’s solvency.

Hyperliquid reacted quickly: the team initiated an oracle override to neutralize the impact and committed to reimbursing affected users, excluding the attacker.

This intervention raised questions about the protocol’s actual level of decentralization, but it was widely recognized that the team acted in the community’s best interest. Since then, additional security measures have been implemented and no further incidents have occurred.

→ For more details on the incident and security measures, see our investigation report:

• May 5, 2025: Staking Tiers

On May 5, Hyperliquid introduced “Staking Tiers”, a feature allowing HYPE stakers to benefit from trading fee discounts based on the amount of tokens staked.

The Bronze tier starts at more than 10 HYPE staked and offers a 5% fee reduction. At the Diamond level, users staking more than 500,000 HYPE receive a 40% reduction.

This initiative enhances the utility of the HYPE token and strongly incentivizes traders to accumulate and stake more tokens to unlock greater benefits.

• “House of Stablecoins”: USDT0 & USDe

During the semester, Hyperliquid also expanded its stablecoin offering with the introduction of Ethena’s USDe (May 5) and USDT0 (May 9), both now available on Hyperliquid Exchange and HyperEVM.

Until now, USDC was the primary stablecoin on Hyperliquid. The addition of new options is a positive signal, enabling better risk diversification and reducing dependence on USDC.

This also supports the growth of DeFi on HyperEVM and attracts new users who prefer USDT0 or USDe. This further strengthens Hyperliquid’s “moat” based on deep liquidity.

• May 2, 2025: HIP-3 Launch on Testnet

HIP-3 represents a major step toward Hyperliquid’s decentralization by opening perpetual market creation to the community. Any actor can propose and deploy a new market (index, stock, memecoin, etc.) permissionlessly, provided they stake 1 million HYPE as collateral.

The right to deploy a market is awarded via a Dutch auction held every 31 hours. The highest bidder has full control over configuration: oracle selection, leverage limits, fees, accepted collateral, and can receive up to 50% of generated fees.

HIP-3 aligns incentives, enables new business models around market creation, and accelerates the diversification of market offerings while ensuring protocol security. Currently on testnet, HIP-3 is expected to go live on mainnet soon.

• June 17, 2025: HYPE Treasury Companies

During this semester, we also witnessed the emergence of HYPE treasury companies, mirroring the strategy Michael Saylor pioneered with Bitcoin at MicroStrategy. In the first half of 2025, Eyenovia (NASDAQ: EYEN) and Lion Group Holding (NASDAQ: LGHL) began accumulating HYPE as part of their corporate treasury reserves. Since the close of the semester, they have been joined by Sonnet BioTherapeutics (NASDAQ: SONN), Hyperion DeFi (NASDAQ: HYPD), and Nuvve Holding Corp. (NASDAQ: NVVE).

In other words, these are publicly listed companies actively acquiring HYPE as a strategic reserve asset, a milestone event, given that very few assets in history have reached this status. HYPE now appears to be the fourth asset, after BTC, ETH, and SOL, to achieve such adoption at the corporate treasury level.

Wall Street is positioning heavily into HYPE, and the reasoning is clear. Hyperliquid is one of the most profitable businesses in history, generating over $800M in annualized revenue and deploying 97% of that revenue into daily HYPE buybacks.

• July 5: CoreWriter (formerly Write Precompiles)

Launched on mainnet on April 28, Read Precompiles enabled any HyperEVM builder to access data from HyperCore via a set of smart contracts, opening new use cases for dApps.

That was only the first step. Since July 5, CoreWriter (formerly Write Precompiles) is also live on HyperEVM. Builders who could read data from HyperCore can now also write to it, enabling trustless, bidirectional communication between HyperCore and HyperEVM.

This development completes composability between the two layers and paves the way for an entirely new generation of innovative applications.

• July 8, 2025: Builder Codes (Phantom Integration)

While Builder Codes were not launched this semester (they were introduced in October 2024), it’s only recently, with the launch of Phantom Perps, that their potential has truly come to light.

As you know, Hyperliquid’s strength lies in its unmatched on-chain liquidity—a competitive edge that is extremely difficult to replicate. This is exactly where Builder Codes become crucial.

They enable any application to connect its interface directly to Hyperliquid’s backend, thereby expanding the protocol’s user base while sharing revenue with its partners.

This is precisely what Phantom did with Phantom Perps, launched on July 8, 2025, allowing wallet users to trade over 100 perpetual pairs via Hyperliquid without ever leaving the app.

Since launch, Phantom has already generated $1.2 million in builder code revenue, $1.3 million in referral revenue, and brought in over 20,000 new users to the ecosystem.

Following Phantom’s success, we expect many more applications to join the program in the coming months.

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Final thoughts

The first half of 2025 confirms the trajectory observed for Hyperliquid at the end of 2024, both in terms of the exchange platform, its technical infrastructure, and its on-chain finance ecosystem. With sustained TVL growth (+70.8%), a doubling of Open Interest, and a record market share in decentralized perpetuals trading volumes (73%), Hyperliquid solidifies its position among the top protocols of 2025.

The launch of HyperEVM has played a central role in this momentum: in just four months, the blockchain has entered the top 10 networks by TVL, with already significant on-chain activity and revenues that place it among the most profitable in DeFi. This success is built on a rare structural advantage — direct access to HyperCore’s deep liquidity — enabling dApps to launch in an environment that is both high-performance and immediately attractive to users.

On the token side, HYPE has not only outperformed the market in Q2 but also benefits from a buyback model funded directly by the protocol’s revenues, which continue to grow. At the current pace, this mechanism absorbs around 14% of the circulating supply per year.

It is worth noting, however, that while all indicators suggest revenues should continue to rise, any reversal of this trend would undermine one of the core investment theses for HYPE.

The next six months will be critical in assessing Hyperliquid’s ability to maintain this pace in a competitive and uncertain macroeconomic environment. The mainnet launch of HIP-3, the expansion of integrations via Builder Codes, and the scaling of native protocols on HyperEVM will serve as key potential catalysts.

If the current trajectory holds, Hyperliquid could not only strengthen its status as the leader in decentralized perpetuals but also establish itself as a foundational infrastructure layer for on-chain finance. We will revisit this in our end-of-year 2025 review.