Hyperliquid

Hyperliquid is a performant layer-1 blockchain built for fully onchain open finance. It unifies liquidity, user applications, and trading on a single infrastructure designed to eventually encompass all financial services.

Overview

  • Type: Layer-1 blockchain
  • Consensus: HyperBFT (variant of HotStuff)
  • Execution: Dual-component — HyperCore (native order books) + HyperEVM (general-purpose EVM)
  • Native token: HYPE Token (HYPE)
  • Funding: Fully self-funded, no VC capital
  • Active validators: Top 24 by stake

Key Metrics

Metric Value
Order throughput ~200,000/sec
Median latency 0.2 seconds
99th percentile latency 0.9 seconds
Annualized fee revenue >$1B (directed to buybacks)
Builder code revenue >$65M
Annual profit (2025) ~$900M (Colossus — Hyperliquid Tweet)
Total users 570,000+ (late 2025)
Daily active users 200,000+
Monthly volume (Oct 2025) ~$308B
Perp DEX market share ~70% (July 2025)
Global perp market share >10% (July 2025)
Tradable perp assets 100+
Max leverage 3x–40x (asset-dependent)
Core team size 11

Architecture

The platform has three layers:

  1. HyperBFT — Consensus mechanism. Variant of HotStuff. Validators produce blocks proportional to stake. Epochs of 100,000 rounds (~90 min).

  2. HyperCore — Native execution for perpetual futures and spot order books. All orders, cancellations, trades, and liquidations are fully onchain with single-block finality.

  3. HyperEVM — General-purpose EVM-compatible smart contract layer. Shares consensus with HyperCore. Currently in alpha. Dual-block architecture (1s fast blocks, 1min slow blocks).

Value Proposition

Hyperliquid positions itself as “the AWS of finance” — providing liquidity infrastructure for developers to build financial applications. Unlike traditional DEXs that rely on AMMs, Hyperliquid runs full order books onchain with performance comparable to centralized exchanges.

All trading fees are directed to the community: HLP (liquidity provider vault), the assistance fund (which buys and burns HYPE), and deployers.

Key Timeline

Date Event
Feb 2023 Hyperliquid founded by Jeff Yan
Nov 2024 HYPE token launch — 31% airdropped to users
Feb 19, 2025 HyperEVM launched
July 2025 Phantom Wallet “Phantom Perps” integration
Nov 2025 HIP-3: Builder-Deployed Perpetuals launched
July 2025 Sonnet BioTherapeutics forms $888M HYPE holding entity

Ecosystem

Notable protocols building on Hyperliquid:

  • Felix Protocol — collateralized debt protocol, >$400M in assets
  • HyperLend — lending protocol, $380M in assets
  • Phantom Perps — Phantom Wallet’s perps feature, using Hyperliquid infrastructure

Risks

  • Smart contract risk on Arbitrum bridge
  • L1 downtime risk (less battle-tested than established chains)
  • Market liquidity risk in early stages
  • Oracle manipulation risk

See also: Fee Structure, Staking, Validators