The Hyperliquid World Tour

Hyperliquid has been impossible to ignore lately. 

HYPE has climbed nearly 4x off its all-time lows and emerged as the best performing token in the top 100 over the past month — up over 110%. Ecosystem metrics tell an even more compelling story: Hyperliquid now commands 70% of all DeFi perps volumes, amounting to $1.5T in total volume, with ecosystem TVL hitting $1.4B — up over 100% just this month.

Amid the breakneck growth, Hyperliquid has seemingly been on a world tour — it's everywhere you look across Twitter, shilled on national TV, profiled by Bloomberg, and at the center of policy conversations. In other words, the momentum has picked up significantly for Hyperliquid since we last covered it in January, just weeks before the HyperEVM went live.

To understand what's driving Hyperliquid's success, it helps to know how Hyperliquid is structured.

• The HyperCore is the exchange layer — the original perpetual futures DEX that gave Hyperliquid its fame, handling all the trading, liquidity, and order book functionality.
• HyperEVM is the general purpose EVM smart contract layer that launched in February, enabling developers to build DeFi applications that can interact with HyperCore's deep liquidity.

Think of HyperCore as the engine and HyperEVM as the apps that can tap into that engine's power — together making up the Hyperliquid blockchain.

Now that we've got that clear, let's dig deeper into Hyperliquid's growth story👇

The HyperEVM Explosion

Hands down, the biggest change since January has been the HyperEVM. 

While slow initially, HyperEVM's growth has skyrocketed in recent weeks with the chain continually hitting new highs for daily transactions (most recently reaching above 300K), as more than $250M in HYPE has been bridged to the EVM layer where 50+ DeFi projects are actively building — all without any ecosystem grants or incentive programs which begs the question: how is another general purpose EVM chain gaining so much traction?

An App Explosion

The answer seems to be its leaning on its exchange layer, which the HyperEVM uses to offer developers two unique ways to deploy apps:

• Standard Deployment: Works just like any other EVM chain. You can copy-paste existing DeFi apps and they'll run normally.
• Hyperliquid-Native Deployment: Smart contracts can read and (soon) write directly to the exchange layer — seeing user balances, open positions, and prices in real-time. Imagine if DeFi apps could tap directly into a major exchange's order book. That's essentially what this enables (h/t @const_hom and @hypurr_co).

One particular protocol I’m watching as the ecosystem grows that uses this connective edge is Felix — a DeFi lending suite composed of two primary markets: 

The CDP Market lets users mint a decentralized stablecoin called feUSD by depositing collateral like HYPE. Next, there are the recently released Vanilla Markets — peer-to-peer lending pools built with Morpho. Instead of minting a stablecoin like feUSD, users borrow or lend tokens directly — including the upcoming HUSD, a stablecoin launched by Felix in partnership with the m0 Foundation.

Together, the CDP and Vanilla Markets give users flexible ways to borrow and earn — whether through the stability of a fiat-backed asset or the leverage of a decentralized one — all while feeding value back into Hyperliquid, across both its EVM and exchange layers. 

While the HyperEVM’s DeFi ecosystem extends well beyond Felix — cue Hyperlend, HypurrFi and Morpho’s operations through Morphobeat — I want to highlight three additional projects in particular: 

• HyperUnit (or Unit): Unit provides a non-custodial tokenization protocol enabling cross-chain deposits to and withdrawals from Hyperliquid's L1. Wrapped assets from here are available on both the HyperCore exchange (for spot trading) and the HyperEVM (for DeFi applications), with uBTC acting as a major collateral asset in many markets like Felix.
• PvP.Trade: Stylized in an homage to Runescape, PvP.Trade is a Telegram trading bot that turns trading into a multiplayer game. Launched in early 2024, it lets users join clans and place spot or futures trades using simple commands like “/long” or “/short,” trading against each other, tailing clanmates’ trades, and competing for leaderboard rank. On the backend, it taps Hyperliquid’s deep liquidity using Builder Codes, letting devs plug into HyperCore without starting from scratch.
• Liminal: Liminal is a DeFi yield protocol running automated, delta-neutral strategies using spot and perp markets. Users deposit USDC, and the system handles strategy setup, position management, and rebalancing. Returns, currently to the tune of 16% APY, come from collecting funding fees from leveraged traders — not from token rewards or inflation. Currently, you need an invite code to join.

HyperCore's Continued Dominance

While HyperEVM grabbed headlines, HyperCore hasn't slowed down. 

The exchange layer continues hitting ATHs across every metric, as previously mentioned. Most recently, that meant $10M in open interest, $5.6M in 24 hours fees, with $3.5B in USDC in its bridge.

Over the past six months, Hyperliquid has competed heavily with top central exchanges on perps volumes — remarkable for a crypto-native platform without any outside funding. It also tends to lap these platforms with new listings, opening leverage markets on popular tokens well before major exchanges.

All of this activity contributes to HYPE price through daily buybacks with platform fees. The HyperCore has generated $240M in cumulative fees since last December, averaging $40M monthly. Over 23M HYPE tokens have been repurchased through daily buybacks, with ~250K tokens burned directly from trading fees. Based on the average fees of the last seven days, the Assistance Fund could theoretically acquire the entire available supply in under 7 years.

Building Hype

Hyperliquid's community is continuing to grow tighter as the ecosystem pushed forward.

Users across X are signing tweets with "Hyperliquid" and sporting Hypio NFTs. To take the place of grants and incentives, many grassroots organizations have sprouted up like HypurrCollective, HyperActive Capital, as well as localized communities which serve as approachable entries into the ecosystem.

All this activity sets the stage for the coming HIP-3 upgrade, which will enable anyone to stake HYPE and launch permissionless perps markets (in other words, tokenized equities), rapidly expanding the platform’s abilities, progressing towards full decentralization, and bringing Hyperliquid closer to its vision of "housing all finance."

Overall, Hyperliquid's success should warm the hearts of all those jaded by endless token incentives and frothy VC backing. While, yes, many started using the platform to farm HYPE, the continuous use post-airdrop, coupled with non-stop new all-time highs signals that, at the end of the day, what won out was simply the draw of a superior product. 

The result is growth driven by utility rather than subsidies — high usage, actual revenue generation (so hot right now), and genuine community cohesion. With HIP-3 on the horizon and an engaged community ready to shape the platform's next chapter, the numbers suggest this is just the beginning.