Hyperliquid Revolutionizes DeFi with Shared Liquidity and Composability

The concept that liquidity breeds liquidity is particularly relevant in the context of Hyperliquid, a decentralized exchange that has gained popularity among traders, especially those interested in perpetual futures or 'perps'. Founded by Harvard alumni Jeff Yan and a pseudonymous developer known as iliensinc, Hyperliquid has been live since the beginning of 2023 and is now capitalizing on the depth and volume of its order book. It offers firms the ability to compose with its shared liquidity, rather than fragmenting it, which is a key concept in decentralized finance (DeFi) that allows permissionless smart contracts to interlock like financial building blocks. The platform's Ethereum-compatible HyperEVM is directly connected to its high-performance HyperCore blockchain, enabling other applications to build upon Hyperliquid's shared liquidity. This allows applications such as wallets or other exchanges to utilize Hyperliquid as a backend, providing perps trading and other services without having to fragment the liquidity. As more developers integrate Hyperliquid, the platform's liquidity deepens, and the variety of assets expands, creating a self-reinforcing cycle. Currently, hundreds of developers, including prominent names like MetaMask, Phantom wallet, and the South African exchange VALR, are utilizing Hyperliquid's system, generating approximately $90 million in revenue. Hyperliquid has garnered significant praise from its users, with Hyunsu Jung, CEO of Hyperion DeFi, describing it as 'the AWS for finance'. Jung emphasizes that Hyperliquid is more than just a perpetuals exchange; it provides layer-one blockchain infrastructure, offering liquidity and execution services. Similar to AWS, builders on Hyperliquid own their users and have full control over the user interface, while the platform provides the underlying liquidity and execution. This enables builder code integrators to charge fees on the notional size of their users' trades without having to develop the backend or maintain liquidity. The integration with MetaMask, a prominent Ethereum-based wallet with over 100 million users worldwide, is a prime example of Hyperliquid's potential. MetaMask has been offering its users self-custodial access to perps directly from the wallet since October 2025, streamlining fund transfers and allowing users to trade with the tokens they already hold. According to Matthieu Saint Olive, Staff Product Manager at MetaMask, the wallet's integration with Hyperliquid's EVM module has been seamless, allowing users to trade directly with the tokens they already hold. Hyperliquid handles the matching, oracle, and margin engine, while MetaMask focuses on providing a great user experience. The partnership has also led to growth beyond the crypto space, with MetaMask seeing increased interest in commodities and equities. The transparency of Hyperliquid's fees, with a flat 0.1% builder fee and no hidden spread, has been a major advantage, according to Saint Olive. Even large centralized exchanges like VALR have opted to utilize Hyperliquid's perps order book for their liquidity requirements. Despite initially building their own infrastructure, including risk and liquidation engines, the team at VALR found it challenging to achieve sufficient volume and liquidity. Looking ahead, the increasing adoption of perps by major exchanges like Robinhood, Coinbase, and Intercontinental Exchange is expected to create opportunities for cross-venue arbitrage, according to Jung. This will enable users to maintain positions on multiple platforms, taking advantage of differences in funding rates and creating more organic mechanisms for market participants.