Unlocking DeFi's Full Potential: Hyperliquid Revolutionizes Crypto Perps

The concept that liquidity breeds liquidity is particularly relevant in the context of Hyperliquid, a decentralized exchange that has gained significant traction among traders, especially those interested in perpetual futures or 'perps.' These blockchain-based derivatives contracts enable users to speculate on asset prices with leverage and no expiration date. Founded by Harvard classmates Jeff Yan and a pseudonymous developer known as iliensinc, Hyperliquid has been live since the start of 2023 and is capitalizing on its order book's volume and depth by offering a unique form of composability. This DeFi concept allows permissionless smart contracts to interlock seamlessly, much like LEGO blocks, to create new tokenized financial products. Hyperliquid's Ethereum-compatible HyperEVM is directly connected to its high-performance HyperCore blockchain, enabling other applications to build upon the platform's shared liquidity without fragmenting it. This means that applications, including wallets and other exchanges, can utilize Hyperliquid as a backend to offer perps trading and other services, thereby deepening liquidity, expanding asset variety, and compounding network effects. Hundreds of developers, including notable names like MetaMask, Phantom wallet, and the South African exchange VALR, are now leveraging Hyperliquid's 'builder codes,' generating over $90 million in revenue, as reported by Flowscan. The platform has garnered significant praise from its growing user base. According to Hyunsu Jung, CEO of Hyperion DeFi, 'Hyperliquid is not just a perpetuals exchange; it's more akin to the AWS for finance.' Jung emphasizes that the platform provides a layer-one blockchain infrastructure, focusing on liquidity and allowing builders to create on top of it. Similar to AWS, builders maintain control over their users and the user interface, while Hyperliquid provides the underlying liquidity and execution. The integration of builder codes enables integrators to focus on delivering a great user experience, with Hyperliquid serving as the backend for liquidity and execution. Sterling Barnett, business development lead at Hyperliquid Labs, notes that 'builder codes let integrators focus on what they do best, while Hyperliquid handles the backend, allowing them to offer best-in-class on-chain liquidity and institutional-grade infrastructure and earn fees on every trade.' For applications like MetaMask, integrating with Hyperliquid's EVM module makes sense, as it provides self-custodial access to perps directly from the wallet. MetaMask has given its users this access since October 2025, streamlining fund transfers and allowing users to trade directly with the tokens they already hold. The advantage of being a wallet is that there's no need for a decentralized app connection, and Hyperliquid handles matching, the oracle, and the margin engine. Matthieu Saint Olive, Staff Product Manager at MetaMask, highlights that 'matching orders is genuinely hard, and Hyperliquid is excellent at it, so we don't try to rebuild it.' By routing orders straight to the Hyperliquid order book, MetaMask Perps offers some of the best liquidity and execution quality available. MetaMask is seeing growth beyond crypto, with real-world-asset markets increasing from a small portion of perp volume at the start of 2026 to roughly a quarter of it today. In terms of fees, MetaMask charges a flat 0.1% builder fee, with no hidden spread, ensuring transparency. The company is exploring innovative pricing models to make economics a reason people choose MetaMask, not a source of friction. It's notable that a large centralized exchange like VALR has also opted to use Hyperliquid's perps order book for its liquidity requirements. According to Farzam Ehsani, CEO and co-founder of VALR, the exchange initially built all the infrastructure in-house but found it challenging to achieve volume and liquidity for perpetual futures. Ehsani candidly admitted that despite the hard work, the perpetual futures on their own books didn't take off as hoped, predominantly due to liquidity and volume issues. The team at VALR decided to plug into Hyperliquid, which brings a huge amount of volume and market participants from around the world together. Looking ahead, as major players like Robinhood, Coinbase, and Intercontinental Exchange enter the perps market, there will be opportunities for cross-venue arbitrage, according to Jung. This could involve maintaining one position on a platform like Robinhood and the other side of the position on Hyperliquid, leveraging non-toxic flow to create more organic mechanisms for funding rates.