Hyperliquid Revolutionizes DeFi with Composable Liquidity Solutions

The concept that liquidity breeds liquidity has become a guiding principle for Hyperliquid, a decentralized exchange that has gained significant traction among traders, particularly 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 early 2023 and is now capitalizing on the depth and volume of its order book by offering a unique value proposition: composability. This DeFi concept enables permissionless smart contracts to interlock seamlessly, much like financial building blocks, giving rise to innovative tokenized products. Hyperliquid's Ethereum-compatible HyperEVM is directly connected to its high-performance HyperCore blockchain, allowing other applications to leverage the platform's shared liquidity without fragmenting it. This means that applications such as wallets or even other exchanges can utilize Hyperliquid as a backend, enabling them to offer perps trading and other services without having to develop their own infrastructure. As more developers integrate with Hyperliquid, the platform's liquidity deepens, the range of assets expands, and network effects intensify. Currently, hundreds of developers, including prominent names like MetaMask, Phantom wallet, and VALR, are utilizing Hyperliquid's 'builder codes', generating approximately $90 million in revenue, according to Flowscan. Hyperliquid has garnered significant praise from its growing community of supporters. 'Hyperliquid is more than just a perpetuals exchange; it's akin to AWS for finance,' said Hyunsu Jung, CEO of Hyperion DeFi, the first US-listed treasury company focused on Hyperliquid's native token, HYPE. 'While the perps aspect is impressive, Hyperliquid is essentially a layer-one blockchain infrastructure providing liquidity and execution services. This allows builders to focus on delivering exceptional user experiences while Hyperliquid handles the underlying complexity,' Jung explained in an interview. Similar to AWS, builders using Hyperliquid's platform maintain full control over their user interface and own their users, while Hyperliquid provides the necessary liquidity and execution. Integrators of builder codes can charge fees based on the notional size of their users' trades without having to develop or maintain backend infrastructure. 'Builder codes enable integrators to focus on what they do best – providing a seamless user experience – while Hyperliquid serves as the backbone for liquidity and execution,' said Sterling Barnett, business development lead at Hyperliquid Labs, via email. 'Integrators can offer their users top-notch on-chain liquidity and institutional-grade infrastructure while earning fees on every trade.' For an application like MetaMask, which boasts over 100 million users worldwide, integrating with Hyperliquid's EVM module is a natural fit. Since October 2025, MetaMask has allowed its users to access perps directly from their wallets. As a wallet, MetaMask has the advantage of not requiring a separate decentralized application, and fund transfers are streamlined, enabling users to trade directly with the tokens they already hold, according to Matthieu Saint Olive, Staff Product Manager at MetaMask. The integration allows MetaMask to focus on its core competencies while Hyperliquid handles matching, oracle, and margin engine tasks. 'Matching orders is a challenging task, and Hyperliquid excels at it, so we don't attempt to recreate it,' said Saint Olive via email. 'By routing orders directly to the Hyperliquid order book, MetaMask Perps offers some of the best liquidity and execution quality available in the market.' MetaMask is witnessing growth beyond the crypto space, with commodities and equities gaining traction, according to Saint Olive. 'Real-world asset markets have grown from a small fraction of perp volume at the start of 2026 to roughly a quarter of it today,' he said. In terms of fees, MetaMask charges a flat 0.1% builder fee, with full transparency and no hidden spreads or execution costs, allowing traders to verify exactly what they paid. 'We believe transparency is a key advantage and are exploring innovative pricing models to make our economics a reason users choose MetaMask, not a source of friction,' Saint Olive added. It's noteworthy that a large centralized exchange like VALR has opted to leverage Hyperliquid's perps order book for its liquidity requirements. However, this move has proven beneficial for the South Africa-based exchange, which is ranked among the largest in Africa with nearly two million retail customers and about 2,000 corporate institutional customers, according to CEO and co-founder Farzam Ehsani. Initially, VALR built its infrastructure in-house, including risk and liquidation engines, but found it challenging to achieve sufficient volume and liquidity for its perpetual futures, Ehsani said. 'We saw Hyperliquid bringing together a huge amount of volume and market participants from around the world and thought, 'Why not plug into that?' Looking ahead, as major players like Robinhood, Coinbase, and Intercontinental Exchange expand their perps offerings, opportunities for cross-venue arbitrage will emerge, according to Jung of Hyperion. 'Imagine maintaining one position on Robinhood and the other side of the position on Hyperliquid,' Jung said. 'With a significant amount of non-toxic flow, which is driven by retail users entering and exiting the market, you'll be able to see more organic mechanisms for funding rates.'