Hyperliquid Revolutionizes DeFi with Composability and Shared Liquidity

The concept that liquidity generates more liquidity is particularly relevant for 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 iliensinc, Hyperliquid has capitalized on the depth and volume of its order book by introducing a composability feature, allowing permissionless smart contracts to interlock seamlessly, much like financial building blocks. This approach enables other applications to utilize Hyperliquid's shared liquidity, rather than fragmenting it, and provides a robust foundation for the creation of novel tokenized financial products. Hyperliquid's HyperEVM, compatible with Ethereum, directly connects to its high-performance HyperCore blockchain, allowing other applications to build upon the platform's collective liquidity. This, in turn, enables applications such as wallets or other exchanges to integrate Hyperliquid, using it as a backbone for perps trading and other services. As more developers deploy and integrate with Hyperliquid, the platform's liquidity deepens, and its network effects intensify. Notably, hundreds of developers, including prominent players like MetaMask, Phantom wallet, and VALR, have adopted Hyperliquid's 'builder codes', generating approximately $90 million in revenue. The platform 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, a U.S.-listed treasury company focused on Hyperliquid's native token, HYPE. 'The perps aspect is notable, but this is essentially a layer-one blockchain infrastructure, providing liquidity and facilitating the seamless operation of various markets, while allowing developers to build upon them.' Similar to AWS, builders maintain ownership of their users and have full control over the user interface, while Hyperliquid provides the underlying liquidity and execution. Integrators of builder codes can charge fees based on the notional size of their users' trades without needing to develop or maintain the backend infrastructure or liquidity. 'Builder codes enable integrators to focus on delivering exceptional user experiences, while Hyperliquid handles the backend liquidity and execution,' said Sterling Barnett, business development lead at Hyperliquid Labs. 'This allows integrators to offer their users top-notch on-chain liquidity and institutional-grade infrastructure, while earning fees on every trade.' For applications like MetaMask, which boasts over 100 million users worldwide, integrating with Hyperliquid's EVM module is a strategic move. Since October 2025, MetaMask has provided its users with self-custodial access to perps directly from the wallet. As a wallet, MetaMask has the advantage of not requiring a decentralized app connection, and fund transfers are streamlined, allowing users to trade directly with the tokens they already hold, according to Matthieu Saint Olive, Staff Product Manager at MetaMask. The integration enables MetaMask to plug into Hyperliquid's order book, providing users with access to high-quality liquidity and execution. 'Matching orders is a complex task, and Hyperliquid excels at it, so we don't attempt to rebuild it,' said Saint Olive. '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 has observed growth beyond the crypto space, with commodities and equities becoming increasingly popular, according to Saint Olive. 'Real-world asset markets have expanded from a small fraction 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 or execution costs, allowing traders to verify exactly what they paid. 'We believe transparency is a significant advantage and are exploring innovative pricing models to make our economics a reason people choose MetaMask, rather than a source of friction,' Saint Olive added. It's notable that a large centralized exchange like VALR has opted to utilize 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 close to two million retail customers and approximately 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 despite their efforts, they struggled to achieve sufficient volume and liquidity for their perpetual futures. Ehsani acknowledged that launching perpetual futures on their own books didn't yield the desired results, primarily due to liquidity and volume constraints. 'We saw Hyperliquid bringing together a massive amount of volume and market participants from around the world and thought, 'Why not plug into that?' Ehsani said. Looking ahead, when major players like Robinhood, Coinbase, and Intercontinental Exchange enter the perps market, there will be opportunities for cross-venue arbitrage, according to Jung of Hyperion. 'Imagine maintaining one position on Robinhood, for example, and the other side of the position on Hyperliquid,' Jung said. 'With a significant amount of non-toxic flow, which is when more retail users are entering and exiting the market, you'll be able to see more organic mechanisms for funding rates.'