Hyperliquid Revolutionizes Crypto Perpetuals in DeFi's Ecosystem

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 allow users to speculate on asset prices with leverage and no expiration date. Founded by Harvard alumni Jeff Yan and a pseudonymous developer known as iliensinc, Hyperliquid has been live since the beginning of 2023. The platform has capitalized on the depth and volume of its order book by introducing the concept of composability, a notion from decentralized finance (DeFi) where permissionless smart contracts can be combined like financial building blocks, giving rise to novel tokenized products. Hyperliquid's Ethereum-compatible HyperEVM is directly connected to its high-performance, homegrown HyperCore blockchain. This setup allows other applications to build upon the platform's shared liquidity, rather than fragmenting it. Essentially, 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 experiences a deepening of liquidity, an expansion of available assets, and a compounding of network effects. Currently, hundreds of developers, including prominent names like MetaMask, Phantom wallet, and the South African exchange VALR, are utilizing Hyperliquid's system of 'builder codes.' These builders have generated approximately $90 million in revenue, according to Flowscan. The platform has garnered significant praise from its growing user base. 'Hyperliquid is more than just a perpetuals exchange; it's akin to AWS for finance,' stated Hyunsu Jung, CEO of Hyperion DeFi, the first 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. The primary service offered is liquidity, ensuring that all markets function optimally and allowing anyone to build upon them,' Jung explained in an interview. Similar to AWS for cloud infrastructure, builders on Hyperliquid own their user base 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 a superior user experience, while Hyperliquid serves as the backend 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, earning fees on every trade.' For an application like MetaMask, the Ethereum-based wallet with over 100 million users worldwide, integrating with Hyperliquid's EVM module is a logical step. MetaMask has provided its users with self-custodial access to perps directly from the wallet since October 2025. As a wallet, MetaMask has the advantage of not requiring a decentralized app (dApp) connection, and fund transfers are streamlined, allowing users to trade directly with the tokens they already hold. Matthieu Saint Olive, Staff Product Manager at MetaMask, noted that this integration plugs into MetaMask's money account, social login, and follow trading, leaving Hyperliquid to handle matching, the oracle, and the margin engine. 'Matching orders is genuinely challenging, and Hyperliquid excels at it, so we don't attempt to rebuild 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 anywhere.' MetaMask is witnessing growth beyond the crypto space, venturing into areas like commodities and equities, according to Saint Olive. 'Real-world-asset markets have evolved from a small portion 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, disclosed upfront with no hidden spread or execution costs, allowing traders to verify exactly what they paid. 'We believe transparency is a significant advantage, and we're actively exploring more innovative pricing models, as we want the economics to be a reason people choose MetaMask, not a source of friction,' Saint Olive added. It's more surprising to find a large centralized exchange relying on Hyperliquid's perps order book for liquidity. However, taking the Hyperliquid route has proven beneficial for the South Africa-based exchange VALR, ranked among the largest exchanges in Africa with nearly two million retail customers and about 2,000 corporate institutional customers, according to the exchange's CEO and co-founder, Farzam Ehsani. Initially, VALR offered customers spot market, spot margin, and then perpetuals, building all the infrastructure in-house, including risk and liquidation engines. Despite the effort, Ehsani candidly admitted that it was challenging to achieve volume and liquidity. 'Our volume is our volume; we are truthful and transparent and don't engage in wash trading or similar practices. We saw Hyperliquid bringing a huge amount of volume and market participants from all over the world together and thought, 'Why don't we plug into that?' ' Ehsani said in an interview. Looking ahead, when major players like Robinhood, Coinbase, and Intercontinental Exchange fully engage in offering perps, 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. 'Then, because you have a lot of what's called non-toxic flow, which is when more retail users are just purely entering and exiting the market, you'll be able to see more organic mechanisms for funding rates.'