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 garnered significant attention among traders, especially those interested in perpetual futures or 'perps'. Founded by Harvard alumni Jeff Yan and a pseudonymous developer known as iliensinc, Hyperliquid launched in early 2023 and has since capitalized on the depth and volume of its order book by introducing a concept akin to composability. This DeFi concept allows permissionless smart contracts to interlock seamlessly, much like financial building blocks, facilitating the creation of novel tokenized products. The HyperEVM, compatible with Ethereum, directly connects to Hyperliquid's high-performance HyperCore blockchain. This setup enables other applications to integrate with the platform's shared liquidity, rather than fragmenting it. Essentially, applications such as wallets or even other exchanges can leverage Hyperliquid as a backend, offering perps trading and other services without having to develop their own infrastructure. As more developers integrate with Hyperliquid, the platform experiences deepening liquidity, an expanding array of assets, and compounding network effects. Currently, hundreds of developers, including prominent names like MetaMask and Phantom wallet, utilize Hyperliquid's 'builder codes', generating 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, a U.S.-listed treasury company focused on Hyperliquid's native token, HYPE. 'While the perps aspect is notable, Hyperliquid essentially provides layer-one blockchain infrastructure, with its core service being liquidity and ensuring the seamless operation of various markets. This allows anyone to build upon them,' Jung explained in an interview. Similar to AWS in cloud infrastructure, builders on Hyperliquid own their user base and have full control over the user interface, while the platform 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 their own backend or liquidity. 'Builder codes allow integrators to focus on delivering exceptional user experiences, while Hyperliquid handles the backend for liquidity and execution,' said Sterling Barnett, business development lead at Hyperliquid Labs. 'This enables integrators to offer their users top-tier on-chain liquidity and institutional-grade infrastructure, 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 logical step. 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 separate 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. This integration enables MetaMask to plug into Hyperliquid's order book, handling 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. 'By directly routing orders to the Hyperliquid order book, MetaMask Perps offers some of the best liquidity and execution quality available.' According to Saint Olive, MetaMask is witnessing growth beyond crypto, into areas such as commodities and equities. '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 noted. 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, not a source of friction,' Saint Olive added. It's more unexpected to find a large centralized exchange relying on Hyperliquid for liquidity requirements. However, South Africa-based exchange VALR, one of the largest exchanges in Africa with nearly two million retail customers and about 2,000 corporate institutional customers, has found this approach beneficial. After initially offering spot market, spot margin, and then perpetuals, the VALR team built all the necessary infrastructure in-house, including risk and liquidation engines, according to CEO and co-founder Farzam Ehsani. Despite the effort, Ehsani candidly admitted that achieving volume and liquidity for perpetual futures proved challenging. 'Our volume is genuine; we're transparent and don't engage in wash trading or similar practices. We recognized Hyperliquid's ability to bring together a huge amount of volume and market participants from around the world and decided to integrate with them,' Ehsani said in an interview. 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 explained. 'With a significant amount of non-toxic flow, which occurs when retail users enter and exit the market, you'll see more organic mechanisms for funding rates.'