Hyperliquid Revolutionizes DeFi with Composable Liquidity

The concept that liquidity attracts liquidity is particularly relevant in the context of 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 been live since the beginning of 2023 and has capitalized on the depth and volume of its order book by offering a unique concept known as composability. This DeFi concept allows permissionless smart contracts to interlock seamlessly, much like LEGO blocks, to create new tokenized financial products. The Ethereum-compatible HyperEVM, developed by Hyperliquid, directly connects to the platform's high-speed HyperCore blockchain, allowing other applications to build upon the shared liquidity without fragmenting it. This means that applications such as wallets or even other exchanges can utilize Hyperliquid as a backend to offer perps trading and other services, thereby increasing liquidity and expanding the variety of assets available. As more developers integrate Hyperliquid into their systems, the platform's network effects become more pronounced. Currently, hundreds of developers, including prominent names like MetaMask, Phantom wallet, and VALR, are utilizing Hyperliquid's 'builder codes', which have generated approximately $90 million in revenue so far. The platform has garnered significant praise from its users, with Hyunsu Jung, CEO of Hyperion DeFi, comparing it to 'AWS for finance'. Jung emphasizes that Hyperliquid is more than just a perpetuals exchange; it provides a layer-one blockchain infrastructure that offers liquidity and allows builders to create applications on top of it. Similar to AWS, builders using Hyperliquid's 'builder codes' have full control over the user interface and own their users, while the platform provides the underlying liquidity and execution. This allows integrators to charge fees on the notional size of their users' trades without having to develop the backend or maintain liquidity. The integration of Hyperliquid's EVM module with MetaMask, a wallet with over 100 million users worldwide, has been particularly successful. Since October 2025, MetaMask has allowed its users to access perps directly from the wallet, streamlining fund transfers and enabling users to trade with the tokens they already hold. According to Matthieu Saint Olive, Staff Product Manager at MetaMask, the wallet's integration with Hyperliquid has been advantageous, as it eliminates the need for a decentralized app and allows for seamless trading. Saint Olive also highlights that Hyperliquid excels at matching orders, which is a challenging task, and that MetaMask can focus on providing a great user experience while leaving the backend to Hyperliquid. MetaMask has seen growth in perps trading beyond crypto, with commodities and equities becoming increasingly popular. The platform charges a flat 0.1% builder fee, with no hidden spread or execution costs, providing transparency and fairness to its users. Even large centralized exchanges, such as VALR, have opted to use Hyperliquid's perps order book for liquidity. Despite initially building their own infrastructure, including risk and liquidation engines, VALR found it challenging to achieve sufficient volume and liquidity. By integrating with Hyperliquid, VALR has been able to tap into the platform's vast volume and market participants, providing a better experience for their customers. Looking ahead, as more prominent exchanges, such as Robinhood and Coinbase, enter the perps market, opportunities for cross-venue arbitrage will arise. This will allow users to maintain positions on multiple platforms, creating new mechanisms for funding rates and further increasing the efficiency of the DeFi ecosystem.