Hyperliquid Revolutionizes Crypto Perps in DeFi's 'Money LEGO' Ecosystem

The concept that liquidity breeds 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 the pseudonymous developer 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 concept known as composability. This DeFi concept allows permissionless smart contracts to interlock seamlessly, much like money LEGO blocks, enabling the creation of novel tokenized financial products. The HyperEVM, Hyperliquid's Ethereum-compatible platform, directly connects to its high-speed, homegrown HyperCore blockchain. This allows other applications to build upon the platform's shared liquidity, rather than fragmenting it. As a result, applications such as wallets or even other exchanges can utilize Hyperliquid as a backend, providing perps trading and other services to their users. As more developers integrate with Hyperliquid, the platform's liquidity deepens, the variety of assets expands, and network effects intensify. Currently, hundreds of developers, including prominent names like MetaMask, Phantom wallet, and the South African exchange VALR, are utilizing Hyperliquid's 'builder codes' system, 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 the AWS of 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 just one part of it; this is essentially a layer-one blockchain infrastructure. The primary service offered is liquidity, ensuring that all markets function seamlessly and allowing anyone to build upon them,' Jung explained in an interview. Similar to AWS, which provides cloud infrastructure, builders on Hyperliquid own their users and have full control over the user interface. Meanwhile, Hyperliquid handles the underlying liquidity and execution, allowing builder code integrators to charge fees based on the notional size of their users' trades without needing to develop or maintain the backend or liquidity. 'Builder codes enable integrators to focus on delivering exceptional user experiences, while Hyperliquid provides the necessary backend for liquidity and execution,' stated 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, which boasts over 100 million users worldwide, integrating with Hyperliquid's EVM module makes perfect sense. 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 (dApp) connection. Additionally, 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 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,' stated 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, with commodities and equities becoming increasingly popular, 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. Regarding fees, MetaMask charges a flat 0.1% builder fee, which is transparent and disclosed upfront, with no hidden spread or execution costs. 'We believe that transparency is a significant advantage and are actively exploring 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 noteworthy that a large centralized exchange like VALR has chosen to utilize Hyperliquid's perps order book for its liquidity requirements. However, this decision has proven to be a good option 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 the exchange's CEO and co-founder, Farzam Ehsani. Initially, VALR built its infrastructure in-house, including risk and liquidation engines, but struggled to gain traction with its perpetual futures offerings due to liquidity and volume concerns. 'We saw Hyperliquid bringing together a vast amount of volume and market participants from all over the world and thought, 'Why not plug into that?' 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, for example, and the other side of the position on Hyperliquid,' Jung said. 'With a significant amount of non-toxic flow, which occurs when retail users enter and exit the market, you'll be able to see more organic mechanisms for funding rates.'