Hyperliquid Revolutionizes DeFi with Composable Perpetual Futures

The concept that liquidity breeds liquidity is being taken to the next level by Hyperliquid, a decentralized exchange that has become a top choice for traders of perpetual futures, also known as 'perps'. Founded by Harvard alumni Jeff Yan and iliensinc, Hyperliquid launched in 2023, capitalizing on its robust order book volume and depth by introducing a novel concept: composability. This DeFi concept allows permissionless smart contracts to interlock seamlessly, much like LEGO blocks, forming the foundation of innovative tokenized financial products. The Ethereum-compatible HyperEVM is directly connected to Hyperliquid's high-performance HyperCore blockchain, allowing other applications to tap into the platform's shared liquidity. This means that wallets and exchanges can leverage Hyperliquid as a backend, offering perps trading and other services without having to fragment their own liquidity. As more developers integrate Hyperliquid, the platform's liquidity deepens, and the variety of assets expands, creating a compounding network effect. Hundreds of developers, including prominent names like MetaMask, Phantom wallet, and VALR, are utilizing Hyperliquid's 'builder codes', generating approximately $90 million in revenue to date. Hyperliquid is being praised by its growing community of users. '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. 'While the perps aspect is excellent, this is essentially a layer-one blockchain infrastructure. The service offered is, in fact, liquidity, ensuring that all markets function smoothly and allowing anyone to build on top of them,' Jung explained in an interview. Similar to AWS for cloud infrastructure, builders on Hyperliquid own 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 developing the backend or maintaining liquidity. 'Builder codes enable integrators to focus on delivering exceptional user experiences, while Hyperliquid serves as the backend for liquidity and execution,' said Sterling Barnett, business development lead at Hyperliquid Labs. 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, and fund transfers are streamlined, allowing users to trade directly with the tokens they already hold. Matthieu Saint Olive, Staff Product Manager at MetaMask, explained that MetaMask's money account, social login, and follow trading are all integrated, 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. 'By directly routing orders to the Hyperliquid order book, MetaMask Perps offers some of the best liquidity and execution quality available anywhere.' MetaMask is witnessing growth beyond crypto, 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, with no hidden spread or execution costs, allowing traders to verify exactly what they paid. 'We believe that transparency is a significant advantage, and we're actively exploring more innovative pricing models to make our economics a reason people choose MetaMask, not a source of friction,' Saint Olive added. It's surprising to see a large centralized exchange, like VALR, relying on Hyperliquid's perps order book for liquidity. However, this decision has proven beneficial for the South Africa-based exchange, which is among the largest in Africa, with close to two million retail customers and about 2,000 corporate institutional customers, according to CEO and co-founder Farzam Ehsani. Initially, VALR built all the necessary infrastructure in-house, including risk and liquidation engines, but struggled to gain traction with perpetual futures due to liquidity and volume issues. Ehsani said candidly that the team saw Hyperliquid's massive volume and market participants and decided to tap into it. Looking ahead, when major players like Robinhood, Coinbase, and Intercontinental Exchange enter the perps market, 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 said. 'With a significant amount of non-toxic flow from retail users entering and exiting the market, you'll be able to see more organic mechanisms for funding rates.'