Unlocking DeFi's Full Potential: Hyperliquid Revolutionizes Crypto Perps

The concept that liquidity breeds liquidity has become a guiding principle in the world of finance. Hyperliquid, a decentralized exchange, has emerged as a top choice for traders seeking to engage with perpetual futures, or 'perps,' which are blockchain-based derivatives contracts enabling 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 launched in 2023 and has been capitalizing on the depth and volume of its order book. The platform offers a unique concept known as composability, inspired by decentralized finance (DeFi), where permissionless smart contracts can be combined like building blocks, giving rise to novel tokenized financial products. Hyperliquid's Ethereum-compatible HyperEVM is directly connected to its high-performance HyperCore blockchain, allowing other applications to build upon the platform's shared liquidity rather than fragmenting it. This means that applications such as wallets or even other exchanges can utilize Hyperliquid as a backend, providing perps trading and other services. 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, which has generated approximately $90 million in revenue, according to Flowscan. A growing number of enthusiasts are praising the platform's capabilities. 'Hyperliquid is more than just a perpetuals exchange; it's akin to AWS for finance,' said Hyunsu Jung, CEO of Hyperion DeFi, the first U.S.-listed treasury company focused on Hyperliquid's native token, HYPE. 'The perps aspect is excellent, but this is essentially a layer-one blockchain infrastructure. The service offered is, in fact, liquidity, and ensuring that all these markets function seamlessly, allowing anyone to build upon them,' Jung explained in an interview. Similar to AWS for cloud infrastructure, builders maintain ownership of their users and 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 the backend or maintain liquidity. 'Builder codes enable integrators to focus on delivering exceptional user experiences, while Hyperliquid serves as the backbone 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, while 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 decentralized app (dApp) 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. The integration enables MetaMask to plug into Hyperliquid's money account, social login, and follow trading, while Hyperliquid handles 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 has seen growth beyond crypto, extending into areas like commodities and equities, according to Saint Olive. 'Real-world-asset markets have evolved from a small fraction 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, clearly disclosed upfront, with no hidden spread and nothing buried in execution, 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, 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 see a large centralized exchange relying on Hyperliquid's perps order book for liquidity. However, taking the Hyperliquid route has proven to be a viable option for the South Africa-based exchange VALR, which is ranked among the largest exchanges 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, the team at VALR built all the infrastructure in-house, including risk and liquidation engines, Ehsani said. Despite the effort invested in launching perpetual futures, Ehsani candidly admitted that it was challenging to achieve sufficient volume and liquidity. 'So, perpetual futures on our own books didn't take off as we had hoped they would, primarily due to liquidity and volume concerns,' Ehsani said in an interview. '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 substantial amount of volume and market participants from all over the world together and thought, 'Why not plug into that?' Looking ahead, when major players like Robinhood, Coinbase, and Intercontinental Exchange fully commit to 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 significant amount of non-toxic flow, which occurs when more retail users are simply entering and exiting the market, you'll be able to see more organic mechanisms for funding rates.'