Hyperliquid Revolutionizes Crypto Perpetuals in DeFi's Ecosystem

The concept that liquidity breeds liquidity is a fundamental principle. Hyperliquid has emerged as the go-to decentralized exchange for traders, particularly those interested in perpetual futures, also known as 'perps.' These blockchain-based derivatives contracts allow 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 is now capitalizing on the depth and volume of its order book by offering a unique concept: composability. This DeFi concept enables permissionless smart contracts to integrate seamlessly, much like LEGO blocks, creating new tokenized financial products. Hyperliquid's Ethereum-compatible HyperEVM directly connects to its high-performance HyperCore blockchain, allowing other applications to build upon the platform's shared liquidity rather than fragmenting it. This means that wallets and other exchanges can utilize Hyperliquid as a backend, providing perps trading and other services without having to develop their own infrastructure. As more developers integrate with Hyperliquid, the platform's liquidity deepens, and the variety of assets expands, creating a self-reinforcing cycle. Currently, hundreds of developers, including prominent names like MetaMask and Phantom wallet, are utilizing Hyperliquid's 'builder codes,' generating approximately $90 million in revenue. The platform has garnered significant praise from its users. 'Hyperliquid is more than just a perpetuals exchange; it's akin to the AWS of 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 liquidity, and having all these markets function seamlessly, allowing anyone to build on top of them,' Jung explained in an interview. Similar to AWS, builders own their users and have full control over the user interface, while Hyperliquid provides the underlying liquidity and execution. Integrators who utilize builder codes can charge fees based on the notional size of their users' trades without having to develop or maintain their own backend or liquidity. 'Builder codes enable 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, via email. 'Integrators can offer their users best-in-class 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, 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. 'Hyperliquid excels at matching orders, 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, with commodities and equities becoming increasingly popular, according to Saint Olive. 'Real-world asset markets have expanded 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, 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 more innovative pricing models to make our economics a reason people choose MetaMask, not a source of friction,' Saint Olive added. It's notable 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 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 its infrastructure in-house, including risk and liquidation engines, but found it challenging to achieve sufficient volume and liquidity for its perpetual futures. 'Our volume is our volume; we are truthful and transparent and don't engage in wash trading or similar practices,' Ehsani said in an interview. 'We saw Hyperliquid bringing a huge 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 enter the perps market, 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. 'With a significant amount of non-toxic flow, which is when retail users are simply entering and exiting the market, you'll be able to see more organic mechanisms for funding rates.'