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

The concept that liquidity breeds liquidity is particularly relevant to 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 a pseudonymous developer known as iliensinc, Hyperliquid has been live since the beginning of 2023. The platform is leveraging its substantial order book volume and depth by introducing a concept similar to composability, a key principle in decentralized finance (DeFi) that allows permissionless smart contracts to interlock like financial building blocks. Hyperliquid's Ethereum-compatible HyperEVM is directly connected to its high-performance, proprietary 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 to offer perps trading and other services. As more developers integrate with Hyperliquid, the platform's liquidity deepens, the variety of assets expands, and network effects become more pronounced. 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. 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,' 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 notable, but this is essentially a layer-one blockchain infrastructure. The primary service offered is liquidity, ensuring that all markets function optimally and allowing anyone to build on top of them,' Jung explained in an interview. Similar to AWS in 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 having to develop the backend or maintain 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. 'Integrators can offer their users top-tier 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 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. 'Matching orders is genuinely challenging, and Hyperliquid excels at it, so we don't attempt to rebuild it,' said Matthieu Saint Olive, Staff Product Manager at MetaMask. 'By routing orders directly to the Hyperliquid order book, MetaMask Perps offers some of the best liquidity and execution quality available.' MetaMask is witnessing growth beyond crypto, with commodities and equities becoming increasingly popular. '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,' Saint Olive noted. In terms of fees, MetaMask charges a flat 0.1% builder fee, which is transparent and has no hidden spread or execution costs. 'We believe transparency is a significant advantage and are 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 partnership has proven beneficial for the South Africa-based exchange, which is among the largest in Africa with nearly two million retail customers and about 2,000 corporate institutional customers. According to VALR's CEO and co-founder, Farzam Ehsani, the team initially built all the infrastructure in-house, including risk and liquidation engines. Despite their efforts, they found it challenging to achieve sufficient volume and liquidity for their perpetual futures. 'Our volume is our volume; we are truthful and transparent and don't engage in wash trading or similar practices. We recognized that Hyperliquid was bringing a substantial amount of volume and market participants from around the world together, so we decided to integrate with them,' Ehsani said. Looking ahead, as major players like Robinhood, Coinbase, and Intercontinental Exchange expand their perps offerings, there will be opportunities for cross-venue arbitrage, according to Jung. '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, which occurs when more retail users are entering and exiting the market, you'll be able to see more organic mechanisms for funding rates.'