Hyperliquid Revolutionizes Crypto Perpetuals in the DeFi Ecosystem

The concept that liquidity breeds liquidity holds significant truth. As a decentralized exchange, Hyperliquid has gained popularity among traders, particularly those interested in perpetual futures or 'perps,' which are blockchain-based derivatives contracts allowing users to speculate on asset prices with leverage and no expiration date. Founded by Harvard classmates Jeff Yan and a pseudonymous developer known as iliensinc, Hyperliquid launched in 2023 and has capitalized on its order book volume and depth by introducing the concept of composability. This DeFi concept involves permissionless smart contracts that can interlock like financial building blocks, creating new tokenized products. The platform's Ethereum-compatible HyperEVM directly connects to its high-speed HyperCore blockchain, allowing other applications to utilize Hyperliquid's shared liquidity without fragmenting it. This means that applications such as wallets or other exchanges can leverage Hyperliquid as a backend to offer perps trading and other services. As more developers integrate with Hyperliquid, the platform's liquidity deepens, asset variety 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.' These builders have generated 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 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 notable, but 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 on top of them,' Jung explained in an interview. Similar to AWS for cloud infrastructure, builders maintain control over their users and user interface while Hyperliquid provides the underlying liquidity and execution. Integrators of builder codes 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 backend 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 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 decentralized app connection, and fund transfers are streamlined, allowing users to trade directly with the tokens they already hold, said Matthieu Saint Olive, Staff Product Manager at MetaMask. The integration enables MetaMask to plug into its 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,' 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 grown 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, disclosed upfront, with no hidden spread and nothing buried in execution, allowing traders to verify exactly what they paid. 'We believe transparency is a significant advantage, and we're actively exploring more innovative pricing models because we want the economics to be a reason people choose MetaMask, not a source of friction,' Saint Olive added. It's surprising to find a large centralized exchange relying on Hyperliquid's perps order book for liquidity. However, taking the Hyperliquid route has proven beneficial for the South Africa-based exchange VALR, which is ranked among the largest exchanges in Africa with close to two million retail customers and about 2,000 corporate institutional customers, according to the exchange's CEO and co-founder, Farzam Ehsani. Initially, VALR built all the infrastructure in-house, including risk and liquidation engines, Ehsani said. Despite the efforts, the team found it challenging to achieve significant volume and liquidity for perpetual futures. 'So, perpetual futures on our own books didn't take off as we had hoped, primarily due to liquidity and volume concerns,' Ehsani said in an interview. 'Our volume is genuine; 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 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. 'Then, because you have a lot of non-toxic flow, which is when more retail users are simply entering and exiting the market, you'll be able to see more organic mechanisms for funding rates.'