Arise Hyperliquid: A Thesis By Mirana Ventures & HypurrCollective
We would like to thank Mavis, Sohan and HypurrCollective for their helpful feedback on this article
Arise Hyperliquid: This Cycle’s DeFi Kingpin
Hyperliquid’s approach to ecosystem development distinguishes it from the traditional playbooks. While conventional strategies prioritize launching a L1 chain first before incentivizing community and ecosystem growth, Hyperliquid has reversed this order. By first delivering a product with strong product-market fit (PMF), the platform has laid a solid foundation before expanding the HyperEVM ecosystem.
This strategic approach has enabled Hyperliquid to rapidly emerge as one of the most innovative and promising DeFi platforms, distinguished by its pioneering approach to on-chain market infrastructure and its ability to replicate the performance and user experience of centralized exchanges (CEXs). The platform is the first to introduce a fully on-chain Central Limit Order Book (CLOB) that supports both multi-chain spot and derivatives markets, an unprecedented innovation. In addition, Hyperliquid’s CEX-like user experience is powered by its own L1 blockchain built from first principles and optimized for trading performance. Combined with staking-based fee tiers that lower trading costs, Hyperliquid sets a new standard for decentralized trading.
While recent incidents, such as the Hyperliquidity Provider (HLP) manipulations, have raised short-term concerns, we believe these challenges are surmountable and not reflective of the platform’s long-term fundamentals. Hyperliquid continues to demonstrate strong PMF, supported by an experienced team and an active, highly engaged community.
Why Hyperliquid
Strong Product Market Fit and Rapid Growth Trajectory
Hyperliquid has demonstrated strong product-market fit (PMF) since its inception, evidenced by its accelerating trading volumes and growing user base. With continued momentum, the protocol is increasingly positioned to compete with leading centralized exchanges (CEXs) such as Binance, Bybit, and OKX.
Since January 2024, Hyperliquid has steadily gained market share, particularly relative to decentralized competitors like dYdX and GMX. The platform has processed >$1.2T in cumulative perpetual futures (perps) trading volume, marking a significant milestone that reflects its emergence as the first decentralized exchange (DEX) capable of rivaling the performance and scale of a CEX.
Hyperliquid’s traction is particularly notable in comparison to Binance, the leading CEX by perps volume. Based on the most recent available data, Hyperliquid accounted for ~9.3% of Binance’s perps volume and ~14.1% of its open interest (OI), a clear indication of its ability to capture meaningful market activity historically dominated by CEXs. These metrics reinforce Hyperliquid’s standing as the current market-leading DEX, with the potential to become a long-term disruptor in the derivatives trading landscape.
Battle Tested Founders Backed by a Highly Engaged Community
Hyperliquid is led by co-founders Jeff and iliensinc, former Harvard classmates with complementary skill sets and excellent academic backgrounds. Additionally, Jeff brings deep quantitative trading experience from Hudson River Trading, one of the most respected firms in the space. Together, they have demonstrated resilience and a strong ability to execute quickly under high-pressure situations. Notably, the team responded swiftly to the attempted manipulation of the $JELLY perps market, showing the importance of real-time, transparent governance and proactive intervention, even in situations that require trade-offs between decentralization and user protection. This episode highlighted Hyperliquid’s ability to iterate, improve and maintain community trust, capabilities that are critical to the long-term sustainability of the protocol.
Beyond the founding team, Hyperliquid has cultivated a highly engaged, mission-aligned community in just over two years. This growth has been driven by an egalitarian culture and grassroots ethos, further reinforced by the team’s decision to eschew venture capital funding. Instead, Hyperliquid prioritized user ownership from the outset, meaningfully rewarding early contributors through its token generation event (TGE). This has established strong alignment between protocol success and the incentives of users and builders.
Despite limited foundational support for ecosystem development, the community has proactively driven growth through bottom-up initiatives, laying the groundwork for long-term sustainability.
- HypurrCollective: A collective of traders, builders, and funds working together to grow the Hyperliquid ecosystem; through public goods such as educational materials, go-to-market support for projects, event organization around major industry conferences, and more.
- HyperActive: An angel syndicate led by Max Fiege incubating early-stage projects such as Felix and Silhouette.
- Localized Communities: Hyperliquid user groups are active in Korea, Vietnam, Indonesia, Latin America and more, enabling regional adoption through content translation and local engagement.
Undisputed New Generation Category Leader Contender
Hyperliquid has emerged as the category leader in the perp DEX vertical, capturing both mindshare and market dominance while developing its spot product offering. According to Kaito, Hyperliquid currently commands >72% of mindshare among perp-focused DEXs, outperforming peers in brand awareness and community engagement.
On the market share front, Hyperliquid has captured >65% of the perp DEX trading volume over the past six months, a position attributed to its deep liquidity, low fees and strong execution. In addition to derivatives, Hyperliquid has begun scaling its spot trading offering, now processing >$50M in daily BTC spot volume via HyperUnit. This marks the beginning of a broader expansion into multi-asset support on the platform.
Deflationary Tokenomics Powered by Assistance Fund Buybacks:
Hyperliquid’s token model is underpinned by a deflationary structure that redirects platform revenue toward consistent buybacks and burns of its native token, $HYPE. According to DeFiLlama, the platform has generated ~$150M in cumulative fees since the beginning of 2025, averaging ~$40M in monthly revenues.
Beyond core trading activity, Hyperliquid benefits from alternative monetization streams such as spot ticker sales, facilitated through a Dutch auction mechanism. While current listings are priced around $40K, historical auctions have reached as high as $1M per ticker, reflecting strong market demand.
To date, >20M $HYPE tokens have been repurchased through daily buybacks ranging from $1M to $3M per day, with activity transparently tracked in real time via HypurrScan at wallet address 0xfefe…fefe. Additionally, >200K $HYPE tokens have been burned directly from trading fee revenue.
At current token price levels, the buyback program has the potential to absorb a significant portion of both the circulating and total token supply. Notably, >1M $HYPE tokens were purchased over a recent 6 day period, demonstrating the aggressive pace of the program. Based on current assumptions of ~$1.2M in daily revenue and a token price of ~$15.4, the Assistance Fund could acquire the entire available-for-sale supply within ~6.9 years.
Unlocking New Asset Classes: Building the Financial Layer
Looking ahead, Hyperliquid’s ability to onboard new asset classes will be a key growth driver, supporting its ambition to become the dominant blockchain that houses all financial layers. The launch of HyperUnit, an asset tokenization platform supporting native $BTC and $ETH spot markets, marks early progress in this vertical, with >$1B in $BTC spot volume generated within five months of launch. As the platform scales, Hyperliquid is well-positioned to become the first on-chain CLOB to support multi-chain spot and derivatives trading, offering a fully on-chain alternative to the CEX experience.
Furthermore, the recent listings of tokenized commodities like $PAXG (Gold Futures), along with upcoming listings such as equities through third-party tokenizations potentially through Unit or other players building on the EVM, signals the beginning of broader asset coverage on Hyperliquid.
“Unit's launch brings Hyperliquid one step closer to housing all finance. It will be exciting to see Hyperliquid's world class liquidity and UX extend to many more important financial assets." - Jeff
Ecosystem Insights
Current State of Affairs
The Hyperliquid ecosystem is in the early stages of ecosystem expansion, with HyperEVM serving as a pillar of this next phase. As with any early-stage developer environment, teams building on HyperEVM are working through typical challenges, including evolving infrastructure and a lean support model from the foundation. Some developers have noted issues with RPC nodes, impacting the pace of testing and smart contract deployment.
That said, these challenges are actively mitigated by a highly engaged community. In the absence of support from the foundation, builders have organically come together through the technical Discord, offering peer-to-peer troubleshooting, documentation, and real-time support. This community-driven ethos reflects the protocol’s grassroots DNA and underscores the strength of bottom-up ecosystem formation.
Looking ahead, several catalysts are expected to accelerate the growth of the Hyperliquid ecosystem:
- HyperCore x HyperEVM integration: Major milestone that will deepen composability between trading infrastructure and smart contracts
- HyperEVM Pre-Compiles and System Contracts: Projects are awaiting pre-compiles for deployment (HyperDrive, Kinetiq, etc.).
- Layerzero Integration: Cross-chain messaging support that will unlock interoperability with major ecosystems.
- Stablecoin Expansion: Native deployment of USDC/USDT/USDT0 and/or new stablecoins/synthetic dollar ($feUSD, $USDe, etc.) is expected to enhance liquidity.
- Builder Codes: Enabling builders to plug into Hyperliquid’s liquidity and create a revenue driver while focusing on growth and user experience instead.
The ecosystem growth is further evidenced by its organic traction with HyperEVM already surpassing >100K daily transactions & >$200M in $HYPE primarily bridged here.
Ecosystem Trends
We believe that there are several ecosystem development trends focused on 2 main verticals that will help accelerate the growth of the Hyperliquid ecosystem: HyperEVM & Builder Codes.
HyperEVM
HyperEVM supports 2 forms of deployments - Standard EVM-compatible deployment & Precompiles and System Contracts enabled deployment, a novel approach unique to Hyperliquid. Currently, we have seen primarily forks deploying on the HyperEVM (i.e. Hyperlend’s AAVE friendly fork, HyperSwap’s Uniswap Fork, etc.)*.
*Note: Some of these projects do plan to build with Precompiles when it’s live.
These projects have gotten great traction, given >$200M has been bridged; with Felix Protocol recently hitting >$100M TVL alone.
Note: For ease, we would focus more on the Precompiles and System Contracts enabled deployment; given standard EVM deployment has been well covered.
Precompiles and System Contracts
Precompiles and System Contracts are an innovation layer of Hyperliquid, allowing for on-chain interactions between permissionless smart contracts on the HyperEVM & the on-chain liquidity of HyperCore (The L1/Exchange Layer). For a deeper technical understanding, we recommend this blog written by Cain from HyperDrive & Jeff’s tweet.
Precompiles are for Read Actions. System Contracts are for Write Actions.
A non-exhaustive list of Hyperliquid DeFi primitives potentially enabled by Pre-Compiles that we are excited about include:
- Liquid Staking Tokens (LSTs): To operate fully on-chain in a more secure manner, with logic to stake & unstake being written into the smart contract itself (e.g. Thunderhead, Kinetiq, Hyperdrive).
- Money Markets: To interact with your Hyperliquid balances - Borrowing against your perp PnL position (e.g. HyperDrive, HyperLend, HypurrFi)
- Tokenized HLP & other forms of tokenized vaults
- Tokenized Perps & Spot Positions: Enables tokenized yield strategies (e.g. Basis trades).
- PayFi / Card Spending of Perps and Spot Balances: For example, spending against one’s profitable perp PnL positions.
- Options and Tokenized Equities/Commodities
- Others: CDP (Felix), AMM (Laminar, HyperSwap, Kittenswap, Valantis), Yield (Theo, Resolv, Liminal)
Builder Codes
Builder Codes is another understated innovation of Hyperliquid. Builder Codes enable projects to earn revenue from day 1, enabling in-built perp trading easily through tapping into HyperCore’s liquidity and earning a custom fee they set from the users they bring in.
This allows builders to focus on user acquisition, front-end improvements, and other core features — without the burden of building a perp DEX from scratch or managing liquidity and listings. Instead, they can leverage it as a revenue and profit driver with minimal ongoing setup and operational costs.
“AWS : Cloud infrastructure : Hyperliquid : Liquidity infrastructure
Today, liquidity on Hyperliquid rivals even tier 1 CEXs. With builder codes, this deep liquidity is now permissionlessly accessible for anyone to monetize.” - Jeff
Nicknamed “The AWS of Liquidity”, Builder Codes allows for builders to focus on the front end and marketing layer while seamlessly accessing Hyperliquid’s deep liquidity, numerous trading pairs & reliable infrastructure, all in a permissionless manner. Through Builder Codes, Hyperliquid effectively grows its user base and liquidity flywheel indirectly, similar to the model of white-label CEXes. More information about Builder Codes can be found in a good read from Xulian, a core contributor to Hyperliquid.
Successful playbooks of Builder Code integrations include:
- PvP.Trade: Telegram trading bot generating >$7M in revenue.
- Axiom Exchange: All in one trading platform for memes, perps, yield - With Hyperliquid powering the perps. Axiom has >43.5% market share on Solana memecoin market; with >$500K revenue from Hyperliquid Builder Codes.
- Nest Wallet & Okto Wallet: Wallet providers supporting perp trading to monetize further from existing users.
We anticipate a new wave of consumer applications fueled by front-end innovation and improved user experiences. Referencing PvP.Trade’s success in attracting a strong user base through its simplified trading interface, we expect upcoming projects to prioritize UX optimization as a key strategy for capturing users and market share. However, we do want to see Builder Codes integrated to help acquire new users elsewhere or better support their existing users.
A non-exhaustive list of potential playbooks enabled by Builder Codes that we are excited about include:
- “Robinhood” for Crypto: New UI/UX layers focused on clean interfaces to onboard the next batch of users & less sophisticated users on-chain. (eg. Dexari, SuperHYPE, HAVEN, Lootbase, etc.). Product-led growth & smart advertising spend will be key differentiators amongst teams.
- Social Trading Layers: Platforms like PVP.Trade, Bullpen and new ones across different social channels (eg. X, Line, Kakao Talk, etc.).
- Existing Large Name Wallets/Trading Apps: Players with >500K users that are integrating Hyperliquid for perp trading. (i.e Axiom Exchange)
- Localized Front Ends: In native languages and specific markets.
- Tier 2/3 CEXs and Perp DEX Aggregators/Terminals: To improve liquidity further.
- Account Abstraction Layers: Like UniversalX
- Privacy Layers: Like Silhouette
Why Build on Hyperliquid?
Hyperliquid is emerging as a premier ecosystem for builders, distinguished by its equitable market, highly engaged community and deep organic liquidity. Unlike other ecosystems, Hyperliquid has seen significant developer tracker without relying on any ecosystem grants/incentive programs, underscoring the strength of its underlying fundamentals.
“I've noticed a pattern that builders, traders, and communities who "make it" on Hyperliquid are those who call Hyperliquid home. Legacy players don't win just because of their credentials. Newcomers have equal opportunity to win by challenging the status quo and seizing the opportunities. There are empires to be built on the HyperEVM, and the community welcomes builders with open arms.” - Jeff
Today, >50 DeFi projects are actively building on Hyperliquid. Notably, many of these teams are composed of long-time Hyperliquid users, early contributors, and power users (“OGs” and whales), reflecting a high degree of alignment between builders and the protocol’s community ethos.
Hyperliquid also streamlines access for new projects through a transparent and permissionless listing framework. Teams can pay a clearly defined fee to list their spot tickers and seamlessly launch an airdrop process should they choose to distribute their tokens on the platform. This openness reduces friction in onboarding and reinforces Hyperliquid’s commitment to a fair and accessible system.
For a full overview of the current ecosystem, including the growing the growing DeFi and yield verticals, please see the latest directory and ecosystem map here;
Mirana’s Investment Strategy
Hyperliquid teams have historically relied on community-driven initiatives such as HypurrCo, Hyperactive and launchpads (Echo, Legion, etc.) for fundraising, staying true to Hyperliquid’s ethos. However, we are noticing a shift, with an increasing number of venture-funded projects in the ecosystem, deviating from anti-VC sentiments. These projects are prioritising investments from long-term strategic partners who can provide critical resources for scaling (TVL support, advisory, etc.). We observed a recent surge in investor interest within the Hyperliquid ecosystem, with Theo, HyperDrive, Resolv and Silhouette closing oversubscribed rounds recently.
Mirana’s investment strategy focuses on supporting potential category leaders & definers within the Hyperliquid ecosystem. We identified Theo (Mirana portfolio) & Hyperdrive to be the best positioned teams to become their leaders in their respective categories.
Our thesis in Theo is grounded in its differentiated and capital-efficient approach to DeFi. By leveraging innovative products like Straddle and thUSD, Theo is strategically positioned to capture significant share in the expanding markets of yield generation and cross-chain margining.
Whilst our conviction in Hyperdrive stems from its first-mover advantage, unique product edge via HLP tokenization, and being the only team in the ecosystem with a working Proof of Concept — underscoring its potential as a category leader.
Looking Ahead
At Mirana, we take a long-term, conviction-led approach, investing, nurturing and championing founders/teams who have the potential to lead categories or redefine sectors. In line with this strategy, we aim to back teams that are uniquely positioned to accelerate growth within the Hyperliquid ecosystem.
At HypurrCollective; we look forward to supporting and growing the Hyperliquid ecosystem further. We see a world where all of finance are housed on-chain on Hyperliquid.
Hyperliquid welcomes all builders.
Disclosure: Mirana is a long term investor in the Hyperliquid ecosystem.
Hyperliquid.