Interpretation: How can Hyperliquid play in the face of PerpDEX's reshuffle?

Author: Biteye

Global Perpetual DEX Market Overview and Industry Transformation

The decentralized perpetual exchange market is experiencing an unprecedented wave of growth and a reshaping of the competitive landscape. As of September 2025, global perp DEX daily trading volume has exceeded $52 billion, a 530% increase from the beginning of the year, with cumulative monthly trading volume reaching $13 trillion. This growth is driven by breakthroughs in technological innovation, growing user demand for decentralized financial products, and regulatory pressure on centralized trading platforms. The entire sector now accounts for approximately 26% of the crypto derivatives market, a significant leap from the single-digit share in 2024. The rapid differentiation of the market is reshaping the competitive landscape. Traditional order book models (such as dYdX and Hyperliquid) dominate the professional trading field with precise price discovery and deep liquidity, while AMM models (such as GMX and Gains Network) attract retail users with instant liquidity and simplified operations. Emerging hybrid models, such as Jupiter Perps, attempt to combine the strengths of both, using the Keeper system to seamlessly transition between order books and AMMs in a high-speed environment. Data suggests that the order book model is gaining market share, with Hyperliquid processing $2.76 trillion in cumulative trading volume with its CLOB architecture. The Rise and Market Impact of Aster DEX: Aster, formed through the merger of APX Finance and Astherus, achieved a meteoric rise from zero to top in just a few weeks through a multi-chain aggregation strategy and the support of YZi Labs, particularly CZ. Its 1,650% increase on the day of its token launch on September 17th, $371 million in trading volume on the first day, and the influx of 330,000 new wallet addresses all demonstrate its strong market capture capabilities. Aster's technological innovation is primarily reflected in improvements to its user experience. Its Simple mode offers up to 1001x leverage, far exceeding Hyperliquid's 40-50x. While carrying significant risk, it remains attractive to speculators seeking high returns. The hidden order feature draws on the concept of dark pools in traditional finance, effectively protecting large transactions from MEV attacks. The yield integration feature allows users to use interest-bearing assets like asBNB as margin, earning a base yield of 5-7% while trading. This innovation maximizes the composability of DeFi. Aster's TVL surged 328% from $370 million on September 14th to $1.735 billion, with BNB Chain contributing 80% of this capital. Daily trading volume has repeatedly exceeded $20 billion, surpassing Hyperliquid to become the world's largest perpetual DEX, with 24-hour fee revenue reaching $7.12 million. More importantly, Aster has accumulated $19.383 billion in cumulative perpetual trading volume in just a few months. While still a far cry from Hyperliquid's $2.76 trillion, its growth rate is astonishing. Community discussions revealed a clear divergence in traders' preferences for the two platforms. Professional traders favor Hyperliquid, believing its "single block confirmation" and deep liquidity are essential for professional trading. Meanwhile, cross-chain users and newcomers prefer Aster, whose bridge-free multi-chain support and CEX-like user experience significantly lower the barrier to entry. Hyperliquid: Technologically Leading, But Market Share Under Pressure As a pioneer in the perpetual DEX space, Hyperliquid has redefined the possibilities of on-chain derivatives trading with its innovative HyperCore architecture. HyperCore achieves a processing capacity of 200,000 orders per second and a latency of 0.2 seconds, performance metrics that even surpass many centralized exchanges. With cumulative perpetual swap trading volume of $2.765 trillion, current open interest of $133.5 billion, and a 24-hour trading volume of $15.6 billion, these figures fully demonstrate the success of its technical architecture and user trust. However, Hyperliquid faces the challenge of a continued decline in market share. Its share of the perpetual swap DEX market has fallen from 71% in May 2025 and 80% in August to 38% today. This change is primarily due to the rapid rise of emerging competitors and the success of its multi-chain strategy. In particular, Hyperliquid has been repeatedly surpassed by Aster DEX in terms of daily trading volume and fee revenue, a change that was previously unimaginable. Despite the challenges, Hyperliquid's advantages remain obvious. It boasts the deepest liquidity, with spreads as low as 0.1-0.2 basis points for major assets like BTC/ETH; the most stable technical architecture, with one block confirmation providing traders with unparalleled certainty; and the most mature ecosystem, with over 100 projects building comprehensive DeFi infrastructure on its platform. Importantly, its deflationary token model allocates 99% of protocol revenue to buyback and burn HYPE tokens, resulting in an annualized revenue of $20.1 billion, providing strong support for the token's value. From a user quality perspective, Hyperliquid demonstrates superior user value. Of its 825,000 daily active addresses, 3.651 million are monthly active users, and its open interest to trading volume (OI/Volume) ratio reaches 287%, significantly exceeding the industry average. This metric indicates that Hyperliquid's users are primarily motivated by genuine risk hedging needs, rather than short-term speculative trading. In comparison, Aster's ratio is only 12%. While it boasts higher daily trading volume, its user behavior tends to favor short-term arbitrage. Facing competitive pressure, Hyperliquid is actively adjusting its strategy. The upcoming HIP-3 (Permissionless Perpetual Markets) will allow anyone to deploy custom perpetual contracts, potentially leading to innovative products like RWA perpetuals and AI computing power futures, revitalizing the ecosystem. The launch of the USDH native stablecoin will further enhance its financial infrastructure. With an estimated $5.5 billion in assets under management and 95% of proceeds allocated for HYPE buybacks, this will significantly enhance the token's value. In this fiercely competitive market, Hyperliquid's true moat lies not simply in its technology itself, but in the comprehensive ecosystem built around its core protocol. From its humble beginnings as a perpetual trading platform to a comprehensive DeFi ecosystem with over 100 projects, Hyperliquid has established a self-contained financial infrastructure. This ecosystem encompasses a full-stack solution, from infrastructure and DeFi protocols to application layers, with each component contributing to the network's value accumulation and user engagement. It is against this backdrop that this article will delve into the core projects and innovative applications within the Hyperliquid ecosystem, exploring how these projects have built a sustainable competitive advantage for Hyperliquid amidst fierce market competition, and how they are collectively shaping the future of decentralized derivatives trading. An In-Depth Analysis of Hyperliquid's Core Ecosystem Projects 1. Kinetiq - Pillar of the Liquidity Staking Ecosystem (TVL: $1.757 billion) Kinetiq holds an undisputed position within the Hyperliquid ecosystem. Its $1.757 billion TVL accounts for approximately 78% of the ecosystem's total, making it a core hub for capital flow within the ecosystem. As the "Jito" of this ecosystem, Kinetiq has redefined the validator delegation mechanism through its innovative StakeHub algorithm, achieving unprecedented efficiency and profit optimization. The core of the StakeHub algorithm lies in its sophisticated multi-dimensional scoring system. This system scores over 100 active validators in real time, dynamically adjusting fund allocation strategies based on metrics such as reliability (40% weighting), security (25% weighting), economic performance (15% weighting), governance participation (10% weighting), and operational history (10% weighting). This algorithm not only considers the validator's historical performance but also predicts its future stability. Using a machine learning model, it continuously optimizes allocation weights to ensure that delegated funds always flow to the highest-quality validators. The protocol offers a rich and market-leading revenue structure. The base PoS reward yields approximately 2.3% annualized, which is already among the highest among similar LST projects. StakeHub optimizations provide an additional 0.2-0.5% boost to yields by avoiding underperforming validators. MEV revenue contributes approximately 1% annualized yield, derived from the Hyperliquid network's MEV capture mechanism. Even more compelling are the integration rewards with other DeFi protocols, offering a variable bonus of 6-8%, bringing the total yield to 10-12%, highly competitive in the current DeFi landscape. Kinetiq offers a streamlined user experience. Users stake HYPE and receive kHYPE tokens, enjoying a slight premium of 1:0.996. This premium reflects the market's increased valuation of liquid staking tokens and confidence in the protocol's security. The unstaking mechanism incorporates a 7-day safety delay and a 0.1% fee, ensuring network security while providing a reasonable exit mechanism for users. Kinetiq's TVL has exploded from $458 million in July to $1.81 billion today, a threefold increase in just two months. This growth is primarily due to the integration of the Pendle protocol, which created additional liquidity demand and yield strategies for kHYPE through its PT/YT split mechanism.

Kinetiq TVL Growth

2. Based - Mobile Super App and Ecosystem Portal

Based As the highest-earning Builder app on Hyperliquid, Based's 24-hour revenue was approximately US$90,300, ranking first among all third-party apps. Cumulative perpetual swap trading volume exceeded $16.699 billion, with 24-hour perpetual swap volume reaching $321 million. Based on Hyperliquid's high-net-worth user base and deep engagement, the platform handles approximately 7% of its total trading volume. Its revenue model is based on Hyperliquid's Builder fee-sharing system, offering a maximum commission share of 0.1% on perpetual swaps and 1% on spot trading. The majority of this revenue is returned to users in the form of commissions through an affiliate marketing program, creating a sustainable incentive structure that benefits users, the platform, and Based. With 7-day revenue of $2.22 million and 30-day revenue of $6.71 million, these metrics not only demonstrate the robustness of its business model but also highlight its key role as a revenue contributor in the Hyperliquid ecosystem. Based on the token economics design reflects a deep understanding of user behavior and innovative incentive mechanisms. $PUP tokens, used as an XP bonus tool, completed their airdrop on August 22, 2025. The total supply is 100 million, of which 5% is allocated to early users and community contributors. $PUP's primary function is to improve users' XP earning efficiency, providing a 25-60% point multiplier, enabling holders to earn more rewards from activities like trading and spending. $BASED, the primary governance token, will be distributed based on users' total XP. The snapshot date is September 20, 2025. Perpetual trading contributes 0.06 XP for every $1 of notional trading volume, spot trading contributes 0.30 XP for every $1 of trading volume (a 5x incentive), and Visa spending contributes 4-6 points for every $1 spent (converted to XP at the TGE). This dual-token mechanism cleverly combines short-term incentives ($PUP multipliers) with long-term governance ($BASED distributions). $PUP holders essentially gain "leverage" from $BASED airdrops, further strengthening user loyalty and ecosystem engagement. 3. Pendle - A Giant Yield Tokenization Protocol Pendle's successful deployment on the HyperEVM marks the maturity of yield tokenization within the Hyperliquid ecosystem and represents a new level of sophistication and innovation in DeFi products. By separating interest-bearing assets like kHYPE into PT (principal token) and YT (yield token), the protocol provides investors with a precise tool for both fixed-income investment and yield speculation. In just a few months, Pendle's TVL on the HyperEVM grew from zero to $12.3 billion, a 30-day increase of 76.27%. The synergy formed by Pendle and Kinetiq is a key factor in its rapid success in the Hyperliquid ecosystem. This synergy is not only reflected in the complementarity of products, but more importantly, it creates a new value capture mechanism. By tokenizing kHYPE into PT and YT, Pendle provides liquidity stakers with a more diverse range of yield strategies and creates new avenues for earning Kinetiq's points system. YT-kHYPE holders receive the full return of Kinetiq points rewards without the risk of principal fluctuations. PT-kHYPE holders enjoy the certainty of a fixed return, which can be used to build a stable yield strategy. Pendle's product portfolio continues to expand, demonstrating its strategic commitment to deep integration with the Hyperliquid ecosystem. In addition to the mainstream kHYPE market, the protocol is also gradually supporting the tokenization of yield from ecosystem-based interest-bearing assets such as feUSD, hwHLP, and beHYPE. Each new asset creates new yield strategy combinations and arbitrage opportunities, further driving the activity and composability of the entire ecosystem. As more LST and yield-generating assets emerge, Pendle provides standardized yield segregation tools for these assets, becoming a crucial bridge connecting different protocols.

Pendle's revenue token in HyperrEVM

4. HyperLend - Core of Lending Infrastructure

As the "credit bank" of the Hyperliquid ecosystem, HyperLend plays a vital role in the entire DeFi infrastructure, providing core support for the ecosystem's liquidity circulation and capital efficiency improvement. The protocol leverages the market-proven Aave V3 fork architecture, but features deep optimizations and innovations tailored to Hyperliquid's high-performance environment and unique asset characteristics. Its greatest technological breakthrough lies in the HyperLoop feature. This innovative mechanism enables one-click leverage cycling through flash loans, providing advanced users with unprecedented capital efficiency while maintaining operational simplicity. HyperLend's architectural design embodies a delicate balance between risk management and capital efficiency. The protocol innovatively employs a dual-pool architecture: a unified liquidity pool dedicated to efficient lending and borrowing of core assets such as HYPE, kHYPE, and USDC, significantly reducing transaction slippage and improving capital utilization through a shared liquidity mechanism; a segregated risk pool dedicated to more volatile or risky assets, supporting fully customizable risk parameters to ensure that risk events related to a single asset do not impact the stability of the entire system. The technical implementation of the HyperLoop feature demonstrates the ultimate application of DeFi composability and significantly enhances user experience. Users operate through a simple and intuitive interface, while the protocol automatically executes a complex sequence of atomic operations on the backend: first, borrowing the target debt asset through a flash loan mechanism, then exchanging it for the user's desired yield asset through a built-in DEX aggregator, supplying that asset as collateral to the protocol's corresponding pool, then borrowing more debt assets based on the newly added collateral, and finally repaying the initial flash loan. This entire complex sequence of operations is atomically completed within a single block, allowing users to easily achieve 3x-5x leverage without the complexity, time cost, and gas fees of multiple manual operations.

HyperLoop's one-click revolving loan interface 

Judging from its asset composition and operational efficiency data, HyperLend has demonstrated a healthy and stable development trend and good market adaptability. Its total TVL of $524 million is primarily comprised of wstHYPE ($254 million, 48%) and native HYPE ($206 million, 39%). This asset distribution clearly reflects the importance of LST within the ecosystem and the strong demand for native token liquidity. With a current total borrowing volume of $267 million, the overall utilization rate has reached 48%, a healthy operating range for DeFi lending protocols, ensuring sufficient liquidity to meet withdrawal demands while optimizing capital utilization for reasonable returns. HyperLend's revenue model demonstrates clear and sustainable business value creation. The protocol generates $15.89 million in annualized revenue, with diversified and stable revenue streams primarily consisting of lending interest rate spreads, clearing fees, and flash loan fees. Particularly noteworthy is its flash loan fee of 0.04%, significantly lower than Aave's standard rate of 0.09%. This competitive pricing strategy maintains market competitiveness while providing users with better cost efficiency, helping to attract more high-frequency trading and arbitrage activities. The protocol also has a robust points system, which has been running for 22 consecutive weeks. Accumulated points are distributed in preparation for the upcoming $HPL governance token airdrop, of which 3.5% of the token supply is reserved for the Aave DAO. 5. USDH - Native Stablecoin Infrastructure As the upcoming native stablecoin of Hyperliquid, USDH carries the important mission of improving the ecosystem's financial infrastructure. Native Markets won the community vote on September 14, 2025, and obtained the right to issue USDH. The launch of USDH will fill the gap in the Hyperliquid ecosystem's native stablecoin, providing a more complete and independent financial infrastructure for the entire ecosystem. USDH's technical architecture reflects a deep consideration of regulatory compliance and scalability. The stablecoin will be backed by U.S. Treasuries through traditional financial institutions such as Stripe Bridge and BlackRock, ensuring adequate asset collateralization and regulatory compliance. Importantly, USDH will be dually compatible with HyperEVM ERC-20 and HyperCore HIP-1. This design allows the stablecoin to flow seamlessly throughout the Hyperliquid ecosystem, serving as collateral and liquidity in DeFi protocols and as margin in perpetual swaps, achieving true ecosystem-native integration. USDH is expected to launch in Q4 2025, with specific progress dependent on the completion of technical development and regulatory applications. As a critical infrastructure component of the Hyperliquid ecosystem, the successful launch of USDH will have a profound impact on the entire Hyperliquid ecosystem, not only improving user experience and capital efficiency but also, more importantly, strengthening the ecosystem's independence and sustainability. USDH's inherent advantages and revenue-sharing mechanism will provide it with unique competitive advantages, particularly in competition with external stablecoins like USDC. The Hyperliquid ecosystem demonstrates strong growth momentum and healthy development. Total TVL reached $6.535 billion, with $2.37 billion locked in DeFi protocols and $4.165 billion in perpetual swaps. 30-day perpetual swap volume reached $651.6 billion. User data demonstrates high-quality features: 308,000 monthly active users, an average stake of $162,000, and a 30-day retention rate of 67%, significantly exceeding similar platforms. The ecosystem's greatest strength lies in the deep synergy between protocols. The integration of Kinetiq and Pendle, the capital efficiency amplification of HyperLend, the ecosystem-wide circulation of Felix feUSD, and the mobile traffic driven by Based have created a powerful network effect. However, the decline in market share cannot be ignored. Hyperliquid's market share in the perpetual DEX market declined from 48.2% in August to 38.1% in September, primarily due to competitors employing multi-chain strategies and incentive mechanisms. The launch of HIP-3 (Permissionless Perpetual Markets) will be a significant turning point, allowing anyone to deploy custom perpetual contracts and expected to usher in innovative products such as RWA perpetuals and AI computing power futures. The USDH native stablecoin is expected to manage $5.5 billion in assets, with 95% of its returns used for HYPE buybacks, resulting in an annualized return of $150-220 million, significantly strengthening the token's value. The HYPE token's value capture mechanism is well-designed: 99% of protocol revenue is used for buyback and destruction, with a current annualized buyback rate of approximately 8.7%. However, the linear release starting on November 29th will increase supply by 71%, requiring strong fundamentals to offset supply pressures. The Hyperliquid ecosystem stands at a critical juncture. Its success will depend on the integration of technological innovation and user experience, the balance between ecosystem openness and quality control, and the coordination of technological focus and diverse needs. The launch of HIP-3 and USDH will be a crucial test of its adaptability. For investors, the ecosystem offers a wealth of investment opportunities, from the stable returns of the LST protocol to high-risk early-stage projects. The key is to understand the business models and risk factors of each protocol and develop a sound strategy based on their own circumstances. Hyperliquid's value lies not only in the success of individual protocols, but also in the formation of network effects across the entire ecosystem. In this era full of opportunities and challenges, its ability to continuously innovate and create value for users will determine its long-term development prospects.