Hyperliquid is a layer-one blockchain built around an on-chain order book for perpetual futures and spot trading. Its native token, HYPE, pays gas on the HyperEVM, is staked to secure the network, and is used for governance. Trading is executed on-chain, not through an automated market maker.
What is Hyperliquid's core technology?
The network has two components that share one consensus layer. HyperCore hosts the spot and perpetual order books, margining and liquidations, with one-block finality. HyperEVM is an Ethereum-compatible smart contract environment that is secured by the same consensus and can interact directly with HyperCore order books. HyperEVM mainnet launched on 18 February 2025.
The project states that HyperBFT supports roughly 200,000 transactions per second with a 0.07-second block time. The search results contained no independent throughput measurements.
Consensus and network security
HyperBFT is a delegated proof-of-stake consensus algorithm that the project describes as a variant of HotStuff. The active validator set has 27 validators, selected by total HYPE stake. A block requires validators holding more than two-thirds of total stake to commit. Each validator must self-delegate 10,000 HYPE, locked for one year, and a 7-day unstaking queue is designed to deter large-scale attacks.
Validator concentration is a documented concern. Crypto Briefing reported on 8 September 2026 that Hyper Foundation validators control 49% of staked HYPE. Layer North's August 2026 review found five self-labeled Foundation validators holding 48.73% of active stake.
Sources disagree on slashing. HL Academy and CryptoTicker report no automatic slashing for validators. The HIP-3 specification allows stake-weighted slashing of a deployer's stake for malicious operation.
Tokenomics
HYPE has a maximum supply of 1 billion tokens. The current total supply is 951,538,273 HYPE, and the circulating supply is 239,406,814 HYPE. At a price of $87.88, the market capitalization is $21.04B (rank #11), and the price is 10.29% below the all-time high of $97.96.
Hyperliquid states that no venture capital or private sale tokens were issued. The genesis airdrop went live on 29 November 2024. The reported genesis allocation is:
| Allocation | Share | Amount | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Future emissions and community rewards | 38.888% | 388.88M HYPE | |
| Genesis distribution | 31.0% | 310M HYPE | |
| Core contributors | 23.8% | 238M HYPE | |
| Hyper Foundation budget | 6.0% | 60M HYPE | |
| Community grants | 0.3% | 3M HYPE |
Core contributor tokens vest after a one-year cliff, then unlock monthly over about 24 months. Sources disagree on the scale of upcoming unlocks.
Trading fees are split among HLP, the Assistance Fund and deployers. The Assistance Fund converts fees to HYPE and burns the HYPE it holds, removing it permanently from supply. CryptoTicker reported that the fund held 48.17 million HYPE from trading fees as of October 2026. Hyperliquid's documentation does not state a fixed fee share, and secondary sources cite figures from 93% to 99%. HyperEVM priority fees are also burned.
Primary use cases
Trading is the main use case. HyperCore supports perpetual futures and spot markets, and HyperEVM hosts smart contract applications.
Under HIP-3, any deployer that stakes 500,000 HYPE can run its own perpetual exchange with independent markets and oracles. CoinDesk reported on 9 August 2026 that builder-deployed markets, led by Trade.xyz's real-world asset perps, grew from about 2% of perp volume at the start of 2026 to roughly half. The same report states that revenue has declined for four consecutive quarters, because up to half of volume is passed to outside builders.
HIP-4 outcome markets, which settle within a fixed range and support prediction markets, went live on mainnet on 2 May 2026. Builders staking 500,000 HYPE have been able to deploy markets from validator-approved templates since 29 August 2026.
Who is behind Hyperliquid and where is it based?
Hyperliquid was created by Jeff Yan and a pseudonymous co-founder known as iliensinc. The project describes them as Harvard classmates. Yan is publicly identified as a former quantitative trader at Hudson River Trading who founded the market-making firm Chameleon Trading. iliensinc's identity is not disclosed in the sources, and the sources do not name the other team members. The team is reported at roughly 11 people.
Sources differ on the founding year, placing the project's origins in 2022 or 2023. SEC filings describe Hyperliquid Labs as founded in 2023. The project began as a perpetuals application on Arbitrum and migrated to its own proof-of-stake Layer 1 in March 2024.
Hyperliquid Labs Pte Ltd is the core development company. It was incorporated in Singapore in January 2024 and is described in SEC filings as self-funded. The Hyper Foundation is a Cayman Islands foundation company formed in October 2024, responsible for governance, ecosystem development and grants. Forbes lists the Cayman Islands as the country. The blockchain is described as decentralized and permissionless, with no single entity owning or operating it.
The Monetary Authority of Singapore said it was unaware of Hyperliquid being regulated in any major jurisdiction. It added Hyperliquid to its Investor Alert List on 26 June 2026. Hyperliquid told the Financial Times that it remains unregulated and is open to cooperation.
Key partnerships and integrations
Coinbase and Circle arranged for USDC to serve as the platform's Aligned Quote Asset in May 2026. Coinbase is the treasury deployer and Circle is the technical deployer. The first distribution of $14.58 million settled on 3 October 2026, and Coinbase stated that USDC on Hyperliquid totaled roughly $5 billion. USDH, a stablecoin launched by Native Markets in September 2025, is being wound down.
Other integrations include Ripple Prime, which enabled institutional access on 4 February 2026, zerohash, which added HYPE support on 11 June 2026, MoonPay, which added USDC on HyperCore on 22 May 2026, and Anchorage Digital, which offers HYPE staking.
Competitive advantages
Hyperliquid runs its own Layer 1 with a fully on-chain order book, instead of relying on an automated market maker. The project states that it has no private investors, no paid market makers and no insider allocations. Builder codes allow applications to use its liquidity and charge per-order fees without building their own backend.
Development activity and roadmap
Recent announcements include manual borrowing, which lets users post HYPE and BTC as collateral to borrow USDC and USDT, introduced on 18 September 2026. The HyENA HIP-3 DEX was sunset on 31 August 2026. The AQAv2 migration is expected to make USDC the ecosystem's primary aligned quote asset over the coming months. The Hyper Foundation also runs a bug bounty program, a staking delegation program and an ecosystem grants program.