Could Another Hyperliquid Airdrop Solidify It As The Premium Perps DEX?

Hyperliquid was one of the best-performing alts of the 2025 bull run. While the perps DEX started off with little fanfare, following the token launch in November 2024, and what is now widely considered to be the most profitable airdrop in the history of crypto, there are plenty of traders and investors who have interacted with the DEX and the EVM over the last 18 months who are desperate for another airdrop.

However, as Jeff Yan and his team focus their efforts on much bigger ideas, such as 24/7 S&P 500 trading, oil markets, and HIP-4 prediction updates, is the idea of another airdrop a pipedream, or could it be the catalyst that helps give HYPE yet another factor that sets it further ahead of its competitors like Aster and dYdX?

Hyperliquid has ambitious plans, most notably, to become the house of all finance. There are many in the crypto world who would have rolled their eyes at these aims initially; they wouldn’t be the first company to vocalize such bold ambitions. In the 18 months since they launched their token, though, they have handled trillions of dollars' worth of volume and set their sights on the budding prediction markets.

Prediction markets are among the biggest narratives driving market activity. Of course, they’re not particularly new ideas, but for Hyperliquid to go from crypto perps to oil, stocks, and gold, and then move on to the prediction market, it shows just how aggressive their growth strategy is. 

Gambling on its own is a hugely popular narrative, with poker brands using blockchain and crypto gambling ideas to boost their audience and reach a market with a strong understanding of contemporary assets.

As is the case with Ignition Poker Australia and a growing number of other crypto poker providers, the main design that has helped them develop such a strong market revolves around the wallet-to-wallet nature of deposits and withdrawals. The blockchain ensures that all withdrawals and deposits to the crypto poker site are P2P, removing third parties, eliminating the need for banks, and enabling people to take ownership of their digital assets. 

Taking a look through Hyperliquid’s socials, it’s clear that there are two clear camps you can find yourself in when it comes to the topic of another airdrop. There are those who sold all their initial airdrop allocation on day 1 in November 2024, then watched the token's price do a 30x, and are desperate to get back in the game. 

There are those who were more conservative with their airdrop, have watched the price skyrocket, and have made such an impressive sum of money that they couldn’t care less about receiving another airdrop. 

Now, there is a caveat here. It is an important one. Jeff Yan, the mastermind behind HYPE's incredible success, has made no secret that the project is community driven. 

Some believe that this means another airdrop is on the horizon, that over 30% is still allocated to community rewards, and that, given it's been close to 18 months since the TGE and nothing of note has been given to the community since. Unless you count the NFT.

However, there is a small but loud minority of people, often in Discord, who believe that the radio silence from the team about an airdrop is unfair and is encouraging airdrop farming, thus inflating the price – although, honestly, for the volume HYPE does and the whales that it attracts, this belief holds very little value.

Many prediction markets had a Hyperliquid airdrop at a pretty high probability at the end of last year. There were all sorts of murmurs about it being one year since the initial airdrop, while some believed a potential Season 3 airdrop was written into the website code. 

However, both dates passed without any news. The likelihood has since dropped significantly, with many markets offering less than a 30% chance that there’s a Hyperliquid airdrop by the end of the year.

For those desperate for that capital injection, Hyperliquid is renowned for being notoriously tight-lipped, revealing very little to the community. For some, this is further proof that the community-driven rhetoric is purely lip service and buzzwords, given how often the community is kept in the dark. 

So, that’s not to write off the chance of an airdrop this year, but given the market sentiment, the geopolitical outlook, and the fact that Hyperliquid’s small, core team is focused on commodities and prediction markets, it’s highly likely their attention is on more pressing issues. 

The brutal truth is that Hyperliquid does not need an airdrop to solidify its position at the top of the perps market. It is already there. Despite a spirited effort from Aster in the latter stages of 2025 to incentivize usage and from other brands like Lighter to capitalize on Hyperliquid's success, you only need to look at the metrics to see how dominant it is. 

If it can get a foot in the market of predictions and become the home for blockchain-based S&P and oil perps, the token price is going to hit three figures, and quickly, and while the community might have gotten them off the ground to begin with, they simply have much bigger fish to fry.