Global Perpetual DEX Market Overview and Industry Transformation The decentralized perpetual exchange market is experiencing unprecedented growth and a reshaping of the competitive landscape. By September 2025, global perpetual DEX daily trading volume had 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 exchanges. The sector as a whole now accounts for approximately 26% of the crypto derivatives market, a significant leap from its 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 the AMM model (such as GMX and Gains Network) attracts retail users with instant liquidity and simplified operations. Emerging hybrid models, such as Jupiter Perps, attempt to combine the advantages of both, leveraging the keeper system to seamlessly transition between order books and AMMs in a high-speed environment. Data indicates that the order book model is gaining market share. Hyperliquid, leveraging its CLOB architecture, has processed $2.76 trillion in cumulative trading volume. 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% gain on the first day of its TGE on September 17th, $371 million in trading volume on its first day, and the influx of 330,000 new wallet addresses all demonstrate its strong market acquisition capabilities. Aster's technological innovations are primarily reflected in improved user experience. Its Simple mode offers up to 1001x leverage, far exceeding Hyperliquid's 40-50x. While risky, this approach is highly 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 aggregation feature allows users to use interest-bearing assets like BNB 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 of $7.12 million. More importantly, Aster has accumulated $19.383 billion in cumulative perpetual trading volume in just a few months. While still a step behind Hyperliquid's $2.76 trillion, its growth rate is astonishing. Community discussions reveal a clear divergence in traders' preferences for the two platforms. Professional traders prefer Hyperliquid, believing its "single block confirmation" and deep liquidity are essential for professional trading. Meanwhile, cross-chain users and beginners prefer Aster, whose bridge-free multi-chain support and CEX-like user experience significantly lower the barrier to entry. Hyperliquid: Technological Leadership 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 is facing the challenge of a continued decline in market share. Its market share in the perpetual DEX market has declined 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 shift that was previously unimaginable. Despite facing challenges, Hyperliquid's advantages remain clear. 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 single-block confirmations providing traders with unparalleled certainty; and the most mature ecosystem, with over 100 projects building comprehensive DeFi infrastructure on its platform. Importantly, its deflationary model allocates 99% of protocol revenue to buyback and burn HYPE tokens, with an annualized revenue of $20.1 billion providing strong support for its value proposition. From a user quality perspective, Hyperliquid demonstrates superior user value. Among its 825,000 daily active addresses, 3.651 million are monthly active users, and its open interest to trading volume ratio (OI/Volume) reaches 287%, significantly exceeding the industry average. This metric suggests that Hyperliquid's users are primarily motivated by genuine risk hedging needs, rather than short-term speculative trading. In comparison, Aster's user base is only 12%. While its daily trading volume is higher, its user behavior is more skewed towards short-term arbitrage. Facing competitive pressure, Hyperliquid is actively adjusting its strategy. The upcoming HIP-3 (Permissionless Perpetual Market) will allow anyone to deploy custom perpetual contracts, potentially leading to innovative products such as 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 its value proposition. In this fiercely competitive market, Hyperliquid's true moat lies not solely in its technology itself, but in the complete ecosystem built around its core protocol. From its humble beginnings as a perpetual trading platform to a comprehensive DeFi ecosystem encompassing over 100 projects, Hyperliquid has formed a self-contained financial infrastructure. This ecosystem encompasses a full-stack solution, from infrastructure and DeFi protocols to the application layer, 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.
In-Depth Analysis of Hyperliquid Core Ecosystem Projects
1. Kinetiq - Pillar of the Liquidity Staking Ecosystem (TVL: $1.757 billion)
Kinetiq holds an unshakable position in the Hyperliquid ecosystem. Its $1.757 billion TVL accounts for approximately 78% of the entire ecosystem, making it a core hub for capital flow within the ecosystem. As the "Jito" of the ecosystem, Kinetiq redefines the validator delegation mechanism through its innovative StakeHub algorithm, achieving unprecedented efficiency and yield 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% weight), security (25% weight), economic performance (15% weight), governance participation (10% weight), and operational history (10% weight). This algorithm not only considers a validator's historical performance but also predicts its future stability. Using machine learning models, it continuously optimizes allocation weights to ensure that delegated funds always flow to the highest-quality validators. The protocol offers a diverse and market-leading yield structure. Base PoS rewards yield approximately 2.3% annualized, placing it at the top of the LST (Low-Stake) spectrum among similar projects. StakeHub optimizations provide an additional 0.2-0.5% in enhanced yields to underperforming validators, while MEV revenue contributes approximately 1% annualized yield. This revenue comes from the Hyperliquid network's MEV capture mechanism. Even more appealing are the integration rewards with other DeFi protocols, offering a variable 6-8% margin, bringing the total yield to 10-12%, which is highly competitive in the current DeFi landscape. Kinetiq offers a streamlined user experience. Users stake HYPE to earn kHYPE, enjoying a slight premium of 1:0.996. This premium reflects the market's added valuation of liquidity staking and confidence in the protocol's security. The unstaking mechanism incorporates a 7-day security delay and a 0.1% fee, ensuring network security while providing users with a reasonable exit mechanism. Kinetiq has experienced explosive growth from $458 million in TVL in July to $1.81 billion today, a threefold increase in just two months. This growth is primarily driven by the integration of the Pendle protocol, which creates additional liquidity demand and yield strategies for kHYPE through its PT/YT split mechanism. The upcoming launch of $KNTQ provides a key tool for decentralized governance and long-term value creation for the protocol. It is expected that 30-50% of the supply will be distributed to the community via airdrops, with priority allocations given to points holders, early adopters, and kHYPE stakers. $KNTQ's core functions include voting on protocol upgrades, MEV routing policy decisions, and curation of the HIP-3 market. This decentralized governance authority will further enhance the protocol's decentralization and community engagement. Interaction Method: Users stake HYPE on kinetiq.xyz to earn kHYPE, which supports instant minting and a 7-day lockup period. The protocol also offers a kPoints system, distributing points weekly in preparation for the upcoming $KNTQ airdrop. Points are earned based on multiple factors, including stake amount and holding duration. 2. Based - Mobile Super App and Ecosystem Portal As the highest-grossing Builder app on Hyperliquid, Based generated approximately $90,300 in 24-hour revenue, ranking first among all third-party apps. Cumulative perpetual swap trading volume exceeded $16.699 billion, with a 24-hour perpetual swap volume of $321 million, handling approximately 7% of Hyperliquid's total trading volume. This data fully reflects the high-net-worth nature and deep engagement of its user base. Its revenue model is based on Hyperliquid's Builder fee-sharing system, with users receiving up to 0.1% of perpetual swap fees and 1% of spot trading fees. The majority of this revenue is returned to users in the form of commissions through an affiliate marketing program, forming 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 Hyperliquiquid ecosystem. Based's economic design reflects a deep understanding of user behavior and innovative incentive mechanisms. $PUP, an XP accumulator, completed its airdrop on August 22, 2025. The total supply of $PUP is 100 million, with 5% allocated to early users and community contributors. $PUP's primary function is to increase users' XP acquisition efficiency, providing a 25-60% point multiplier. This allows holders to earn more rewards through activities such as trading and consumption. $BASED will be distributed based on users' total XP, with a snapshot date of September 20, 2025. Perpetual swaps contribute 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 purchases contribute 4-6 points for every $1 spent (converted to XP at the TGE). This dual mechanism cleverly combines short-term incentives ($PUP bonus) with long-term governance ($BASED distribution). $PUP holders essentially gain "leverage" from $BASED airdrops, further strengthening user loyalty and ecosystem engagement. Within the community, $PUP has a circulating market capitalization of approximately $5 million, with a price stable around $0.05, demonstrating robust demand as a utility. $BASED's projected supply is 1 billion, with a community allocation of 40%, expected to be fairly distributed to active users through the XP system. Interaction: Users can download the mobile app or visit the website through based.markets, register an account using their email address, and deposit assets across multiple blockchains with one click. The trading interface, designed similarly to traditional financial applications, offers spot and perpetual trading capabilities. Users can also apply for a Visa debit card (existing users should note the November deactivation schedule) for fiat currency transactions. The XP system displays points progress in real time, and $PUP holders can activate bonuses in their wallets to increase rewards efficiency. 3. Pendle - A Giant in Yield-Based Protocols Pendle's successful deployment on HyperEVM marks the mature application of yield farming 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) and YT (yield), 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 HyperEVM grew from zero to $12.3 billion, a 30-day increase of 76.27%. The synergy between Pendle and Kinetiq is a key factor in its rapid success within the Hyperliquid ecosystem. This synergy is reflected not only in product complementarity but also, more importantly, in the creation of a new value capture mechanism. By converting kHYPE into PT and YT, Pendle provides liquidity staking users with more diversified income strategies and creates new ways to earn points through Kinetiq's points system. Users holding YT-kHYPE receive the full returns of Kinetiq Points rewards without bearing the volatility risk of their principal. PT-kHYPE holders enjoy the certainty of a fixed income, which can be used to build a stable income strategy. Pendle's product portfolio continues to expand, demonstrating its strategic intent to deeply integrate with the Hyperliquid ecosystem. In addition to the mainstream kHYPE market, the protocol has also gradually supported the yield-generating of ecosystem-based interest-bearing assets such as feUSD, hwHLP, and beHYPE. The addition of each new asset creates new yield strategy combinations and arbitrage opportunities, further driving the activity and composability of the entire ecosystem. In particular, with the emergence of more LST and yield-generating assets, Pendle provides standardized yield-separation tools for these assets, becoming a crucial bridge connecting different protocols. Interaction: Users access the protocol through app.pendle.finance and select the Hyperliquid network. They can then split their interest-earning assets, such as kHYPE, into PT/YT, or trade these yield products directly in the secondary market. The protocol provides intuitive yield curves and maturity information to help users make investment decisions. Pendle in HyperrEVM 4. HyperLend - Core 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. The protocol adopts the market-proven Aave V3 fork architecture, but has been deeply optimized and innovated for 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 tools 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. This shared liquidity mechanism significantly reduces transaction slippage and improves capital utilization. A segregated risk pool specifically handles more volatile or risky assets, supporting fully customizable risk parameters to ensure that risk events involving 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 this 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, HyperLend demonstrates healthy and stable development and good market adaptability. Its $524 million total TVL 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 liquidity. The current total borrowing volume is $267 million, with an overall utilization rate of 48%. This level is within a healthy operating range for DeFi lending protocols, ensuring sufficient liquidity to meet withdrawal demand while optimizing fund utilization for a reasonable return. HyperLend's Protocol Scale HyperLend's revenue model demonstrates clear and sustainable business value creation. The protocol has annualized revenue of $15.89 million, 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, set at 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, accumulating points to prepare for the upcoming $HPL airdrop, with 3.5% of the supply reserved for the Aave DAO. Interaction: Users connect their wallets through hyperlend.finance, which supports deposits to earn interest, borrowing, and HyperLoop one-click leverage. The interface is simple and intuitive, providing real-time interest rate information and risk indicators to help users make informed lending decisions. 5. Hyperbeat - DeFi Super App (TVL: $387 Million) Hyperbeat is positioned as a one-stop DeFi hub, providing a complete solution encompassing diverse services such as staking, lending, and yield optimization. The protocol recently completed a $5.2 million seed round led by Electric Capital, with participation from renowned institutions such as Coinbase Ventures, Chapter One, and DCF God. This funding round fully demonstrates institutional investors' recognition of its business model and technical team. Hyperbeat's product matrix design reflects its deep ecosystem integration concept. The beHYPE liquidity staking module provides a scalable security model and supports governance participation. The Morphobeat lending market, optimized based on the Morpho protocol, specifically targets interest-bearing assets like LST. The Yield Vault utilizes a Meta-Yield strategy to automate yield optimization and diversify risk across multiple protocols. Its cross-chain integration capabilities enable deployment on multiple chains like Arbitrum. It currently holds $28.92 million in TVL on Arbitrum, expanding its user base and assets under management. Hyperbeat's technological innovation is primarily reflected in its automated yield optimization strategy. Using smart contracts, the protocol automatically monitors yield fluctuations across various DeFi protocols and dynamically adjusts capital allocation to achieve optimal returns. This "set-and-forget" user experience significantly lowers the technical barrier to entry for DeFi, making it particularly suitable for users who desire DeFi returns but prefer a less frequent approach. The Meta-Yield strategy also incorporates risk hedging mechanisms, mitigating the risk of a single protocol through diversified investments across multiple protocols while leveraging arbitrage opportunities to enhance overall returns. Interaction: Users access the multi-product dashboard at hyperbeat.org, offering a one-stop platform for DeFi operations such as staking, lending, and yield farming. The interface design prioritizes user experience, providing yield estimates and risk warnings. The Hearts points system is nearing its end, with less than 12% remaining for distribution. A total of 51 million Hearts points will be allocated for the upcoming $BEAT airdrop. This system encourages users to remain active across multiple product modules, earning points through multi-faceted activities such as staking, lending, and yield farming. 6. 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 issuance rights for USDH. The launch of USDH will fill the gap in the Hyperliquid ecosystem's native stablecoin and provide a more complete and independent financial infrastructure for the entire ecosystem. USDH's technical architecture reflects a deep consideration of compliance and scalability. The stablecoin will be backed by U.S. Treasury bonds through traditional financial institutions such as Stripe Bridge and BlackRock, ensuring sufficient asset collateralization and regulatory compliance. More 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 for the 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, more importantly, strengthening the ecosystem's independence and sustainability. In particular, USDH's native advantages and revenue-sharing mechanism will provide it with unique competitive advantages in competition with external stablecoins such as USDC. The Hyperliquid ecosystem demonstrates strong growth momentum and healthy development. Its 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 holding size 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 share of the perpetual DEX market fell from 48.2% in August to 38.1% in September, primarily due to losses to competitors adopting multi-chain strategies and incentive mechanisms. The launch of HIP-3 (Permissionless Perpetual Markets) will be a major turning point, allowing anyone to deploy custom perpetual contracts and expected to bring innovative products such as RWA perpetuals and AI computing power futures. The USDH native stablecoin is expected to manage $5.5 billion in funds, with 95% of its returns used for HYPE buybacks, resulting in an annualized return of $150-220 million, significantly enhancing its value proposition. HYPE'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 pressure. The Hyperliquid ecosystem is 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-yield 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 your 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 of opportunities and challenges, its ability to continuously innovate and create value for users will determine its long-term development prospects.
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