Hyperliquid is a smart contract platform best known for its Hyperliquid exchange. It is a technologically advanced platform optimized for high-frequency trading. Hyperliquid’s native token, HYPE, is among the top 10 cryptocurrencies by market cap.
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Hyperliquid Overview
Hyperliquid is one of the largest smart contract platforms by market cap. Its most popular application is the Hyperliquid exchange, which has become a household name in the crypto industry in 2026.
Hyperliquid is a relatively new entrant to the market. The Hyperliquid exchange was founded in 2022 and migrated to its own Hyperliquid platform in 2023. The native token HYPE, meanwhile, was launched in November 2024. The HYPE token is used on the Hyperliquid platform for staking, governance, and transaction fees for certain applications.
Hyperliquid has become known to the general public through the Hyperliquid exchange. However, it is also a smart contract platform with hundreds of other applications. The decentralized exchange is by far its most well-known app.
The Hyperliquid exchange began offering perpetual futures on crypto, but the HIP-3 update (in October 2025) enabled trading in tokenized stocks and commodities. Trading in these assets has significantly boosted the exchange’s popularity in 2026.
You’ll find basic information about Hyperliquid in the table below.
| Feature | Info |
|---|---|
| Founder | Jeff Yan & iliensinc (pseudonym) |
| Category | Smart contract platform |
| Consensus | Delegated Proof of Stake |
| Ticker | HYPE |
| Circulating supply | 250 million HYPE |
| Max Supply | 955 million HYPE |
| All-Time High (date) | $64.59 (May 26, 2026) |
| All-Time Low (date) | $3.20 (Nov 29, 2024) |
You can follow the real-time price of Hyperliquid on this page: Hyperliquid (HYPE) Price.
This article is a beginner’s guide to Hyperliquid. We will go over the project’s history and the technology it’s built on. We will also take a look at the Hyperliquid exchange and the role of the HYPE token.
History of Hyperliquid
Hyperliquid was founded by Jeff Yan and the pseudonym iliensinc. Jeff Yan acts as the project’s frontman and handles interviews and other public appearances. The two have known each other since their days at Harvard University.
This is Jeff Yan.
He is the co-founder of Hyper Liquid, doing $10B in daily volume.
He went from being a quant at Hudson River Trading to running one of the largest decentralized exchanges in crypto.
Here's what you need to know: pic.twitter.com/eZeRmKQ06g
— Goshawk Trades (@GoshawkTrades) December 17, 2024
Jeff Yan and iliensinc became familiar with the DeFi industry in the early 2020s. The duo noticed that the technology, liquidity, and user interface of decentralized exchanges (DEX) were far from those of centralized exchanges.
The collapse of the FTX exchange in November 2022 was a strong signal that the market needed a high-quality and decentralized derivatives exchange. Before its collapse, FTX was one of the largest exchanges focused on futures and derivatives trading.
Jeff Yan and iliensinc decided to build a decentralized exchange (DEX) with a user experience that could truly compete with centralized exchanges. The project was named Hyperliquid.
It is important to note that the project did not receive any money from venture capitalists (VCs). There have only been a handful of application developers involved since the beginning, in addition to the founding duo.
Hyperliquid DEX development began in December 2022 on the Arbitrum TestNet. Arbitrum is one of the most popular Ethereum Layer 2s. However, it soon became clear that Arbitrum could not scale to Hyperliquid’s needs. The project founders began building their own Layer 1, also named Hyperliquid (like the decentralized exchange).
The Hyperliquid platform was initially built on the Cosmos SDK, but the architecture was soon changed to its own HyperBFT consensus model. Hyperliquid MainNet was launched in spring 2023, and its only application was the Hyperliquid exchange.
The Hyperliquid platform was still connected to Arbitrum. Trading on the Hyperliquid exchange was done by using USDC stablecoins, which were transferred to the Hyperliquid platform via a token bridge on Arbitrum.
Hyperliquid came to the public’s attention in late 2024, when its HYPE token was launched. The HYPE token entered the market on November 29th.
Hyperliquid plans to launch HYPE token in Nov. 29 'genesis event' https://t.co/1gX3FSRWY6
— The Block (@TheBlockCo) November 28, 2024
The HYPE token was distributed to the general public via an airdrop – a total of 310 million tokens from a reserve of around one billion. The token became instantly popular, and its price increased by 600 percent in a couple of weeks. The timing was also ideal, as the crypto market was trending higher in November 2024 following Donald Trump’s election victory.
In February 2025, HyperEVM, Hyperliquid’s version of the Ethereum virtual machine, was launched. This was an important innovation, as it brought compatibility with Ethereum and enabled other DeFi applications to be built on the Hyperliquid platform. Until then, Hyperliquid had been practically the same as the Hyperliquid exchange.
October 2025 saw perhaps the most important update in Hyperliquid’s history: HIP-3. Thanks to this, Hyperliquid became an “everything exchange” instead of a crypto exchange. You can read a comprehensive analysis on the subject in the embed below.
Hyperliquid is no longer just a perps exchange.
HIP-3 let anyone list a new perpetual by staking HYPE, opening the platform to assets that would never clear a centralized listing process.
TradFi assets have grown into a meaningful share of platform volume, driven largely by… https://t.co/W9JNbdmW3f pic.twitter.com/eMZ9dZCMyL
— Delphi Digital (@Delphi_Digital) March 6, 2026
HIP-3 enabled the trading of tokenized stocks and commodities on the Hyperliquid exchange. At the same time, assets can also be created by others other than Hyperliquid’s own team, but they will still be tradeable in the Hyperliquid exchange.
In particular, trading in technology stocks, gold, silver, and oil made Hyperliquid extremely popular in 2026. At the same time, Hyperliquid also received the first spot ETF funds in the United States.
The project’s success is evident in the HYPE token setting a new price record in May 2026, amid the crypto bear market.
Hyperliquid’s technology
Hyperliquid is a highly scalable smart contract platform optimized for decentralized exchanges’ requirements. Let’s take a closer look at Hyperliquid’s technology next.
HyperBFT
Hyperliquid uses the HyperBFT consensus algorithm, which it developed in-house, and is based on the HotStuff protocol. This is a Proof-of-Stake-based consensus, meaning the platform’s validators stake the HYPE token. The validators’ voting rights are determined by the number of HYPE tokens staked, as in Delegated PoS systems.
Hyperliquid currently has 25–30 validators, and five of these are also run by the Hyperliquid Foundation. The system is therefore quite centralized. HyperBFT enables very high performance, which is a requirement for an on-chain-based exchange.
The Hyperliquid exchange can process up to 200,000 orders per second with an average latency of 0.2 seconds. The capacity of the Hyperliquid blockchain itself is in the order of thousands of transactions per second. This applies to other DeFi applications built on the platform.
HyperCore and HyperEVM
The Hyperliquid platform can be divided into two different engines:
- HyperCore
- HyperEVM
HyperCore is the engine of the Hyperliquid exchange. It handles all the functions of the exchange’s order book: perpetual futures, spot trades, margin, funding payments, and liquidations. All exchange operations are executed at the HyperCore level, enabling exceptional performance.
After the HyperEVM update, other DeFi applications have also been created for the Hyperliquid platform. HyperEVM is the engine of these applications. It processes other smart contracts and can also utilize the data in HyperCore.
Both HyperCore and Hyperliquid use the HyperBFT consensus.
HIP-3 and HIP-4
HIP-3 is an update made in October 2025 that expanded the Hyperliquid exchange beyond a traditional crypto exchange. With HIP-3, anyone can theoretically create tokenized assets, such as stocks and commodities, on the Hyperliquid exchange for trading. However, the requirement is to stake 500,000 HYPE tokens, which amounts to over $30 million with today’s price.
With the HIP-3 update, Hyperliquid has added hundreds of new markets that Hyperliquid’s core team doesn’t have to manage themselves. These include technology stocks, stock indices, commodities, and precious metals.
While other crypto exchanges have seen activity decline during the 2026 bear market, Hyperliquid has seen its revenue increase. It has also begun to attract investors from outside the crypto sector, who can now trade many assets outside of traditional exchange hours.
In May 2026, Hyperliquid also released the next update, HIP-4. It brings prediction markets to the Hyperliquid exchange.
LATEST: ⚡ Hyperliquid validators can now deploy and settle real-world outcome markets natively on-chain, reducing reliance on external oracles under the HIP-4 upgrade. pic.twitter.com/5sEsx5grOR
— CoinMarketCap (@CoinMarketCap) May 26, 2026
A prediction market is a fancy name for betting on real-world events with binary outcomes. For example, will the Bitcoin price be above or below x euros on a given day? With HIP-4, such markets can be created on the Hyperliquid exchange.
Hyperliquid DEX
The Hyperliquid platform has gained immense popularity with the Hyperliquid exchange. You can explore the exchange at app.hyperliquid.xyz/trade. Below is a screenshot of the trading view.
The Hyperliquid decentralized exchange (DEX) offers the same functionality and performance as a centralized exchange (CEX). Trading takes place on the blockchain, and the exchange can process up to 200,000 orders with a latency of around 0.2 seconds. The performance matches those of centralized exchanges – even during peak hours.
The Hyperliquid exchange began by offering crypto futures like other derivatives exchanges. The HIP-3 update in October 2025 introduced non-crypto assets. Today, the platform offers, among others:
- Most popular cryptocurrencies: BTC, ETH, SOL, etc.
- Tokenized stocks: AAPL, NVDA, TSLA, AMZN, META, etc.
- Tokenized stock indices: S&P 500, Nasdaq, etc.
- Tokenized commodities: Oil, natural gas, gold, silver, etc.
You can even trade pre-IPO markets, such as SpaceX. This means trading shares that will be publicly listed even before the actual listing.
The Hyperliquid exchange also allows up to 50x leverage in perpetual futures trading. In addition to futures, there is also a traditional spot market. The fees are very low; for example, in futures trading, the standard trading fees are 0.045% for takers and 0.015% for makers.
Many may be surprised to learn that the HYPE token is not required to trade on the Hyperliquid exchange. Trading is done in stablecoin pairs (USDC), which is where trading fees are paid. However, you can get up to 40% off trading fees by staking HYPE tokens.
HYPE token
The HYPE token was launched in November 2024. HYPE has a total supply of 955 million tokens, with just over 250 million currently in circulation. The supply was allocated at the token creation stage as follows:
- Future issues and community rewards: 38.9%
- Genesis distribution: 31.0%
- Core team: 23.8%
- Hyper Foundation: 6.0%
- Community contributions: 0.3%
- HIP-2: 0.2%
Genesis distribution refers to the share that was distributed as an airdrop. The airdrop criteria included, among others, trading activity on the Hyperliquid exchange, token transfer via bridges, and TestNet usage.
In total, approximately 94,000 people received the airdrop, which is significantly lower than in many other airdrops. It was still one of the largest DeFi airdrops by dollar value.
The HYPE token is used for staking, protocol governance, and transaction fees for HyperEVM applications.
Since Hyperliquid uses a Proof of Stake consensus, its validators stake the HYPE token. In addition, a Hyperliquid exchange user can stake HYPE tokens by delegating them to validators. This allows for discounts on trading fees.
It is good to remember that trading fees on the Hyperliquid exchange are not paid in HYPE tokens. They are paid directly in the token being traded, e.g., USDC. If you use other DeFi apps on the Hyperliquid platform instead, you will pay for transactions made in them with HYPE tokens. Just like on other smart contract platforms.
Note that the amount of HYPE tokens in circulation has decreased by tens of percent since autumn 2025. This is because the Hyperliquid team uses over 95% of trading fees to buy HYPE tokens on the market. After that, the tokens are burned, i.e., destroyed.
Hyperliquid as an investment
Hyperliquid has been a great investment throughout its history. It was already successful in the project’s early years, 2024–2025, but the HIP-3 update in October 2025 elevated its popularity to a new level.
At the beginning of 2026, the prices of raw materials and precious metals began to rise sharply. Hyperliquid benefited from this boom by trading tokenized assets. This rise in popularity also occurred as prices of other cryptocurrencies fell sharply.
The HYPE token broke the ATH price set in autumn 2025 in May 2026, during a bear market. This is an exceptional achievement, as the prices of the largest altcoins were 50–70 percent below their ATHs at the same time.
‼️ $HYPE is on fire ‼️
Hitting a new ATH, breaking the high from September 2025.
It is up 28% in the last 7 days!Will it break $100 this year?
Comment your targets below! 👇Check out Hyperliquid’s Coin Detail Page:https://t.co/DNbZpnBzNi pic.twitter.com/VqTFZwg17i
— CoinMarketCap (@CoinMarketCap) May 27, 2026
From an investor’s perspective, Hyperliquid has many strengths. It is the dominant market leader in perpetual futures DEXes, and its HyperCore technology is ahead of competitors’. On top of that, it has RWA, meaning tokenized real-world assets. Thanks to them, Hyperliquid’s popularity does not depend solely on the crypto market’s popularity.
The popularity of the exchange directly affects the price of the HYPE token, as over 95% of trading fees are used to buy HYPE on the market. The equation sounds really delicious from an investor’s perspective. It’s no wonder the HYPE token has already risen to the top 10 cryptocurrencies by market value.
What about the risks? The first threat comes from within the crypto industry. When will another service be able to implement a technically equivalent exchange and start attracting traders with better bonuses, lower fees, and other benefits?
Another potential risk comes from regulation. The Hyperliquid exchange is a DeFi application, meaning it can be used with a crypto wallet, without KYC. Can regulators target Hyperliquid and force it to implement KYC?
The development of artificial intelligence has also led to numerous DeFi hacks in the spring of 2026. New artificial intelligence models are discovering more vulnerabilities and enabling more complex attacks than before. If the Hyperliquid exchange were to be hacked, the damage could be enormous.
