Written by: Michael Nadeau
Compiled and Organized by: BitpushNews
We believe that perpetual futures represent a significant innovation that will ultimately lead to the evolution of the derivatives market structure—from fragmented, expiration-dated contracts to a continuous, funding rate-driven market.
This model is particularly well-suited for trading macro assets (such as foreign exchange and interest rates, which are among the largest markets globally) because, in these markets, traders seek risk exposure rather than actual ownership. We also anticipate that real-world assets (RWAs) will first be brought on-chain in the form of perpetual futures, as this structure can avoid many of the frictions associated with tokenization, custody, transfer agents, and corporate actions.
Hyperliquid, a decentralized exchange (DEX) for perpetual futures and an emerging L1 ecosystem, is built on first principles and aims to bring these advantages on-chain.
This report will analyze the latest performance of Hyperliquid, including the progress of the HyperEVM Layer 1 blockchain. (The views expressed are those of the author and should not be considered investment advice.)
Let's get started.
Perpetual Contract DEX Financial Data
Fee Revenue
- 365-day cumulative fees: $915 million
- 90-day cumulative fees: $230 million
- 30-day cumulative fees: $57 million
Perpetual contract trading contributed approximately 97% of the fees, while spot trading accounted for only 3%.
Key Points
Hyperliquid's perpetual contract DEX fee revenue has declined, but the drop is much smaller than what we have seen with Solana and its leading applications.
For example, in the fourth quarter, Hyperliquid achieved $270 million in fee revenue (a 16% decrease from the third quarter). During the same period, Solana's REV dropped by 60%. How did the leading applications on Solana perform during the same period?
- Raydium: down 79%
- Jito: down 76%
- Axiom: down 61%
- Jupiter: down 37%
- Pump.Fun: down 19%
In an environment where risk aversion is rising and interest in cryptocurrencies has plummeted, Hyperliquid's performance has remained relatively strong compared to other top public chains and applications. This is unique, especially for a "high-flying" application experiencing its first bear market.
Buyback Situation
Over the past year, Hyperliquid has used 93.3% of its fees for HYPE token buybacks, totaling $854 million (an average of $2.3 million per day).
Key Points
If Hyperliquid can maintain its user base during the bear market, stable buying pressure on the token may help offset any increased selling pressure, meaning its "cyclical low" may be shallower than what we typically see in new projects during their first bear market.
More details on the token economic model and team unlocks will be elaborated in the subsequent sections of the report.
Perpetual Contract DEX Fundamentals
Open Interest
Hyperliquid's open interest is currently slightly below $10 billion, down from a peak of $15.8 billion in August last year.
The largest centralized perpetual contract exchange, Binance, currently has an open interest of $29 billion, which peaked at $44.5 billion in early October last year.
Compared to its decentralized competitors:
- Aster open interest = $2.5 billion
- Lighter open interest = $1.2 billion
- Drift open interest = $247 million
- Jupiter open interest = $181 million
Key Points
In just over a year, Hyperliquid has captured a significant share of the centralized perpetual trading market (equivalent to 34% of Binance's open interest and 54% of CME's crypto futures open interest).
At the same time, its open interest is more than double that of its top four decentralized competitors combined.
Active Addresses
At its peak, Hyperliquid's perpetual contract DEX added about 2,600 users daily. In the past 30 days, this number has dropped to approximately 1,600 new users per day (a 38% decrease).
The number of new addresses may not seem high, but it aligns with our understanding of the unit economics of the crypto trading market. A small number of highly active traders often contribute the majority of revenue. The key is to observe how this is maintained during a bear market.
Perpetual Contract Trading Volume
In the past 30 days, Hyperliquid's average daily trading volume for futures was $5.2 billion—down 47% from a peak of about $9.8 billion per day.
Interestingly, real-world assets (RWAs) currently drive the third-highest trading volume, second only to BTC and Layer 1 tokens.
Key Points
The decline in futures trading volume (relative to fee revenue) is more significant, indicating that liquidation fees may have filled some of the gap. For reference, the DEX processed over $90 billion in liquidations on October 10 last year, generating over $10 million in fees (almost double Hyperliquid's second most profitable day's revenue).
Spot Trading Volume
At its peak, Hyperliquid's spot daily trading volume was approximately $820 million. In the past 30 days, its average daily spot trading volume was $12.7 million (down 84%).
In the past 365 days, spot trading volume accounted for about 3% of Hyperliquid's total fees.
Cross-Chain Bridge Value
Currently, over $4.1 billion in value is locked on the Hyperliquid DEX. This is down from a peak of $6 billion in September last year.
For reference, Solana's TVL is currently $8.7 billion.
Since launch, a cumulative total of $318 billion in value has been deposited for trading, of which $314 billion has been withdrawn.
HyperEVM Fundamentals
What makes Hyperliquid unique is that it started as a perpetual contract DEX, but it is also a Layer 1 blockchain. In this section, we provide the latest updates on the HyperEVM, which is scaling but still developing.
REV (Revenue)
Since its launch (last February), HyperEVM has generated $8.9 million in REV. In the past 30 days, its average daily REV was only $11,700, down from a peak of $66,000 per day. On October 10 last year, the protocol generated $450,000 in fees.
In terms of TVL, Hyperliquid L1 currently secures just under $12 billion in value. Among them, the liquid staking protocol Kinetiq has over $500 million; the lending protocol Morpho has over $300 million; and the lending protocol HyperLend has over $240 million.
Active Addresses
In the past 30 days, this L1 had an average of about 12,000 unique active addresses per day. This is down from about 20,000 per day at the peak in September/October last year.
DEX Trading Volume
In terms of DEX trading volume, this L1 had an average daily trading volume of $62 million in the past 30 days—insignificant compared to Ethereum and Solana.
Stablecoin Supply
As of January 21, 2026, there are over $674 million in stablecoins on Hyperliquid L1. Recent growth can be attributed to Circle (USDC) deploying on Hyperliquid and capturing a 50% market share. Tether accounts for 21% of stablecoins on Hyperliquid, Paxos for 12%, and Ethena for 11%.
Token Economic Model
This section covers the HYPE token, which represents equity in the Hyperliquid perpetual contract DEX and L1.
- Maximum Supply: 1,000,000,000
- Circulating Supply: 395,494,480
- Core Contributors: 22.3 M
- Hyper Foundation: 60 M
- Genesis Airdrop Allocation: 310 M
- HIP-2: 120 K
- Community: 3 M
Token Distribution
- Genesis Airdrop: 31%
- Future Releases and Community Rewards: 38.88%
- Core Contributors: 23.8% (Unlocked starting November 2025, continuing until November 2027)
- Hyper Foundation Budget: 6%
- Community Grants: 0.3%
- HIP-2 (Hyperliquidity): 0.012%
Token Unlocking
Team tokens began unlocking last November. Until November 2027, the protocol releases 9,916,666 HYPE tokens to the team each month (valued at $213 million per month at the current HYPE price).
Hyperliquid has no venture capital support, so there are no investor unlocks.
Buyback
In the past 30 days, the average daily buyback amount was $1.7 million (79,000 HYPE per day). At this rate, approximately 2.3 million HYPE is removed from circulation each month, or 28 million HYPE annually.
Key Points
Hyperliquid's buyback program provides solid buying support for the token, but the monthly unlock amount for the team is currently over four times the buyback amount. Of course, if user activity declines, buybacks will also decrease accordingly.
More analysis on "buyback yield" can be found below.
Relative Performance
Since launch, HYPE has risen 71% relative to BTC. From April to September last year, it outperformed BTC by 278%.
However, since the peak in September last year, HYPE has underperformed BTC by 52%.
For reference, during the same period, ETH fell 21% relative to BTC, and SOL fell 47% relative to BTC.
Valuation Analysis
HYPE currently has a fully diluted valuation of $20.5 billion. Its 365-day fee revenue is $915 million. This means its fully diluted price-to-sales (P/S) ratio is 22.4 times (down from 66 times in August).
In terms of the price-to-sales ratio calculated based on circulating market capitalization, it is 7.1 times (down from 21.9 times in August). This is now below the levels we typically see in high-growth tech/fintech companies (8-16 times).
Buyback Yield
Due to Hyperliquid's buyback mechanism, this analysis differs from traditional tech/fintech companies—because the revenue generated is not hoarded by the company (which has a fiduciary duty to investors) but is used to buy back HYPE tokens.
- Total Buyback Over 365 Days = $854 million.
- Circulating Market Cap = $6.5 billion.
- Current implied "buyback yield" is 13.1%.
This means Hyperliquid has bought back tokens equivalent to 13% of its market cap over the past 365 days.
However, this does not take into account new token issuance/unlocking—currently, its monthly unlocking amount is over four times the buyback amount.
Conclusion
We believe that perpetual futures are likely to become the mainstream abstraction for user trading of macro financial assets (especially foreign exchange and interest rates). Additionally, trading RWA derivatives is much easier than trading tokenized stocks/bonds themselves (tokenized assets require custody, transfer agents, corporate actions, dividends, etc.—perpetual contracts avoid all of these).
The current key risks are regulation and whether Hyperliquid/decentralized solutions can be incorporated into the U.S. crypto market structure legislation. Our view is that Hyperliquid itself may not be directly regulated, but its consumer-facing interface will be subject to regulation.
Nevertheless, Hyperliquid is achieving success. We believe there are five main reasons:
An excellent product that offers a user experience comparable to CEX while allowing users to self-custody.
The best narrative since BTC and ETH: 31% of tokens airdropped to early users, creating a massive wealth effect and a loyal community.
An outstanding token economic model that aligns the interests of users and token holders.
A founding team with strong technical capabilities and clear goals.
Early integration with mainstream wallets like Phantom and applications like Axiom, making Hyperliquid gradually become the default "perpetual contract trading" infrastructure across the crypto space, allowing users to trade through a friendly front-end interface while leveraging Hyperliquid's liquidity on the back end.
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