In-depth interpretation: PerpDEX reshuffling moment, how else can Hyperliquid play?

Original Author: Biteye

Reprint: Luke, Mars Finance

Overview of the Global Sustainable DEX Market and Industry Changes

The decentralized perpetual trading market is experiencing an unprecedented wave of growth and a reshaping of the competitive landscape. As of September 2025, the global daily trading volume of perp DEX has surpassed $52 billion, a 530% increase since the beginning of the year, with a cumulative monthly trading volume reaching $13 trillion. Behind this growth are breakthroughs in technological innovation, an increase in user demand for decentralized financial products, and regulatory pressure on centralized trading platforms. The entire sector now occupies about 26% of the crypto derivatives market, achieving a qualitative leap from the single-digit share in 2024.

Change in Total Trading Volume of Perp DEX

The rapid differentiation of the market is reshaping the competitive landscape. Traditional order book models (such as dYdX, Hyperliquid) dominate the professional trading space with precise price discovery and deep liquidity, while AMM models (such as GMX, Gains Network) attract retail users through instant liquidity and simplified operations. Emerging hybrid models (such as Jupiter Perps) attempt to combine the advantages of both by achieving seamless switching between order books and AMMs in a high-speed environment through a keeper system. From a data performance perspective, order book models are gaining more market share, with Hyperliquid handling a cumulative trading volume of $2.76 trillion thanks to its CLOB architecture.

The Rise of Aster DEX and Market Impact

The protocol Aster, formed by the merger of APX Finance and Astherus, achieved a leap from zero to the top in just a few weeks through a multi-chain aggregation strategy and the support of YZi Labs, especially CZ. On the day of the token issuance on September 17, a 1650% increase, a trading volume of 371 million USD on the first day, and the influx of 330,000 new wallet addresses all demonstrated its strong market acquisition capability.

Aster's technological innovations are primarily reflected in the improvement of user experience. Its Simple mode offers up to 1001 times leverage, far exceeding Hyperliquid's 40-50 times, which, although carrying significant risks, is highly attractive to speculators seeking high returns. The hidden order feature draws on the concept of dark pools from traditional finance, effectively protecting large transactions from MEV attacks. The yield integration feature allows users to use yield-bearing assets like asBNB as collateral, earning a basic yield of 5-7% while trading. This innovation maximizes the composability of DeFi.

From the performance data, Aster's TVL surged from $370 million on September 14 to $1.735 billion, an increase of 328%, with the BNB Chain contributing 80% of the funds. Daily trading volume repeatedly exceeded $20 billion, briefly surpassing Hyperliquid to become the world's largest perpetual DEX, with a 24-hour fee revenue of $7.12 million. More importantly, Aster accumulated a total perpetual trading volume of $19.383 billion in just a few months. Although there is still a gap compared to Hyperliquid's $27.6 trillion, the growth rate is astonishing.

In community discussions, traders show a clear divergence in their preferences for the two platforms. Professional traders tend to prefer Hyperliquid, believing that its “one block confirmation” and deep liquidity are essential conditions for professional trading. Meanwhile, cross-chain users and newcomers favor Aster, as its multi-chain support without the need for bridging and CEX-like user experience significantly lowers the barrier to entry.

Hyperliquid: Technologically advanced but under pressure in market share

As a pioneer in the perpetual DEX space, Hyperliquid redefines the possibilities of on-chain derivatives trading through its innovative HyperCore architecture. HyperCore achieves an order processing capacity of 200,000 orders per second with a latency of 0.2 seconds, a performance metric that even surpasses many centralized trading platforms. With a cumulative perpetual trading volume of $2.765 trillion, a 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 technological architecture and the trust of its users.

However, Hyperliquid is facing the challenge of a continuous decline in market share. Its share in the perpetual DEX market has dropped from 71% in May 2025 and 80% in August to the current 38%. This change is mainly due to the rapid rise of emerging competitors and the success of multi-chain strategies. Particularly in terms of daily trading volume and fee income, Hyperliquid has been surpassed multiple times by Aster DEX, a change that was unimaginable in the past.

Despite facing challenges, the advantages of Hyperliquid are still evident. It has the deepest liquidity, with spreads on major assets like BTC/ETH as low as 0.1-0.2 basis points; the most stable technical architecture, providing traders with unparalleled certainty with each block confirmation; and the most mature ecosystem, with over 100 projects building a complete DeFi infrastructure on its platform. More importantly, its deflationary token model uses 99% of protocol revenue for HYPE buybacks and burns, with an annualized revenue scale of 20.1 billion dollars providing strong support for the token's value.

From the perspective of user quality analysis, Hyperliquid demonstrates a higher user value. Among its 825,000 daily active addresses, the monthly active users reach 3.651 million, and the ratio of open interest to volume (OI/Volume) stands at 287%, significantly higher than the industry average. This metric indicates that Hyperliquid's users are more genuinely seeking risk hedging, rather than engaging in short-term speculative trading. In contrast, Aster's ratio is only 12%; although its daily trading volume is higher, user behavior tends to lean more towards short-term arbitrage.

In the face of competitive pressure, Hyperliquid is also actively adjusting its strategy. The upcoming HIP-3 (permissionless perpetual market) will allow anyone to deploy custom perpetual contracts, which may bring innovative products such as RWA perpetuals and AI computing futures, re-energizing the ecosystem. The launch of the USDH native stablecoin will further enhance its financial infrastructure, expected to manage $5.5 billion in funds, with 95% of the profits used for HYPE buybacks, significantly enhancing the value support of the token.

In this intense market competition environment, Hyperliquid's true competitive advantage is not just the technology itself, but the complete ecosystem built around its core protocol. From its initial pure perpetual trading platform to today's comprehensive DeFi ecosystem with over 100 projects, Hyperliquid has formed a self-sustaining financial infrastructure. This ecosystem includes full-stack solutions ranging from infrastructure, DeFi protocols, to application layers, with each component contributing to the overall network's value accumulation and user stickiness.

Against this backdrop, this article will delve into the core projects and innovative applications within the Hyperliquid ecosystem, exploring how these projects build a sustainable competitive advantage for Hyperliquid in the fierce market competition, as well as how they collectively shape the future of decentralized derivatives trading.

In-depth Analysis of Hyperliquid's Core Ecosystem Projects

1. Kinetiq - A pillar of the liquid staking ecosystem (TVL: $1.757 billion)

Kinetiq's position in the Hyperliquid ecosystem is unshakeable, with its TVL of $1.757 billion accounting for about 78% of the entire ecosystem, making it the core hub of capital flow in the ecosystem. As the “Jito” of this ecosystem, Kinetiq redefined the validator delegation mechanism through its innovative StakeHub algorithm, achieving unprecedented efficiency and yield optimization.

The core of the StakeHub algorithm lies in the precise design of a multidimensional scoring system. This system scores over 100 active validators in real-time, dynamically adjusting the capital allocation strategy based on indicators 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 the historical performance of validators but also predicts their future stability, continuously optimizing the allocation weights through machine learning models to ensure that delegated funds consistently flow to the highest quality validators.

The yield structure of this protocol is extremely rich and has a market-leading competitive edge. The base PoS reward is approximately 2.3% annualized yield, which is considered upstream among similar LST projects. StakeHub optimization provides an additional 0.2-0.5% enhanced yield by avoiding underperforming validators, and the MEV income contributes about 1% annualized yield, which comes from the MEV capture mechanism of the Hyperliquid network. Even more attractive are the integrated rewards with other DeFi protocols, which can provide a variable bonus of 6-8%, allowing the total yield to reach levels of 10-12%, making it highly competitive in the current DeFi environment.

In terms of user experience, Kinetiq has achieved extreme simplification. Users obtain kHYPE tokens by staking HYPE, enjoying a slight premium of 1:0.996. This premium reflects the market's additional valuation of liquid staking tokens and confidence in the protocol's security. The unstaking mechanism is designed with a 7-day security delay and a fee of 0.1%, providing a reasonable exit mechanism for users while ensuring network security.

Kinetiq has exploded from a TVL of $458 million in July to the current $1.81 billion, a threefold increase in just two months. This growth is primarily attributed to the integration effect of the Pendle protocol, which has created additional liquidity demand and yield strategies for kHYPE through the PT/YT separation mechanism.

The upcoming $KNTQ governance token provides an important tool for the decentralized governance of the protocol and long-term value creation. It is expected that 30-50% of the token supply will be allocated to the community through airdrops, with priority distribution given to point holders, early users, and kHYPE stakers. The core functions of $KNTQ include voting on protocol upgrades, decision-making for MEV routing strategies, and planning authority for the HIP-3 market. This decentralization of governance authority will further enhance the protocol's degree of decentralization and community participation.

Interaction Method: Users can stake HYPE on kinetiq.xyz to receive kHYPE, supporting instant minting and a 7-day unlock period. The protocol also offers a kPoints rewards system, distributing points weekly in preparation for the upcoming $KNTQ airdrop. Points are earned through various dimensions, including the amount staked and holding duration.

2. Based - Mobile Super Applications and Ecological Entry

Based, as the highest income Builder application on Hyperliquid, generates approximately $90,300 in revenue over 24 hours, ranking first among all third-party applications. The cumulative perpetual trading volume exceeds $16.699 billion, with a 24-hour perpetual trading volume of $321 million, processing about 7% of Hyperliquid's total trading volume. This data fully reflects the high net worth characteristics and deep engagement of its user base. Its revenue model is based on Hyperliquid's Builder fee-sharing system, where it can earn up to 0.1% from perpetual trading and 1% from spot trading. Through an affiliate marketing program, most of the revenue is returned to users in the form of rebates, forming a sustainable incentive structure that benefits users, the platform, and Based. The 7-day revenue is $222 million, and the 30-day revenue is $671 million. These metrics not only demonstrate the robustness of its business model but also highlight its key role as a revenue contributor within the Hyperliquid ecosystem.

The tokenomics design of Based reflects a deep understanding of user behavior and innovative incentive mechanisms. The $PUP token, as an XP booster tool, completed its airdrop on August 22, 2025, with a total supply of 100 million tokens, of which 5% is allocated to early users and community contributors. The main function of $PUP is to enhance the efficiency of XP acquisition for users, providing a multiplier bonus of 25-60% on points, which allows holders to earn more rewards in activities such as trading and consumption. As the main governance token, $BASED will be distributed based on users' total XP, with a snapshot date of September 20, 2025, where perpetual trading contributes 0.06 XP for each $1 nominal trading volume, spot trading contributes 0.30 XP for each $1 trading volume (5x incentive), and Visa consumption contributes 4-6 points for each $1 consumption (converted to XP at TGE).

This dual-token mechanism cleverly combines short-term incentives ($PUP bonuses) and long-term governance ($BASED allocations), where holders of $PUP essentially gain a “leverage” from the $BASED airdrop, further enhancing user loyalty and ecological stickiness. In the community, the circulating market value of $PUP is approximately $500 million, with a price stability around $0.05, demonstrating its robust demand as a utility tool, while the expected supply of $BASED is 1 billion tokens, with a community distribution ratio as high as 40%, expected to be fairly distributed to active users through the XP system.

Interaction method: Users can download the mobile application from based.markets or access the web terminal to register an account using their email, supporting one-click recharge of multi-chain assets. The trading interface is designed similarly to traditional financial applications, offering spot and perpetual trading functions. Users can also apply for a Visa debit card (existing users should note the suspension schedule in November) to facilitate fiat currency consumption. The XP system displays real-time progress of points, and holders of $PUP can activate bonuses in their wallets to enhance reward efficiency.

3. Pendle - Yield Tokenization Protocol Giant

The successful deployment of Pendle on HyperEVM marks the mature application of the yield tokenization concept in the Hyperliquid ecosystem and represents a new height in the complexity and innovation of DeFi products. The protocol provides investors with precise tools for fixed income investment and yield speculation by separating yield-bearing assets like kHYPE into PT (Principal Token) and YT (Yield Token). In just a few months, Pendle's TVL on HyperEVM grew from zero to 12.3 billion USD, with a 30-day increase of up to 76.27%.

The synergistic effect between Pendle and Kinetiq is a key factor in its rapid success within the Hyperliquid ecosystem. This synergy is not only reflected in the complementary nature of their products but, more importantly, it creates new value capture mechanisms. By tokenizing kHYPE into PT and YT, Pendle provides liquidity staking users with more diversified yield strategy options while creating new avenues for earning within Kinetiq's points system. Users holding YT-kHYPE can obtain the full benefits of Kinetiq point rewards without bearing the volatility risk of the principal; PT-kHYPE holders enjoy the certainty of fixed yields, which can be used to build stable yield strategies.

Pendle's product matrix continues to expand, showcasing its strategic intent for deep integration with the Hyperliquid ecosystem. In addition to the mainstream kHYPE market, the protocol has gradually supported the yield tokenization of ecosystem-native 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. Especially with the emergence of more LSTs and yield-bearing assets, Pendle provides standardized yield separation tools for these assets, becoming an important bridge connecting different protocols.

Interaction method: Users access the protocol via app.pendle.finance, select the Hyperliquid network, and can separate their yield-bearing assets such as kHYPE into PT/YT, or directly trade these tokenized yield products on the secondary market. The protocol provides an intuitive yield curve and maturity date information to help users make investment decisions.

4. HyperLend - Core Lending Infrastructure

HyperLend, as the “lending bank” of the Hyperliquid ecosystem, plays a crucial role in the entire DeFi infrastructure, providing core support for the liquidity circulation and capital efficiency enhancement of the ecosystem. The protocol employs a market-validated Aave V3 fork architecture, but has been deeply optimized and innovated for the high-performance environment and unique asset characteristics of Hyperliquid. Its biggest technological breakthrough is focused on the HyperLoop function, which implements one-click leverage cycles through flash loans, providing advanced users with unprecedented capital efficiency tools while maintaining operational simplicity.

The architectural design of HyperLend embodies a delicate balance between risk management and capital efficiency. The protocol innovatively adopts a dual-pool structure: a unified liquidity pool specifically handles the efficient lending of core assets such as HYPE, kHYPE, and USDC, significantly reducing trading slippage and improving capital utilization through a shared liquidity mechanism; the isolated risk pool, on the other hand, is dedicated to managing assets with higher volatility or greater risk, supporting fully customizable risk parameter settings to ensure that risk events of a single asset do not impact the overall stability of the system.

The technical implementation of the HyperLoop function showcases the ultimate application of DeFi composability and a significant enhancement in user experience. Users operate through a simple and intuitive interface, while the protocol automatically executes complex sequences of atomic operations in the backend: first, borrowing the target debt asset through a flash loan mechanism, then converting it into the desired yield asset via the built-in DEX aggregator, supplying this asset as collateral to the corresponding pool of the protocol, subsequently borrowing more debt assets based on the new 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 a 3-5 times leverage amplification without bearing the complexity, time costs, and gas fees of multiple manual operations.

From the perspective of asset composition and operational efficiency data, HyperLend demonstrates a healthy and stable development trend along with good market adaptability. Its total TVL of $524 million is mainly composed of wstHYPE ($254 million, accounting for 48%) and native HYPE ($206 million, accounting for 39%), and this asset distribution clearly reflects the importance of LST within the ecosystem and the strong demand for the liquidity of native tokens. Currently, the total borrowing scale is $267 million, with an overall utilization rate of 48%. This level is considered a healthy operating range among DeFi lending protocols, ensuring sufficient liquidity to meet withdrawal demands while optimizing capital utilization to achieve reasonable returns.

The income model of HyperLend demonstrates a clear and sustainable capability for creating business value. The protocol's annual revenue is $15.89 million, with a diversified and stable income source, mainly including lending interest margin income, liquidation fee income, and flash loan service fee income. Notably, its flash loan fee is set at 0.04%, significantly lower than Aave's standard rate of 0.09%. This competitive pricing strategy provides users with better cost efficiency while maintaining market competitiveness, helping to attract more high-frequency trading and arbitrage activities. The protocol has also designed a robust point system, which has been running for 22 consecutive weeks, with a total of points distributed in preparation for the upcoming $HPL governance token airdrop, of which 3.5% of the token supply is reserved for Aave DAO.

Interaction method: Users connect their wallets through hyperlend.finance, supporting deposits to earn interest, borrowing, and the HyperLoop one-click leverage feature. The interface design 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 comprehensive solution that covers diversified services such as staking, lending, and yield optimization. The protocol recently completed a seed funding round of $520 million USD, led by Electric Capital, with notable institutions like Coinbase Ventures, Chapter One, and DCF God participating. This funding backdrop fully reflects institutional investors' recognition of its business model and technical team.

The product matrix design of Hyperbeat reflects a deep ecological integration concept. The beHYPE liquidity staking module provides a reducible security model that supports governance participation; the Morphobeat lending market is optimized based on the Morpho protocol, specifically targeting income-generating assets such as LST; the yield vault achieves automated yield optimization through the Meta-Yield strategy, spreading risks across multiple protocols. Its cross-chain integration capability allows it to deploy on multiple chains such as Arbitrum, currently having a TVL of $2892 US dollars on Arbitrum, which expands the user base and asset management scale.

Hyperbeat's technological innovation is primarily reflected in its automated yield optimization strategy. The protocol automatically monitors the yield rate changes of various DeFi protocols through smart contracts, dynamically adjusting capital allocation to achieve optimal yields. This “set-and-forget” user experience significantly lowers the technical barriers to participating in DeFi, making it especially suitable for those who wish to earn DeFi yields but do not want to engage in frequent operations. The Meta-Yield strategy also includes risk hedging mechanisms, reducing the risk of a single protocol by diversifying investments across multiple protocols while leveraging arbitrage opportunities to enhance overall returns.

Interaction method: Users can access the multi-product dashboard through hyperbeat.org to perform one-stop DeFi operations such as staking, lending, and yield farming. The interface design focuses on user experience, providing yield estimation and risk warning features. The Hearts points system is nearing its end, with less than 12% of the remaining distribution amount, a total of 51 million Hearts points are being prepared for the upcoming $BEAT token airdrop. The design of this points system encourages users to remain active across multiple product modules, earning point rewards through activities such as staking, lending, and yield farming.

6. USDH - Native Stablecoin Infrastructure

USDH, as the soon-to-be-launched native stablecoin of Hyperliquid, carries the important mission of enhancing the financial infrastructure of the ecosystem. Native Markets won the community vote on September 14, 2025, and gained the right to issue USDH. The launch of USDH will fill the gap in native stablecoins within the Hyperliquid ecosystem, providing a more complete and autonomous financial infrastructure for the entire ecosystem.

The technical architecture of USDH reflects a deep consideration for compliance and scalability. This stablecoin will be backed by U.S. Treasury bonds through traditional financial institutions like Stripe Bridge and BlackRock, ensuring ample asset backing and regulatory compliance. More importantly, USDH will achieve dual compatibility with HyperEVM ERC-20 and HyperCore HIP-1, allowing the stablecoin to flow seamlessly throughout the Hyperliquid ecosystem, serving as collateral and liquidity in DeFi protocols, as well as margin in perpetual trading, thus achieving true ecological native integration.

The launch time of USDH is expected in Q4 2025, and the specific progress will depend on the completion of technical development and regulatory applications. As an important infrastructure for the ecosystem, the successful launch of USDH will have a profound impact on the entire Hyperliquid ecosystem, not only enhancing user experience and capital efficiency but more importantly strengthening the independence and sustainability of the ecosystem. Especially in the competition with external stablecoins like USDC, the native advantages and revenue-sharing mechanism of USDH will provide it with unique competitiveness.

Ecosystem Data Panorama and Development Outlook

The Hyperliquid ecosystem demonstrates strong growth momentum and a healthy development trend. The total TVL reaches $6.535 billion, with DeFi protocols locked at $2.37 billion and perpetual trading positions at $4.165 billion. The perpetual trading volume in the last 30 days reached $6516 billion dollars. User data shows high-quality characteristics: 308,000 monthly active users, an average holding size of $162,000, and a 30-day retention rate of 67%, which far exceeds similar platforms.

The biggest advantage of the ecosystem lies in the deep collaboration between protocols. The integration of Kinetiq with Pendle, the capital efficiency amplification of HyperLend, the internal circulation of Felix feUSD, and the mobile traffic import of Based have formed a powerful network effect. However, the decline in market share cannot be ignored. Hyperliquid's market share in the perpetual DEX market dropped from 48.2% in August to 38.1% in September, mainly lost to competitors adopting multi-chain strategies and incentive mechanisms.

The launch of HIP-3 (permissionless perpetual market) will be a significant turning point, allowing anyone to deploy custom perpetual contracts, expected to bring innovative products such as RWA perpetuals and AI computing power futures. The native stablecoin USDH is expected to manage $19,283,746,565,748,392,01 in funds, with 95% of the revenue used for HYPE buybacks, yielding an annual return of $150-220 million, which will significantly enhance the support for token value.

The value capture mechanism design of the HYPE token is reasonable: 99% of protocol revenue is used for buyback and burn, with the current annual buyback rate of approximately 8.7%. However, the linear release starting on November 29 will increase the supply by 71%, which needs to be offset by strong fundamental performance to counteract supply pressure.

The Hyperliquid ecosystem is at a critical development juncture. Its success will depend on the combination of technological innovation and user experience, the balance between ecosystem openness and quality control, and the coordination between technological focus and diverse needs. The launch of HIP-3 and USDH will be an important test of its adaptability.

For investors, the ecosystem offers a wealth of investment opportunities, ranging from stable yield LST protocols to high-risk early-stage projects. The key is to understand the business models and risk factors of each protocol and to formulate reasonable strategies based on individual circumstances. The value of Hyperliquid lies not only in the success of individual protocols but also in the formation of the overall ecosystem network effect. In this era full of opportunities and challenges, its ability to continuously innovate and create value for users will determine its long-term development prospects.