In the past 10 days, with HYPE nearly reaching $40, Hyperliquid has gained nearly 70,000 or +10% new users. To all new users making their first journey into Hyperliquid with this recent ATH, what are we building here, and what does the opportunity set look like for you?
This article will break down Hyperliquid as it stands today as well as a few glimpses into what is to come.
You may have come to Hyperliquid firstly in order to purchase HYPE as one of the only fundamentals-driven assets in DeFi. Hyperliquid is buying back HYPE to the tune of $1m-$3m per day as of late, via the Hyperliquid Assistance Fund. HYPE staking also serves multiple use cases: serving as the backbone for Hyperliquid’s proof of stake consensus mechanism (HyperBFT) as well as a vehicle for trader discounts for large stakers, creating another sink for HYPE. These two aspects alone of Hyperliquid’s design for the market dynamics of HYPE have created hold and buy pressure for HYPE to the tune of $784m of HYPE bought back by the Assistance Fund, >$13.3bn of HYPE staked, and >$400m of HYPE liquid-staked. With this knowledge, you likely purchased HYPE and are now wondering what to do with this HYPE to maximize your exposure.
You have multiple options. Firstly, you can stake your HYPE directly to one of the many community-run validators or Foundation-run validators and earn the staking APY currently at ~2.2%. This path is likely most attractive if you are a large trader looking to take advantage of staking fee tiers.
With these tiers, if you are a large trader with more than 500,000 HYPE staked, you can benefit from a 40% trading fee discount.
However, for those that are not as large holders or not trading as actively and still looking for a place to put HYPE to work, HyperEVM might be more interesting for you. HyperEVM is the EVM chain that Hyperliquid launched in mid-February of this year.
HyperEVM allows for new use cases for Hyperliquid power users including coin margin and liquid staking (the two of which can go hand in hand). To get to HyperEVM with your HYPE, go to the Portfolio page on hl.xyz. Then next to your HYPE holdings, click “Transfer to EVM.” This will transfer your HYPE to HyperEVM where you can begin to explore a variety of apps.
If coming from Solana, you might be most familiar with protocols like Jupiter, Kamino, and Meteora. Maybe you want to LP with stables you acquire on HyperEVM (USDT0 and USDe are currently live) or lend HYPE or borrow against your HYPE and go trade on Hyperliquid core. If looking for those LP opportunities, you can try out HyperSwap, Kittenswap, Valantis, Laminar or Curve–five AMM-based DEXes live on HyperEVM now. If more familiar with Kamino and looking to lend / borrow, Felix CDP, Felix Vanilla, Hyperdrive, Hypurrfi, and Hyperlend all provide various options for you to take advantage of.
As one sample of the opportunities present currently, Felix CDP is currently offering yields up to 17%+ for users depositing feUSD into the Felix Stability Pools. This yield is coming from borrower interest, protocol fees, and liquidation rewards as feUSD deposited into the Felix Stability Pools is used to process Felix CDP liquidations. Hyperliquid yields are the result of real user demand as opposed to manufactured emissions. And, if you are a borrower looking for sustainable rates, you will hopefully be happy to know that there is no Boyco incentives program that is going to cause half of the TVL to exit overnight.
For greater capital efficiency on HyperEVM, you may be interested in trying out liquid-staking. Currently mHYPE from Magpie and stHYPE from Thunderhead Labs are live with about $400m in combined TVL. Many users await the launch of kHYPE from the team at Kinetiq, which will also likely unlock more staked HYPE for use on HyperEVM. With one of these LSTs as collateral, you can either borrow stables against the LST to trade more or you can borrow HYPE against the LST to loop and maximize exposure to yield and incentives. This will be available on Felix Vanilla in the coming weeks.
On May 2, 2025, the Hyperliquid team announced HIP-3, a new Hyperliquid improvement proposal to allow for builder-deployed perpetuals markets. With the launch of PURR in early 2024, Hyperliquid graduated from a perp DEX to a place to trade spot assets as well, with users being able to list their own assets via a ticker dutch auction. And then in early 2025, Hyperliquid became a spot exchange not just for HYPE and HL-native assets but also for majors via @hyperunit bringing BTC, ETH, and now SOL to Hyperliquid. Then, in May of 2025, we saw some of the first large outside deployments of spot assets from Ethena with USDe and Tether/LayerZero with USDT0.
With HIP-3, builders will be able to deploy not only spot markets but also perp markets. However, this of course comes with novel and unprecedented risks, hence the need for 1M staked HYPE to deploy any new perp market. With builder deployed perps, Hyperliquid will allow builders to seize the reins on listing innovation and push beyond the currently opaque listing processes for perps across CEXes. Additionally, Hyperliquid builders that can solve the necessary regulatory questions will be able to deploy unforeseen markets at scale that have only just begun to be deployed in other ecosystems like equity perps.
The motto of the chain to house all finance becomes more real as spot equities and equity perps begin to go live along with builder-code apps like PvP Trade, Lootbase, Dexari, and Mercury. These apps will enable the benefits of the Hyperliquid trading experience to be transported across user-bases, some of which may prefer a mobile-first experience or may not even be traders at all but rather just people looking for crypto exposure in a user-friendly way. Hyperliquid builder code apps will pave the way here.
Finally, with HIP-3, we will also see the enabling of new collateral assets for perps on Hyperliquid. This is in part where the Hyperliquid fiat-backed stable USDhl will come into play. USDhl will serve as a Hyperliquid-aligned fiat backed stable that uses the yield from the treasuries backing it to buy back HYPE and then return that HYPE to users doing various actions around Hyperliquid (LPing with USDhl, lending USDhl, etc). This is expected to launch in early June to both HyperCore and HyperEVM.
For those looking for a more bespoke experience on Hyperliquid or still unsure of where to go next, feel free to send a DM–our team at Felix has been building on Hyperliquid for almost a year now, and we are happy to help you get set up directly based on your desires regarding yield, liquidity, etc. To all 70,000 users that have just recently joined us on Hyperliquid, welcome.
Felix
