Hyperliquid (HYPE)

Hyperliquid (HYPE) is the native cryptocurrency of the Hyperliquid Layer 1 blockchain, a chain purpose-built for an on-chain perpetual futures and spot order book. Unlike automated market maker designs, every order, fill, funding payment and liquidation is recorded directly on the L1 state, giving traders a fully transparent matching engine without intermediaries. The chain is secured by HyperBFT, a HotStuff-inspired Proof-of-Stake consensus that delivers sub-second finality and the throughput needed to run a high-frequency exchange entirely on-chain.

The protocol launched in 2023 as a perpetuals venue and has expanded into a broader ecosystem with the rollout of HyperEVM, an Ethereum Virtual Machine layer that lets Solidity developers deploy contracts alongside the order book and tap into native HYPE liquidity. Other building blocks include the Hyperliquidity Provider (HLP) vault, which lets anyone deposit USDC to backstop liquidations and earn a share of platform revenue, and the assistance fund that uses trading fees to buy back HYPE on the open market. HYPE itself is used for gas, staking, governance and validator delegation.

HYPE went live with a genesis event on 29 November 2024, when roughly 310 million tokens, equal to 31 percent of the one billion maximum supply, were airdropped to early users with no allocation to venture investors, private rounds or paid market makers. The project is built by Hyperliquid Labs, a small team founded by Jeff Yan that relocated from the United States to Singapore in 2024, while the Hyper Foundation manages ecosystem grants and protocol stewardship. The combination of self-funded development, an open order book and a community-first token distribution has positioned Hyperliquid as one of the most actively used decentralized derivatives venues in the market.