What is Hyperliquid?

Ryan Sean Adams frames Hyperliquid as a super app targeting the entire global asset market, not just crypto.

“Hyperliquid is not a crypto app, it's a super app. It's not targeting the $3 trillion crypto economy, it's targeting the $600 trillion global asset market.”

Hyperliquid ($65B market cap, $800M revenue) vastly outvalues Pump.fun ($1.4B market cap, $440M revenue) despite both using buy-and-burn, suggesting a trust premium for the team matters more than buyback mechanics alone.

“I have a thesis that buybacks don't actually work. Hyperlid makes 800 million in annualized revenue. Pump Fund makes 440 annualized revenue, but Hype trades at 65 billion, whereas Pump trades at 1.4 billion. Why the discrepancy? They're both buy and burn, you know, like pump is just half hyperlquid. Shouldn't it be half the valuation?”

Hyperliquid has a significantly higher liquidations-to-trading-volume ratio than competitors Aster and Lighter, suggesting more genuine user risk-taking.

“Hyperlid has a much higher ratio of liquidations to trading volume compared to Aster and Lighter who are the main competitors.”

Lighter (LIT): an Ethereum-based perpetuals exchange claiming record throughput, zero taker fees, superior trade latency versus Hyperliquid, and an aggressive token buyback program.

“I think yesterday lighter had something like over 10,000 transactions per second which is far and away the most in the Ethereum ecosystem while only using maybe 1% of the blob space.”

Jason Yanowitz argues that the DAT structure enabling hedge fund positions in projects like Hyperliquid is a far bigger market catalyst than the SEC crypto proposal.

“The ability for hedge funds to express their views on a project like hyperlquid is a big catalyst through this structure of a DAT. that's more impactful in my opinion than the SEC coming out by far and away.”

Hyperliquid builder codes allow permissionless frontends to aggregate users, route volume, and earn revenue without involvement from the core team, a potentially powerful distribution mechanism.

“I think builder codes which allow for frontends to permissionlessly like go and start aggregating users routing volume and make revenue off that will be the path.”

HIPP3 permissionless markets on Hyperliquid grew from near zero to roughly one third of total platform volume within months of launch.

“HIPP3 volumes went from basically nothing to I believe about a third of total volume on Hyperlid in the matter of months.”

Lighter bought back twice the percentage of its supply compared to Hyperliquid over the prior month, a ratio that holds for both circulating and fully diluted supply.

“Over the last month, lighters bought back, you know, twice the percentage of the supply. that's true of the circulating supply and the fully diluted supply because those ratios are about the same for both projects as Hyperlid has.”

Bitwise launched a Hyperliquid ETF and is directing 10% of its fees to purchase and hold HYPE tokens on its balance sheet, a novel fee-to-native-token flywheel model worth tracking.

“They're taking 10% of the fees from that ETF and they are just buying hype with it and holding it on balance sheet.”

DAT (Decentralized Autonomous Token) structure. Enables hedge funds to take directional positions in crypto projects like Hyperliquid, potentially a larger market catalyst than new SEC guidance.

“The ability for hedge funds to express their views on a project like hyperlquid is a big catalyst through this structure of a DAT. that's more impactful in my opinion than the SEC coming out by far and away.”