Hyperliquid (HYPE)

Figures from combined_metrics.json and the underlying Hyperliquid report; rows labeled DefiLlama are on-chain aggregator pulls.

Hyperliquid is the dominant on-chain perpetuals venue and, by fee generation, one of the most profitable businesses in crypto: $1.047B of fees over the trailing twelve months, with ~97–99% routed to open-market HYPE buybacks. It runs as a purpose-built Layer 1 (HyperBFT consensus) with a fully on-chain central limit order book, an EVM layer (HyperEVM, $2B+ DeFi TVL), and a team of roughly eleven people with zero VC funding — reportedly among the highest profit-per-employee businesses anywhere.

Latest developments

• HIP-4 outcome markets. Curated launch on 2026-05-02; permissionless deployment is planned with the same terms as HIP-3 — a 500,000 HYPE stake with a 6-month lock, roughly $30M locked per deployer at ~$60. A direct challenge to Polymarket/Kalshi and a new structural HYPE sink.
• HIP-3 / RWA expansion. HIP-3 opened permissionless perp deployment on 2025-10-13 (stake 500,000 slashable HYPE to run an independent perp exchange on HyperCore). 2026 coverage shows tokenized equities, commodities and FX becoming a major volume source — HIP-3 grew from ~2% to ~50% of total perp volume between January and July 2026, at times driving a large share of volume during TradFi-closed weekends; RWA perp open interest hit a $3.6B ATH.
• Revenue milestone. Cumulative protocol revenue crossed $1B on 2026-06-30; DefiLlama cumulative revenue now stands at $1.169B with cumulative fees of $1.440B.
• Buybacks. ~97–99% of fees route to the Assistance Fund, buying HYPE on the open market every block. DefiLlama annualized revenue/earnings is ~$801M; cumulative buybacks are reported above $1.1B (~44–45.7M HYPE, ~4.4–4.6% of supply), and the single largest buyback was $283M in July 2026.
• Institutional access. Three US spot HYPE ETFs trade — 21Shares THYP, Bitwise BHYP and Grayscale HYPG — but flows have turned: FXStreet reported $698k of ETF outflows on Tuesday after $7.26M of outflows the prior week, following nine weeks of inflows.
• Whale pressure. FXStreet/CoinGecko news flagged Multicoin-linked HYPE moving to Coinbase Prime and unstaking, pressuring sentiment.

Price action & technicals

HYPE trades at $59.61 with a $13.26B market cap and ~$56.9B FDV. The 1-year return is +29.3%, but momentum has rolled over: −10.0% over 30 days and −12.3% over 7 days. The token sits −19.9% below its 1-year high close and about −22.3% below the CoinGecko ATH of $76.70 (2026-06-16). The year has been a tale of two halves: a brutal January flush to ~$21, then a 3.5x H1 rally on ETF launches, HIP-3/RWA growth and buyback momentum, and a July cool-off as volumes soften.

The FXStreet technical view: price is below the 50-day EMA at $62.70 but above the 200-day EMA at $49.95, sitting near a make-or-break trendline around $60.41. Resistance levels at $62.70, $66.22 and $69.87; a break of the trendline opens downside risk toward $54.19.

Valuation, tokenomics & unlocks

On circulating market cap, HYPE is not egregiously priced for the category leader: ~16.6x trailing-1y revenue (~12.7x trailing fees) with a ~6.0% buyback yield is defensible given its growth — comparable to a high-growth exchange equity with a high shareholder yield. The honest institutional denominator is FDV: only 23.3% of the 955.3M total supply circulates, so FDV / revenue is ~71x, and roughly $44B of future supply must be absorbed.

CF Benchmarks' framework reaches the same conclusion — underwrite on FDV, size to unlocks. Contributor unlocks run at a theoretical ceiling of roughly 9.9M HYPE per month through 2027 (most vesting completes 2027–2028), while buybacks currently retire only part of that. The math holds while volumes hold: recent quarterly buybacks of $149–226M comfortably exceed realized contributor distributions, but revenue has now declined for three consecutive quarters from the Q3 2025 peak, and a prolonged volume downturn flips net supply from flat-to-deflationary to inflationary.

Risks in brief

• Centralization: a 16–25 validator set; the March 2025 JELLYJELLY incident showed a "validator put" — validators force-settled positions to save the HLP vault.
• Exploit surface: at least six HLP-weaponization attacks since early 2025, $40M+ extracted; perp DEXs are demonstrated Lazarus Group targets.
• Unlock overhang: ~9.9M HYPE/month ceiling through 2027–2028; sustainable only while buybacks exceed distributions.
• Revenue cyclicality: fees are −43% from the Q3 2025 peak; ~97% of token demand is fee-funded — reflexivity cuts both ways.
• HIP-3 concentration: TradeXYZ accounts for over 90% of HIP-3 open interest — a single-builder dependency.
• Regulatory & competition: offshore perps, tokenized equities and prediction markets are in US/EU crosshairs; Aster, Lighter and edgeX compete aggressively on incentives and fees.

• Data stack: CoinGecko Pro API for market data and price history; DefiLlama (API and protocol pages) for TVL, fees, revenue, income statements and unlocks; the Hyperliquid API for live open interest and volume per market; Dune CLI for on-chain open-interest / volume queries; Exa for web research and news pulls.
• As-of timestamp: all market and fundamental figures are live pulls as of 2026-07-22 ~19:00 UTC. Company-reported figures (Hyperliquid team and supply details) are labeled as such throughout, both here and in the underlying report.
• Definitions: "annualized" figures are DefiLlama's annualized run-rates; "trailing 1y" sums the last 365 days. Price returns and drawdowns are computed from CoinGecko daily closes; the 365-day series embedded in this site runs 2025-07-23 to 2026-07-22 (366 points, including the current intraday print).
• Artifacts: the underlying report (hyperliquid_report.md), combined_metrics.json and raw API/CSV dumps are retained in the research repository alongside this site.

Full source index from the underlying report. Descriptions preserved from hyperliquid/sources/sources.md (compiled 2026-07-22). Links open in a new tab.