Hyperliquid, an decentralized perpetuals market, challenges the notion that venture capital funding is necessary for crypto success. Instead, it claims it's relying on its touted tech and community-first approach.
DEX Hyper Foundation oversees all development. Thursday its token generation event, slated for early Friday at 2:30 AM ET, alongside an airdrop.
Hyperliquid is a financial system that has evolved from an exchange over the last year." claiming its liquidity now “rivals” that of “top exchanges,” its foundation said Thursday on X, formerly Twitter.
In October, Hyperliquid surpassed Jupiter and SynFutures, clocking a record $1.39 billion in daily trading volume, DeFiLlama derivatives data shows.
“The HYPE genesis event marks a key milestone in the journey, unlocking core functionality at every level of the stack,” it said.
Based on data from Aevo, a derivatives tracking platform, Hyperliquid has a projected valuation of $3 billion. At that valuation, the planned 310 million HYPE tokens allocated for the 31% community airdrop would be worth nearly $1 billion, marking Hyperliquid's "genesis event" as one of the largest in DeFi, the project claims.
Once launched, the HYPE token will integrate directly into Hyperliquid's core operations, the project said. Decrypt has reached out to Hyperliquid to learn more.
Beyond traditional governance roles, the token will also provide functionality for staking and transaction fees while enabling direct USDC trading pairs on the platform's spot market.
What's different?
Hyperliquid runs on a blockchain designed specifically for high-speed trading and financial applications. The platform uses HyperBFT, a proof-of-stake system that can process transactions almost instantly while maintaining security through network consensus.
The project is currently ranked as the top decentralized exchange for derivatives, posting $1.6 billion in 24-hour volume, according to data from DeFiLllama. Its all-time volume sits at roughly $428 billion.
Hyperliquid said in a blog post on Thursday there would be "No allocations to private investors, central exchanges or market makers" an approach that departs from how other projects typically allocate during launch, which often includes significant portions reserved for early backers and project leaders.
“No investors. No paid market makers. No fees to any company. Community first," Hyperliquid’s website makes claims.
Even so, 24% of tokens are allocated to core network contributors and will continue to be for the foreseeable future. A further 6% is going towards the “Hyper Foundation budget,” “The exchange” is what was said.
Sebastian Sinclair edited the book