Key facts
- Hyperliquid's open interest hit a record $11 billion by July 13, 2026, with real-world asset perpetuals driving growth.
- Gross protocol revenue has fallen 43% from its Q3 2025 peak to $202 million in Q2 2026.
- A new proposal allows stakers to deploy markets and retain up to 50% of trading fees, increasing cost of revenue.
- Builder-deployed markets now constitute approximately half of Hyperliquid's perpetual futures volume.
- The HYPE token has seen significant outflows from institutional holders and first weekly ETF outflows.
- Regulators in Singapore and the UK have issued warnings regarding Hyperliquid.
Hyperliquid, a decentralized derivatives exchange, has seen a significant surge in trading activity, with open interest climbing to over $11 billion by July 13, 2026. This growth is largely driven by the platform's burgeoning market for real-world asset (RWA) perpetuals, which now represent the largest market segment by open interest, surpassing bitcoin. Tokenized stocks and commodities have also seen substantial volume, trading through weekends when traditional markets are closed.
Despite this record trading volume, Hyperliquid's gross protocol revenue has declined by 43% from its peak in the third quarter of 2025, reaching approximately $202 million in the second quarter of 2026. This revenue drop is attributed to Hyperliquid Improvement Proposal (HIP-3), implemented in October 2025, which allows users who stake 500,000 HYPE tokens to deploy their own perpetual futures markets and retain up to half of the trading fees generated. Consequently, the cost of revenue, representing fees passed to builders and market makers, has risen from under 6% to 18% of gross revenue.
Builder-deployed markets now account for roughly half of Hyperliquid's perpetual futures volume. Trade.xyz is a dominant player, responsible for over 90% of the open interest generated through HIP-3. This concentration of activity on a single deployer highlights a potential risk, as demonstrated by a recent incident involving a trade on Trade.xyz's SK Hynix contract that triggered liquidations and required reimbursement.
The platform's native token, HYPE, is directly impacted by these revenue trends. Hyperliquid's Assistance Fund, which uses trading fees to buy and retire HYPE, has seen its purchasing power nearly halved, from $290 million in Q3 2025 to $149 million in Q2 2026. HYPE's price has fallen 5% on the week to around $55, and institutional holders have been moving significant amounts of the token to exchanges, coinciding with the first weekly outflow from spot HYPE ETFs.
Regulatory scrutiny is also increasing, with Singapore's MAS adding Hyperliquid to its investor alert list, following earlier warnings from the U.K. Competition is also emerging from unexpected quarters, such as Robinhood Chain, which is now handling substantial daily decentralized exchange volume. Despite these challenges, Hyperliquid and Pump.fun together represent a significant portion of crypto application revenue, with some comparing Hyperliquid's model to Amazon Web Services, where developers build on the platform and the operator takes a cut.