Hyperliquid Trading Volume Highlights
- Hyperliquid recorded approximately $330 billion in trading volume in July 2025, briefly overtaking Robinhood.
- The HLP vault and Assistance Fund buybacks created a synergy among traders, market makers, and token holders in a self-reinforcing loop.
A year after the introduction of its layer 1 (L1), Hyperliquid has emerged as one of the leading venues for decentralized finance (DeFi) perpetuals, achieving around $319 billion in trading volume in July 2025. Notably, the core team behind Hyperliquid is thought to comprise just 11 individuals.
This guide examines the technical architecture and operational strategies that facilitated such scale.
The chain is structured into two closely linked segments: HyperCore, which handles the on-chain order book, margining, liquidations, and clearing; and HyperEVM, a general-purpose smart contract layer that directly interacts with the exchange state.
Both components are secured by HyperBFT, a HotStuff-style proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus designed to maintain a consistent transaction order without dependence on off-chain systems. HyperEVM was launched on the mainnet on February 18, 2025, allowing for programmability surrounding the exchange core.
Performance Metrics
Did you know? Hyperliquid achieves a median trade latency of only 0.2 seconds (with the 99th-percentile delays staying under 0.9 seconds) and is capable of processing up to 200,000 transactions per second, competing with centralized exchanges in terms of speed.
July represented Hyperliquid’s most successful month yet, with data from DefiLlama indicating the platform processed about $319 billion in perpetuals trading volume. This surge elevated the total DeFi perpetuals volume to a record $487 billion, marking a 34% increase from June.
In that same timeframe, industry trackers reported a combined figure of $330.8 billion, which also accounted for spot trading. Headlines remarked that this meant Hyperliquid prematurely surpassed Robinhood.
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Robinhood’s July measurements provide a comparative backdrop: $209.1 billion in equities notional, $16.8 billion in crypto trading, along with $11.9 billion at Bitstamp (a Robinhood subsidiary), culminating in approximately $237.8 billion.
Multiple outlets pointed out that July marked the third consecutive month in which Hyperliquid’s volumes exceeded those of Robinhood—a remarkable achievement for a team consisting of only 11 individuals. Importantly, these represent monthly figures, not cumulative totals. This indicates that the platform is demonstrating consistent high-frequency activity instead of a fleeting spike.
Hyperliquid’s Architecture
Hyperliquid’s magnitude stems from its expertly divided state machine that operates under a unified consensus.
HyperCore serves as the exchange engine, with central-limit order books, margin accounting, matching, and liquidations fully managed on-chain. The documentation emphasizes a deliberate avoidance of off-chain order books. Each asset’s book exists on-chain as part of the chain state, featuring price-time priority matching.
HyperEVM operates within an Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM)-compatible environment on the same blockchain. By sharing consensus and data availability with HyperCore, applications can integrate around the exchange without switching from the L1.
Both components rely on HyperBFT, a PoS consensus inspired by HotStuff, which ensures a consistent order of transactions throughout the system. This design prioritizes low-latency finality while maintaining both custody and execution on-chain.
This architecture is distinct from conventional decentralized exchange (DEX) models: automated market makers (AMMs) that depend on liquidity pools or hybrid order-book DEXs that keep orders on-chain but match them off-chain.
Hyperliquid runs its fundamental exchange logic (order books, matching, margin, and liquidations) entirely on-chain while permitting EVM-based apps to connect seamlessly.
Founder Jeff Yan has mentioned that the core team consists of around 11 individuals, with deliberate hiring aimed at preserving speed and cultural coherence. The focus is on a small, collaborative team rather than rapid headcount growth.
The project is fully self-funded, having opted out of venture capital. Yan views this as a means to align ownership with users and to maintain priorities separate from investor timelines. This approach accounts for the lack of major centralized-exchange listings, with the emphasis remaining on technology and community engagement.
Execution operates through a streamlined feedback loop. Following a 37-minute API outage on July 29 that disrupted order execution, the team compensated affected traders a total of $1.99 million the subsequent business day. This swift response exemplified the platform’s “ship, fix, own it” mentality.
“Hiring the wrong person is more detrimental than not hiring at all,” noted Yan regarding the importance of maintaining a lean team.
Collectively, thoughtful hiring practices, independence from venture capital, and rapid incident management elucidate how a small team can function at the pace of a centralized exchange while ensuring that custody and execution remain entirely on-chain.
The HLP Vault
The HLP is a protocol-managed vault that facilitates market-making and liquidations on HyperCore. Anyone has the ability to deposit capital, with contributors sharing in the vault’s profit and loss (PnL) and a portion of trading fees. By establishing an open and rules-based market-making infrastructure, HLP diminishes reliance on the bilateral deals typical in other venues.
According to DefiLlama dashboards, 93% of protocol fees are directed to the Assistance Fund, which is tasked with buying back and burning HYPE tokens. The remaining 7% is allocated to HLP. This creates a feedback loop: increased organic volume supports larger buybacks, thus reducing token supply while still allocating a fraction to sustain the vault.
Perpetual funding on Hyperliquid is entirely peer-to-peer, with no protocol fee, paid hourly and limited to a maximum of 4% per hour.
The rates comprise a fixed interest (0.01% every eight hours, prorated hourly) along with a variable premium based on an oracle that aggregates spot prices from centralized exchanges.
This arrangement helps maintain the alignment of perpetual prices with spot prices. Payments come from both sides of the book, reinforcing risk-sharing while avoiding yield promises.
Notable Events
On November 29, 2024, the project rolled out the HYPE genesis airdrop, distributing approximately 310 million tokens to early participants. This event coincided with the trading debut of the token, emphasizing a community-driven approach. Hyperliquid (HYPE) is utilized for staking in HyperBFT and for gas payments on-chain.
Momentum picked up in mid-2025 when Phantom Wallet integrated Hyperliquid perpetuals directly within its app. Analysts and media observed a notable increase in flow and adoption.
VanEck’s report for July attributed $2.66 billion in trading volume, $1.3 million in fees, and about 20,900 new users to the Phantom integration. Additional reports tracked $1.8 billion in routed volume within the first 16 days.
On the product front, HyperEVM went live on February 18, 2025, enabling general-purpose smart contracts and creating avenues for wallets, vaults, and listing processes to connect with the exchange. This flexibility encouraged outside developers to engage with the ecosystem and fostered a consistent influx of new markets.
Did you know? Hyperliquid’s genesis airdrop distributed around $1.6 billion worth of HYPE across 90,000 users, which accounted for 31% of the total supply. At peak prices, the average airdrop value surpassed $100,000 per recipient.
In early 2025, researchers and validators voiced concerns regarding validator transparency and centralization. The team recognized these issues and committed to making the code open-source following enhancements to its security. Plans to broaden validator participation were also outlined.
Market Share and Risks
Hyperliquid’s market share—often estimated at 75%-80% of decentralized perpetuals trading—creates potential concentration challenges. Observers noted the advantages of network effects but also highlighted systemic risks that may arise if liquidity shifts or shocks occur within a single venue.
A 37-minute API outage on July 29 temporarily halted trading. In response, Hyperliquid reimbursed approximately $2 million to users the following day. Although the quick refund bolstered its reputation for responsiveness, the incident underscored the risks that leveraged traders encounter during system outages.
Critics have occasionally scrutinized how protocol-managed vaults allocate capital off-chain or across chains, as well as the design of buyback mechanisms. These factors remain critical areas of operational risk to observe as Hyperliquid expands.
Did you know? Hyperliquid relies on validator-maintained price oracles. Any manipulation of these oracles could trigger premature or inaccurate liquidations. To mitigate this risk, Hyperliquid restricts open interest levels and blocks orders that deviate more than 1% from the oracle price, although the HLP vault is exempt from these stipulations.
Contributing Factors to Success
The execution-first design is noteworthy: HyperCore manages on-chain matching and margin, while HyperEVM offers composability, both governed by HyperBFT. This synergy produces near CEX-level latency while ensuring that custody and state are completely on-chain.
Secondly, incentive alignment through fee-funded buybacks (via the Assistance Fund) and the open HLP vault has established a self-reinforcing liquidity loop as trading volumes escalated.
Third, maintaining a compact core team of about 11 contributors has minimized managerial overhead and accelerated product cycles.
Fourth, distribution advantages, particularly Phantom Wallet’s integration, have reduced onboarding friction and broadened reach during a favorable cycle for on-chain derivatives.
Long-Term Considerations
For those assessing long-term viability, several factors warrant attention:
- Will progress be made in validator decentralization and code open-sourcing as promised?
- How swiftly will spot markets, central-limit order book activities, and third-party applications develop around HyperEVM?
- Will revenue and volume remain strong as competitors start adopting analogous models?
This article does not offer investment advice or recommendations. Every investment and trading decision carries risk, and readers should perform their own research before proceeding.
