The Dark Horse Journey of Hyperliquid: Insights into the Rise Logic of the On-Chain Derivation Dominator | Gate Research Institute

Summary

• Market share gap leads, rapid growth drives industry expansion: Hyperliquid holds an impressive 80% market share in the on-chain futures market, far exceeding the second place. This leading position has significantly propelled the expansion of the entire on-chain derivatives market, increasing the market share of DEX in global futures trading from 2.7% at the beginning of 2024 to 8.22% in July 2025.

• Core platform data remains strong: Despite experiencing protocol attacks, Hyperliquid's TVL has rebounded to $478 million (as of July 17, 2025), with cumulative derivatives trading volume surpassing $19.8 trillion, a single-day peak reaching $18.9 billion, and an annualized revenue of approximately $850 million, ranking among the top in on-chain protocol revenue.

• Whale Capital Dominates Liquidity: The core liquidity of Hyperliquid is driven by a small number of high-net-worth users. 118 wallets classified as Leviathan (over $50 million) collectively hold up to $6.82 billion in positions, with large wallets (such as Tidal Whale and Leviathan) showing significantly higher opening activity than retail investors, with over 87% and 92% respectively maintaining open positions.

• CEX Level Experience On-Chain: Hyperliquid combines a self-developed high-performance Layer 1 chain and a native on-chain order book, along with a gasless model and user experience optimizations such as fee-free order placement. This not only achieves a millisecond-level trading experience close to CEX but also maintains complete on-chain verifiability. Leveraging an open matching API, a local simulation matching sandbox, up to 50x leverage, and extremely low rates (0.01% for makers and 0.035% for takers), it has successfully attracted top-tier professional market makers and quantitative institutions.
• HYPE Airdrop Ignites User Growth and Unique Growth Flywheel: The total amount of Hyperliquid's HYPE token genesis airdrop reached up to $620 million, attracting 94,000 addresses to participate. In the two days following the airdrop, approximately 14,619 new addresses were added, far exceeding the total of the previous month, which fully demonstrates the enormous success of its points strategy. This success, along with a precise "anti-VC" narrative, high leverage, extreme rates, and the HIP-1 auction mechanism, has collectively built a strong user growth and market recognition system.

• The "Live Advertising" Effect of Whales: The transparency of on-chain opening information makes whale positions visible, allowing renowned traders like James Wynn to publicly disclose large positions, attracting follow-on capital and creating a positive feedback loop of "position-emotion-price."
• Strategic Expansion and Token Utility Enhancement: The launch of HyperEVM has successfully attracted a large number of DeFi projects for deployment. This not only expands the application scenarios of HYPE tokens (such as paying Gas fees, lending, staking, etc.) but also brings more fee revenue, forming a positive feedback loop between HYPE value and platform ecosystem expansion.

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