Hyperliquid processed approximately $330 billion in trading volume in July 2025, briefly surpassing Robinhood.

The sub-chain architecture brings centralized exchange-level speed while ensuring that asset custody and trade execution are fully on-chain.

The HLP treasury and Assistance Fund buyback mechanism bind the interests of traders, market makers, and token holders, creating a positive feedback loop.

Massive airdrops, Phantom Wallet integration, and self-financing operations attract and retain users.

One year after the launch of its Layer 1 (L1) mainnet, Hyperliquid has become one of the leading perpetual contract platforms in the decentralized finance (DeFi) space, with a trading volume of approximately $319 billion in July 2025. Notably, the core team consists of only 11 members.

Hyperliquid is a decentralized perpetual contract exchange based on a custom Layer 1 blockchain.

Its chain is divided into two closely connected cores: HyperCore is responsible for the on-chain order book, margin, clearing, and settlement; HyperEVM serves as a general-purpose smart contract layer that interacts directly with the exchange state.

Both are secured by HyperBFT (a proof-of-stake consensus mechanism based on the HotStuff paradigm), ensuring a single transaction order without relying on off-chain systems. HyperEVM went live on the mainnet on February 18, 2025, introducing programmability to the core of the exchange.

Did you know? Hyperliquid achieved a median trade latency of just 0.2 seconds (with 99th percentile latency below 0.9 seconds), processing up to 200,000 trades per second, rivaling centralized exchanges.

According to DefiLlama data, July became Hyperliquid's strongest month to date, with the platform's perpetual contract trading volume reaching approximately $319 billion, driving the total DeFi perpetual contract volume to a new high of $487 billion, a 34% increase from June.

Media reports indicate that industry trackers also released total data including spot trading, amounting to $330.8 billion, meaning Hyperliquid briefly surpassed Robinhood.

Robinhood's July data included: $209.1 billion in nominal stock trading volume, $16.8 billion in cryptocurrency trading volume, and $11.9 billion from its subsidiary Bitstamp, totaling approximately $237.8 billion.

Multiple media outlets pointed out that July marked the third consecutive month that Hyperliquid led in trading volume over Robinhood, which is particularly remarkable for a team of only 11 people. Moreover, these are monthly figures, not cumulative totals, indicating the platform's sustained high-frequency activity rather than sporadic spikes.

Hyperliquid's scale benefits from a finely split state machine under a single consensus.

HyperCore serves as the trading engine, implementing centralized limit order books, margin calculations, matching, and clearing all on-chain. The official documentation emphasizes that the platform avoids off-chain order books. The order book for each asset exists as chain state, using price-time priority matching.

HyperEVM is an Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) compatible environment on the same chain. By sharing consensus and data availability with HyperCore, applications can be built directly around the exchange without leaving L1.

Both components rely on HyperBFT, a proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus mechanism based on the HotStuff paradigm, which ensures the uniformity of all transaction orders within the system. This design aims to ensure that asset custody and trade execution are fully on-chain, achieving low-latency finality.

This architecture differs from traditional decentralized exchange (DEX) models, such as automated market makers (AMMs) that rely on liquidity pools or hybrid order book DEXs that use on-chain orders and off-chain matching.

Hyperliquid runs all core trading logic (order book, matching, margin, and clearing) on-chain while supporting native integration of EVM applications.

Hyperliquid intentionally maintains a lean organizational design.

Founder Jeff Yan stated that the core team consists of about 11 people, with hiring being highly selective to ensure team efficiency and cultural consistency. The project emphasizes maintaining a small team and efficient collaboration rather than blindly pursuing rapid expansion.

The project is fully self-financed and has not brought in venture capital. Yan believes this helps align ownership with user interests, avoiding the influence of investor timelines. This also explains why the platform has not chosen to list on mainstream centralized exchanges—its focus remains on technology and community adoption.

The execution process is highly feedback-oriented. For example, an API outage on July 29 caused a 37-minute halt in order execution, and the team compensated affected users with $1.99 million the next day. For a DeFi platform, this quick response demonstrates the platform's commitment to its users.

The founder stated that hiring the wrong person is more detrimental than not hiring at all.

Careful hiring, self-financing, and efficient event management collectively support the small team in managing operations at the pace of a centralized exchange while ensuring that asset custody and trade execution are fully on-chain.

The protocol mechanism tightly binds trader behavior with liquidity provision.

HLP is the treasury managed by the protocol, responsible for market making and clearing on HyperCore. Anyone can deposit funds and share in the treasury's profits and a portion of trading fees. Through an open and transparently regulated market maker infrastructure, HLP reduces reliance on traditional bilateral market-making agreements.

According to DefiLlama data, 93% of protocol fees flow to the Assistance Fund for the buyback and destruction of HYPE tokens, with the remaining 7% belonging to HLP. This creates a positive feedback mechanism: increased trading volume leads to larger buybacks, reducing token supply while supporting the treasury.

Hyperliquid's perpetual contract funding fee is purely peer-to-peer, with no protocol cut, paid hourly, with a maximum of 4% per hour.

The fee structure consists of a fixed interest rate (0.01% every 8 hours, prorated hourly) and a floating premium derived from the spot prices of centralized exchanges aggregated by oracles.

This structure helps maintain the linkage between perpetual contract prices and the spot market. Additionally, both buyers and sellers must pay the funding fee, sharing the risk, and the protocol does not promise fixed returns.

Hyperliquid's token distribution is highly user-centric.

On November 29, 2024, the project launched the HYPE genesis airdrop, distributing approximately 310 million tokens to early participants. This event coincided with the token's launch, reinforcing the community-first strategy. Hyperliquid (HYPE) is used for HyperBFT staking and on-chain fee payments.

Analysts and media have pointed out that the integration of Phantom Wallet with Hyperliquid's perpetual contracts has significantly increased capital flow and user adoption.

According to a July report by VanEck, the Phantom launch brought in $2.66 billion in trading volume, $1.3 million in fees, and approximately 20,900 new users. Other reports indicate that routing trading volume reached $1.8 billion within the first 16 days.

On the product side, HyperEVM went live on February 18, 2025, supporting general smart contracts, facilitating integration of wallets, treasuries, and token listing processes around the exchange. This flexibility attracts external developers to join the ecosystem, continuously driving new market launches.

Did you know? The Hyperliquid genesis airdrop distributed approximately $1.6 billion worth of HYPE to 90,000 users, accounting for about 31% of the total supply. At peak prices, the average airdrop value per user exceeded $100,000.

At the beginning of 2025, researchers and validator nodes raised concerns about validator transparency and centralization risks. The team has acknowledged these issues and plans to open-source the code after enhancing security while expanding validator participation.

Hyperliquid poses concentration challenges in the decentralized perpetual contract market share (typically estimated at 75%-80%). Commentators have noted the clear advantages of network effects but also warn that once liquidity shifts or shocks occur, the systemic risks of a single platform cannot be ignored.

On July 29, an API outage lasted 37 minutes, causing trading to pause. Hyperliquid compensated users with approximately $2 million the next day. While the quick refunds improved the platform's reputation for responsiveness, the incident also exposed the risks faced by leveraged traders during downtime.

Observers have noted that how the protocol treasury allocates funds off-chain or cross-chain, as well as the design of the buyback mechanism, often draws attention. These areas remain operational risks that Hyperliquid needs to address during its expansion.

Did you know? Hyperliquid relies on price oracles maintained by validator nodes. If the oracle is manipulated, it could trigger premature or erroneous liquidations. To mitigate this, Hyperliquid limits the size of open positions and prevents orders from deviating from the oracle by more than 1%, but the HLP treasury is not subject to this restriction.

Four key factors explain Hyperliquid's rapid growth.

First, the execution-first chain design: HyperCore handles on-chain matching and margin, while HyperEVM provides composability, both unified under HyperBFT consensus, achieving near-centralized exchange low latency while ensuring asset custody and state are fully on-chain.

Second, through the Assistance Fund fee buyback and open HLP treasury, the incentive mechanism creates a self-reinforcing liquidity loop with trading volume expansion.

Third, the lean core team (about 11 people) reduces management burdens and enhances product iteration speed.

Fourth, distribution advantages (such as Phantom Wallet integration) lower the entry barrier for users, expanding influence in the favorable cycle of the on-chain derivatives market.

For observers focused on long-term sustainability, the following points are worth noting:

• Whether the decentralization of validator nodes and the progress of open-sourcing the code advance as promised.
• The speed of development around the spot market, centralized limit order books, and third-party applications related to HyperEVM.
• Whether revenue and trading volume can maintain resilience as competitors adopt similar models.

Related: From 55% to 20%? How Japan plans to revise its cryptocurrency tax rules.

Original article: “How a team of just 11 achieved a monthly trading volume of $330 billion? Hyperliquid creates a DeFi efficiency miracle”

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