Recently, a highly anticipated stablecoin competition took place on the decentralized derivatives trading platform Hyperliquid. On September 5, the official announcement of the upcoming Ticker auction for the native stablecoin USDH instantly ignited the market. Several institutions, including Paxos, Ethena, Frax, Agora, and Native Markets, submitted proposals to compete for the issuance rights of USDH. As a leading player in the popular perp DEX sector, Hyperliquid has become a strategic opportunity that institutions feel they must enter, even if it means "not making money." Currently, Native Markets is leading with a 97% advantage, almost securing victory.
Strategy of Native Markets
Native Markets' idea is that the reserves of USDH will be jointly managed by BlackRock (off-chain) and Superstate (on-chain), ensuring compliance while maintaining neutrality for the issuer. Its mechanism is unique: reserve interest is split in half—one half is used for HYPE buybacks through an Assistance Fund, while the other half is invested in ecological development, including the HIP-3 market and HyperEVM applications.
Users can mint or redeem USDH through Bridge, and more fiat deposit channels will be opened in the future. The core component of the protocol, CoreRouter, has completed auditing and is open-sourced, encouraging community participation in its development. Native Markets also promises that USDH will comply with U.S. GENIUS regulatory standards and inherit the global compliance qualifications and fiat channel capabilities of the issuer Bridge. Notably, Bridge was acquired by payment giant Stripe last year, and Native plans to leverage its network for deep integration of stablecoins and fiat currencies.
Although Native Markets is the least known among the current major bidders, it has become the most vocal player due to its team's long-term dedication to the Hyperliquid chain and the recruitment of several industry heavyweights (from Paradigm, Uniswap, etc.).
Related Reading: "The USDH Competition Begins, Everyone is Eyeing the Stablecoin + Hyperliquid Concept"
Founding Team
Over the past year, Max has been deeply involved in the Hyperliquid ecosystem, driving nearly $2.5 billion in HyperEVM locked volume and $15 billion in HyperCore trading volume as an investor and advisor. He previously worked on product and strategy at Liquity and Barnbridge, focusing on stablecoins and fixed-rate instruments. Additionally, as the community leader of Hyperion, he led the establishment of the Hyperliquid DAT public company.
Mary-Catherine Lader served as President and COO of Uniswap Labs (2021–2025) and has been promoting BlackRock's involvement in digital assets since 2015. As a Managing Director at Goldman Sachs, she invested in fintech businesses and is now ready to guide the development of USDH and Hyperliquid in the post-GENIUS era.
Anish is a blockchain researcher and software engineer with over a decade of experience. He was the first employee at Ritual, briefly served as the youngest researcher at Paradigm, and worked as a proprietary DeFi trader at Polychain. Additionally, he has made long-term contributions and impacts in the open-source space for MEV and DeFi tools.
Community Controversy
Of course, there are many doubts regarding this community vote. Haseeb Qureshi, the Executive Partner at the well-known VC Dragonfly, wrote on Tuesday that he "begins to feel that the USDH RFP is a bit ridiculous," claiming that validators seem unwilling to seriously consider any teams outside of Native Markets.
He added that Native Markets' bid appeared almost immediately after the request for proposals was released, "which means they were notified in advance," while other bidders were busy preparing their bid documents. He stated that although more established participants like Paxos, Ethena, and Agora presented stronger proposals, the process seemed "tailored for Native Markets."
However, Nansen CEO @ASvanevik denied this speculation in a post, stating that as one of the largest validator node operators for Hyperliquid, they and the @hypurr_co team invested significant effort in reviewing proposals and communicating with bidders, aiming to find the optimal stablecoin solution. They ultimately chose to support Native Markets.
After seeing the trend, Ethena Labs announced its withdrawal from the USDH bidding, stating that while some questioned the credibility of Native Markets, they believed that their success perfectly reflected the characteristics of Hyperliquid and its community: it is a fair arena where emerging participants can win community support and have a fair chance of success.
KOL Crypto Veda @thecryptoskanda stated that Native Market's selection was inevitable, as the core of the trading platform's token pricing is something other teams cannot provide to meet Hyperliquid's most obvious needs.
On the Hyperliquid chain, the accumulation of dollar liquidity has long relied on external stablecoins like USDC, with a circulation scale that once reached approximately $5.7 billion, accounting for 7.8% of USDC's total issuance. The Hyperliquid team's choice effectively means they are directly transferring potential interest earnings of up to hundreds of millions of dollars per year to the community.
For this reason, the issuance rights of USDH are not only about a massive market share but also about who can control this substantial potential revenue. In the case of Hyperliquid, we see that stablecoin issuers are willing to relinquish almost all profits just to gain distribution opportunities in the scenario—something that was nearly unimaginable in the past. It is foreseeable that once USDH is successfully launched and the positive cycle logic of "returning profits to the community, value reinvesting in the ecosystem" is established, other trading platforms or public chains will inevitably follow suit, leading to significant changes in the industry's stablecoin strategies. At that time, the "Stablecoin 2.0 Era" may truly begin.
免责声明：本文章仅代表作者个人观点，不代表本平台的立场和观点。本文章仅供信息分享，不构成对任何人的任何投资建议。用户与作者之间的任何争议，与本平台无关。如网页中刊载的文章或图片涉及侵权，请提供相关的权利证明和身份证明发送邮件到support@aicoin.com，本平台相关工作人员将会进行核查。
