Author: Nancy, PANews

The narrative of on-chain finance is rapidly moving towards the global market.

In less than a week, several mainstream media outlets have focused on Hyperliquid. This Perp DEX, which previously focused on crypto derivatives, is experiencing its "moment of breakout," with decentralized pricing power becoming the focal point of discussions on Wall Street. However, as on-chain trading volumes continue to expand, balancing decentralized innovation with regulatory compliance has also become an unavoidable challenge.

HIP-3 Invades Mainstream Finance, Hyperliquid is a Whale Paradise

As a leader in Perp DEX, Hyperliquid is continuously widening the gap with its competitors and gradually becoming a new infrastructure force in the mainstream financial market.

According to data from DeFiLlama, as of March 16, Hyperliquid's monthly trading volume reached $173.42 billion, far exceeding similar platforms.

RWA (Real World Asset) trading has recently become an important growth driver for Hyperliquid. Data from the platform shows that in just the past 24 hours, its perpetual contract trading volume reached $5.4 billion, with the HIP-3 sector contributing about 21.3% (approximately $1.15 billion).

HIP-3 deploys perpetual futures markets for various assets including commodities and stock indices. Among these traditional assets on HIP-3, the demand and activity for WTI crude oil, silver, Brent crude oil, and XYZ100 are particularly significant, with the daily trading volume of WTI crude oil accounting for over 35% of the total.

The rapid expansion of trading scale is underpinned by a large influx of whale players into Hyperliquid, with its global user base exceeding 1.729 million. Further analysis from Hyperliquid's ecosystem data analytics service, Hyperliquid Hub, indicates that Hyperliquid's total trading volume has reached an astonishing $41.1 trillion, with just the top 100 addresses contributing over $33.4 trillion, accounting for 81.3% of the total trading volume, while the top 200 addresses nearly account for 98.81%, and the remaining addresses only contribute about 1.19%.

It is evident that Hyperliquid is not a playground for retail investors but dominated by a small number of financially strong and extremely active traders, such as institutions, whales, high-frequency traders, and professional market makers.

Furthermore, the number of independent traders on HIP-3 has surpassed 1.85 million (Note: the same wallet connected on different dates will be counted as two wallets), with over 810,000 new traders in the past month, further confirming the trading demand for tokenized assets.

The recent significant growth of HIP-3's business is directly linked to the conflict between the US and Iran, making Hyperliquid a new hub for global macro trading. Mainstream media such as Bloomberg, Wall Street Journal, and Fortune have recently reported that Hyperliquid's crude oil contracts serve as a direct price reference and pointed out that before the CME (Chicago Mercantile Exchange) opened on Monday, Hyperliquid had completed price discovery over the weekend, becoming a real-time window for global macro assets.

By capturing the pricing power of TradFi, the liquidity vacuum, and the demand for macro hedging, Hyperliquid has begun its true "invasion" of the mainstream financial market.

Bitwise Chief Investment Officer Matt Hougan also stated that the US-Iran situation has made the ever-open crypto market a focal point. In the past, if a major geopolitical shock occurred on a Sunday morning, investors would usually wait until the US futures market opened at 6 PM (Eastern Time) on Sunday to gauge its impact. Now, they can directly turn to an around-the-clock on-chain trading platform to complete transactions in real time. The shift of the financial industry to on-chain is an irreversible trend, like a ball rolling down a hill, unstoppable and faster than anticipated. However, participating in the on-chain market still has its thresholds, including familiarity with wallets, stablecoins, and the operation of platforms like Hyperliquid and Uniswap.

In response to this rapidly developing trend of on-chain finance, traditional financial players such as Nasdaq and CME are also beginning to lay out tokenized trading operations to seize future market opportunities.

Crypto Perpetual Futures May Launch in the US Next Month, Hyperliquid Faces Compliance Challenges

Since last year, the Perp DEX market has seen a significant explosion of liquidity.

A recent report from CoinGecko indicated that in 2025, DEX perpetual contracts are expected to skyrocket to $6.7 trillion, an approximately 346% increase from the previous year, while CEX positions during the same period decreased by 20.8%. This trend is underpinned by the rise of perpetual DEXs like Hyperliquid and Lighter, reflecting that capital is migrating en masse from CEX to DEX.

The gradually clarifying regulatory environment is further amplifying the development space for the perpetual contract market, making more mainstream capital willing to enter this field. Recently, Mike Selig, Chairman of the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), discussed the regulatory progress regarding crypto perpetual futures and prediction markets in a public speech. He stated that the CFTC is working to launch real perpetual futures in the US and expects to announce relevant policies in about a month to attract liquidity back to the US while providing better protection for investors. Selig also pointed out that in the past, due to regulatory uncertainty, a large amount of liquidity flowed overseas, and the CFTC is collaborating with SEC Chair Paul Atkins to promote Project Crypto to coordinate digital asset regulatory reforms.

However, the clarification of regulations may also lead to another outcome. If compliance requirements disrupt the unlicensed and intermediary-free on-chain trading pathways, the core appeal of Perp DEX may be significantly undermined and face direct competition from compliance-focused crypto platforms and traditional financial institutions.

In fact, for many users, in addition to factors like incentive mechanisms, self-custody requirements, capital efficiency, and hedging needs, not requiring KYC is also a significant reason for funds to enter on-chain trading.

For example, on-chain analyst Eye previously mentioned that some institutional trading parties active on Hyperliquid showed noticeable discomfort when their on-chain trading wallets were identified, and even proactively contacted analysts to pressure them to stop making public information, often related to concerns that their losing trades might be disclosed to the outside world.

If Hyperliquid hopes to be regarded as a legitimate participant in the new financial system, it may have to accept and comply with relevant regulatory rules. Especially considering the background of previous controversies involving token manipulation, insider trading, etc., its compliance pressure may further increase.

To address regulatory challenges, Hyperliquid officially established the Hyperliquid Policy Center in Washington, DC, in February of this year, with veteran crypto lawyer Jake Chervinsky serving as its first CEO. The center aims to create a legal pathway for the wide adoption of DeFi in the US, helping Congress and federal agencies understand the underlying technology of DeFi and providing professional support for regulatory rule-making.

Chervinsky stated that the current regulatory framework was formed in the "analog era," making it difficult to cover new trading forms like decentralized protocols. One of the primary tasks of the policy center is to devise a legal framework for perpetual contracts. To support its operations, the Hyperliquid-associated foundation has donated 1 million native platform tokens (HYPE, currently valued at about $28 million) to help the center function.

Hyperliquid co-founder Jeff Yan emphasized in a recent interview that he hopes the platform will "always be used" and will not quickly fade away with changes in market popularity. At the same time, he distinguishes Hyperliquid Labs from the Hyperliquid platform and ecosystem, committing to make Hyperliquid a financially neutral platform that provides sustainable infrastructure for on-chain perpetual contracts and decentralized finance development.

As DeFi tries to challenge traditional finance, compliance has become a prerequisite for accessing larger markets. This is not only a test for Hyperliquid but also a reality that other DEXs and the entire DeFi sector must face.

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