Why I'm so bullish on Hyperliquid ecosystem protocols
For those of you who have followed me for a while, you will notice that I dedicate almost all my capital and attention to farming Hyperliquid ecosystem protocols. In particular, I have focused on farming Unit, Felix, Hyperlend, and HypurrFi. Why am I so concentrated on this ecosystem and these protocols?
The current state of ecosystem protocols
Currently, most ecosystem protocols are very similar to what we have on other chains. We have vanilla lending markets (Hyperlend, Felix, HypurrFi), CDPs (Felix, HypurrFi, Keiko), and DEXes (Hyperswap, Kittenswap, Valantis, Laminar). These protocols have a combined TVL of around 900 million, putting it on par with Berachain and Sonic in TVL.
The ecosystem has had explosive growth since early April, and I believe that it would reach the top 5 chains by TVL even if the HyperEVM did not receive any upgrades from today onwards. However, there is a key component of Hyperliquid that I think is necessary for it to flip Solana and even Ethereum in TVL.
The power of precompiles
Precompiles allow HyperEVM to read and write to HyperCore (which includes staking, perp and spot orderbooks, etc), meaning dapps built on HyperEVM can seamlessly access liquidity on HyperCore. This allows for apps to add features which are simply impossible to build anywhere else, such as:
• Lending markets that liquidate directly into the spot order book
- Lending markets where the protocol automatically hedges borrower collateral using perps if prices move too much (self-liquidating loans).
- Lending markets that offer higher LTV ratios through hedging exposure to the users’ collateral.
• Options and exotic derivatives
- Automatic hedging for options to offer deeper liquidity tapping into the perps order book.
- More complex financial products (e.g., covered calls, straddles).
• Yield protocols that automate trading strategies
- Create vaults that dynamically hedge or long/short perp contracts based on market data fetched live.
• A tokenized HLP vault (which could be used as collateral and looped)
This is going to be a very long thread explaining why I am so bullish long-term on Hyperliquid, the Hyperliquid ecosystem and $HYPE, including some points which people might easily overlook.
1. The Perp DEX
Hyperliquid has proven to be the only perp dex that can compete with CEX volumes and OI, and it completely dominates all other perp dexes in market share. We can attribute this dominance to a few main reasons:
- Best in class liquidity and execution. Other perp dexes struggle with illiquid orderbooks, limited asset selection, lack of advanced order types and occasional latency issues. Hyperliquid experienced these issues in its early stages, but managed to fix them quickly and has dominated ever since.
- Low fees relative to CEXes. Hyperliquid has the lowest fees (0.035% maker and 0.01% taker, decreases with more volume) for futures trading compared to all the major CEXes.
- Organic growth instead of mercenary capital. Hyperliquid usage actually rose after $HYPE TGE, in contrast with other perp dexes with metrics that fall off a cliff after they TGE.
2. The Assistance Fund
Almost all trading fees from Hyperliquid go to the Assistance Fund (the rest go to HLP), which is used to buy $HYPE on the open market. The AF currently holds 5.2% of the circulating supply.
This allows revenue from the exchange to accrue directly to $HYPE holders. Almost all crypto projects have zero value accrual to the token (no one is buying tokens for governance purposes), but the Assistance Fund provides a floor for $HYPE by being a price-insensitive buyer.
We can construct valuation models for $HYPE based on this revenue which actually look undervalued by tradfi big tech standards - refer to this excellent post by @keisancrypto: x.com/Keisan_Crypto/…