#我的Gate交易时刻 Why is only HYPE able to break out of an independent market trend?

—— From early black fans to a cognitive reversal in layout
During the entire crypto market's volatile downward phase, most tokens weakened simultaneously, only HYPE maintained a continuous upward channel. Here are several core issues worth everyone’s careful reflection: With dozens of perpetual contract DEXs in the same track, why does Hyperliquid continue to capture traffic and funds, while dYdX, GMX, Aevo cannot catch up?
Most tokens' market performance entirely depends on overall market sentiment. Why can HYPE stand out with an independent trend, still supported by sustained buying during bear markets and pullbacks?
Over 99% of projects rely on venture capital funding at the start, but Hyperliquid has zero external financing and yet has established an industry monopoly. Why can’t this model be replicated?
Traditional exchanges and on-chain DEXs are competing for traders, so why are institutional funds and traditional commodities traders actively shifting toward Hyperliquid?
If in the future the US dollar credit weakens, AI fully takes over production, and traditional purple-chip yields continue to decline, which assets in the crypto market truly have long-term holding value?
This article does not make price predictions, nor give buy or sell advice. It objectively dissects the core differentiation of Hyperliquid based on publicly available on-chain data, protocol rules, industry landscape, and team’s underlying logic. It clarifies the essential differences between it and all projects in the entire sector. All conclusions are based on verifiable industry data, without subjective speculation.
1. My cognitive reversal: From black fan to layout of HYPE in Q1 2026
1.1 Core reasons for initial skepticism of Hyperliquid
When I first encountered Hyperliquid in early 2024, I had no positive expectations for this project. My judgment criteria were simple:
Serious homogeneity in the sector: Dozens of perpetual contract DEXs derived from Arbitrum ecosystem, with highly overlapping product frameworks, showing no clear differentiation or competitive edge;
Controversy over centralization: Node code not open source, platform front-end has address banning mechanisms. I personally experienced wallet addresses being restricted from access without clear violations, and the official did not provide a reasonable explanation;
Peer doubts: At that time, colleagues working with risk funds all believed in Hyperliquid. I couldn’t understand this logic and always thought it was just a short-term hype project.
1.2 Post-TGE market performance forced me to revisit and thoroughly overturn my original judgment
After the HYPE token issuance, the price surged far beyond market expectations. The stark contrast prompted me to conduct a comprehensive multi-month investigation, analyzing protocol revenue, token economics, technical architecture, user structure, and team governance across five dimensions.
Coupled with macro-level purple-chip configuration logic deduction, I completed my first HYPE position layout in Q1 2026.
This experience made me realize: judging a crypto project cannot rely solely on superficial product features. The core determinants of a project’s lifecycle are the underlying fund circulation, profit distribution, and long-term expansion boundaries.
2. Macro screening: In multiple extreme scenarios, HYPE is one of the few crypto assets with long-term allocation value
2.1 Three major extreme macro assumptions to select qualified assets
In January 2026, the market was filled with discussions about AI tools and computing hardware. Based on acquired knowledge, I proposed three long-term macro assumptions to select cross-cycle hedging assets:
Assumption 1: AI fully replaces human labor, greatly reducing the scarcity of physical goods and ordinary digital purple-chips;
Assumption 2: The US dollar’s global reserve status continues to weaken, causing long-term depreciation of fiat currency purple-chips;
Assumption 3: Both scenarios occur simultaneously.
Based on these three assumptions, I eliminated categories one by one: long-term demand decline for ordinary commodities, high costs of storing and circulating most precious metals, high entry barriers and information asymmetry in stock markets. The remaining sectors that ordinary people can deeply research are only cryptocurrencies, scarce industrial metals, and gold.
Therefore, from the top 100 crypto market cap tokens, I further filtered out projects that only have staking and governance functions without sustainable real cash flow. The remaining five assets are: BTC, ETH, SOL, BNB, HYPE.
2.2 Eliminating other assets one by one to clarify HYPE’s irreplaceable positioning
Ethereum (ETH): Internal ideological rifts within the ecosystem. The foundation has long ignored core issues like transaction congestion and high fees, relying on the “trustworthy settlement layer” narrative to avoid practical usage flaws. The token has no stable cash flow support;
BNB: Has a stable buyback and burn mechanism, solid fundamentals, but relies on Chinese-language channels for complete ecosystem rules and internal information barriers, making it hard for overseas investors to fully grasp the ecosystem logic;
SOL: Active developer community, but long-term inflation rate is high, long-term functional positioning is vague, and lacks stable protocol cash flow;
BTC: The fundamental value cornerstone of the crypto market, no need for further explanation, suitable as a bottom-layer holding asset;
HYPE: The only derivative token in the sector that simultaneously possesses all four attributes: comprehensive financial trading scenarios, ongoing protocol cash flow, no external capital selling pressure, and expansion into traditional financial markets.
3. Core underlying advantage: Zero VC financing structure, thoroughly solving the industry’s biggest selling pressure problem
3.1 Not accepting external investment is Hyperliquid’s most correct strategic choice
Hyperliquid has never accepted any venture capital funding. Founder Jeff’s prior entrepreneurial experience and personal funds support the project’s full development. This model offers four decisive advantages:
Full autonomous decision-making: No need to negotiate product routes, token issuance, or ecosystem planning with external investors. No prior disclosure of project plans to capital. R&D, launch, and iteration are entirely independent;
No short-term capital realization pressure: Most VC-backed projects aim for quick exits, forcing teams to pre-mint tokens, switch ecosystems, or adjust product pace prematurely;
No large unlock sell-offs: Mainstream VC projects reserve large amounts of team and institutional shares. After token unlocks, these institutions often publish long-term bullish reports while dumping tokens in secondary markets—similar situations occurred with Celestia and several public chains;
Aligned interests with ordinary users: Protocol fee revenues directly go into token buybacks, avoiding profit-sharing with a separate capital interest layer.
3.2 Most competitors cannot replicate this model
Most project founders lack large pre-asset accumulation, relying on external financing to start development. Many entrepreneurs lack Jeff’s practical experience in trading sectors and risk tolerance, requiring VC industry resources and operational guidance. Capital has become the industry’s standard startup tool. Projects without external funding face high technical, capital, and cognitive barriers, making replication extremely difficult.
3.3 Comparing VC token economics, HYPE’s value cycle logic is entirely different
Conventional VC:
Support for exchange/public chain incentives conflicts: Institutional holders possess large amounts of low-cost tokens, which they sell immediately upon unlock, leading to a zero-sum game of “who sells first profits first.”
HYPE: No private investor shares. About 97% of trading fees are automatically allocated to an aid fund, continuously used to buy back tokens. The capital flow is: trader fees → protocol buyback → supporting token circulation value. All profits cycle within platform users, community, and team, with no third-party capital profit sharing.
As of late May 2026, Hyperliquid’s total funds used for HYPE buybacks exceeded $1.16 billion. In 2025, protocol revenue was about $800 million, with buyback funds accounting for nearly 46% of the entire crypto industry’s protocol buyback total.
4. Product expansion barriers: unlimited expansion of trading categories, connecting crypto and traditional financial markets
4.1 Current product layout has already broken through the native crypto user circle
Initially, Hyperliquid only launched crypto perpetual contracts and binary prediction markets. Using HIP-3 proposals, it added traditional financial assets. Currently, most trading volume comes from precious metals, crude oil, and S&P 500, not cryptocurrencies, successfully attracting traditional secondary market traders.
In the crypto sector, past options projects like Hegic, Ribbon Finance, Lyra have all failed to sustain liquidity long-term: Hegic, Ribbon, Lyra have shrunk; Aevo’s order book relies on off-chain matching, with transparency issues, lacking long-term competitiveness.
4.2 Standardized options landing will further widen industry gaps
Plain call and put options are not yet officially launched but are the next core growth point. Once implemented, they will bring two layers of incremental growth:
Existing crypto traders: migrating from centralized exchanges like Binance and Bybit, with on-chain custody, low fees, 24/7 trading, no regional restrictions, and superior capital efficiency;
Traditional US stock and commodities traders: Nasdaq plans to offer only five-day trading, while Hyperliquid supports 7×24 hours, lower margin costs, no custody risk, fully on-chain auditability, plus HyperEVM for composable underlying assets, enabling complex trading strategies impossible in traditional exchanges.
4.3 Long-term product roadmap aims to mirror full-category centralized exchanges
Growth path: spot → perpetual → options → wealth management → diversified assets. Hyperliquid replicates this expansion logic but adopts a decentralized underlying architecture.
Focusing solely on perpetual DEXs, competitors are other similar DEXs; covering stocks, commodities, options, prediction markets across all financial tools, directly competing with top global centralized exchanges, elevating the sector’s competitive dimension.
5. Technical core barrier: full on-chain order book, achieving CEX experience + DeFi security
5.1 Self-developed dual-layer architecture, solving two major long-term DEX pain points
The underlying system is divided into HyperCore and HyperEVM engines:
HyperCore: On-chain complete limit order book matching system, sub-second transaction confirmation, matching performance and order depth comparable to top CEXs, solving traditional DEX issues like lag and high slippage;
HyperEVM: Compatible with Ethereum Virtual Machine, supporting developers to build lending, structured finance, purple-chip issuance tools, balancing high performance and composability.
Post FTX collapse, traders widely recognize the value of self-custody. Past DEXs’ flaws were speed and liquidity. Hyperliquid’s improvements directly divert core traffic from centralized exchanges.
Data evidence: Hyperliquid’s perpetual contract trading volume ratio to Binance increased from 8% early on to 13.6%, accounting for over 70% of perpetual DEX trading volume, with daily active users holding 90% of the entire sector’s share, forming an irreversible network effect.
5.2 Differentiation advantage over AMM-based DEXs
AMM DEXs like GMX rely on liquidity pools, unable to support large institutional orders or high-frequency quant strategies. Hyperliquid’s on-chain order book supports professional market makers and quant teams, with continuously deepening order depth and ongoing institutional capital accumulation, further amplifying liquidity advantages.
6. Team operation’s underlying logic: rejecting money-burning marketing, relying on product reputation
6.1 Industry ecosystem subsidy narrative is a short-term bubble—most public chains and DEXs rely on investor funds to subsidize developers. After subsidies end, developers often exit en masse. Chains like Blast, Berachain, zkSync have seen rapid ecosystem decline. Hyperliquid does not run ads or offer ecosystem subsidies, setting market entry thresholds to filter out low-quality projects and “wool” teams, reducing platform noise.
6.2 Team management style aligns with long-term boutique enterprise management, not copying internet giants. More like Telegram or Rockstar Games, focusing on core product iteration without dispersing resources chasing short-term hype. This operational logic matches my research institution’s approach: high-quality products spread naturally through user word-of-mouth, without continuous paid marketing. Short-term hype cannot sustain long-term growth.
7. Valuation logic: Existing traditional and crypto valuation frameworks cannot fully measure HYPE’s value
7.1 Qualitative assessment by traditional financial institutions:
HYPE-related spot ETFs and institutional reports clearly state: Hyperliquid’s business model resembles traditional securities exchanges, but HYPE is not equity, has no dividends, and no corporate structure; unlike 99% of speculative tokens with no cash flow, the platform continuously generates real trading fees, with tokens linked to stable cash flow buyback mechanisms.
7.2 Flaws in current valuation systems:
Equity valuation models: not applicable—no corporate equity or dividend mechanism;
Public chain token valuation: not applicable—most lack stable cash flow, relying on inflationary issuance of staking rewards;
CEX platform tokens: only partially relevant—mainstream CEXs face custody risks and large sell-offs. Hyperliquid’s decentralized, zero-VC structure avoids these issues.
7.3 Long-term growth potential still early
In 2025, Hyperliquid’s annual trading revenue accounted for only 2% of the global crypto perpetual market. Compared to the trillions of dollars in traditional derivatives markets worldwide, its penetration is negligible.
As long as user growth maintains current momentum, there is no clear ceiling for long-term revenue, buyback scale, or token value appreciation.
8. Competitive barriers that are hard for rivals to surpass
Capital structure barrier: Zero VC, no unlock sell pressure, fully aligned with users, no industry replication conditions;
Cash flow barrier: 97% of fees continuously buy back tokens, forming long-term structural buy pressure, even in bear markets;
Technical architecture barrier: self-developed L1 on-chain order book, balancing CEX speed and DeFi transparency/self-custody;
Product expansion barrier: connecting all financial categories—crypto, stocks, commodities, options, prediction markets—broadening sector boundaries;
User network barrier: capturing 70% of perpetual DEX volume, 90% of daily active users, creating a positive liquidity cycle, making it hard for new platforms to divert existing traders;
Team strategic barrier: not chasing short-term hype, not burning money on subsidies, focusing long-term on financial infrastructure iteration.
9. Summary
From early black fan to layout in Q1 2026, my cognitive shift on Hyperliquid is entirely based on verifiable on-chain data, protocol rules, and sector landscape, not short-term market hype; under multiple macro risks, only a few assets in crypto have cross-cycle allocation logic.
HYPE stands out with stable cash flow, unique capital structure, and independent advantages—thoroughly avoiding common industry issues like large institutional sell pressure and short-term profit chasing.
Its on-chain order book tech and full-category financial expansion route divert both centralized and decentralized users, forming an exclusive network effect.
Current equity and crypto valuation models cannot accurately determine HYPE’s fair value range; it cannot be simply benchmarked against the broader market or similar DEXs.
This article only dissects the project’s underlying differentiation logic, without price predictions or trading advice. All market decisions should be made independently by individuals based on their risk tolerance.
Most of the crypto market’s tokens follow market trends, but HYPE can break out of an independent rally. The core support is not short-term speculation but the protocol’s ongoing real cash flow, expanding business boundaries, and highly aligned community interests. This is the fundamental reason everyone needs to fully understand Hyperliquid’s core.