GLC Research
19 January 2026

Hyperliquid Fundamentals Update: “10/10 Recovery, Momentum, and What’s Next”

Introduction

Hyperliquid was not spared during the liquidation cascade of October 10. It was a brutal event that impacted traders and market participants across the industry. In the aftermath, trading activity declined broadly, with lower volumes observed across both centralized exchanges and DEXs.

In this update, we take a closer look at where Hyperliquid stands today. We analyze its core metrics and assess how Hyperliquid has been recovering from the October 10 liquidation event.

–

As a reminder, GLC and Four Pillars have created the Hyperliquid Research Collective (HRC) with the goal of becoming the go-to research platform for everything related to Hyperliquid. We host dozens of articles, with many of the highest-quality Hyperliquid researchers and builders sharing their work on HRC.

If you want to learn more about Hyperliquid, you can explore the HRC website here.

Let’s dive in.

Hyperliquid’s Volume and Open Interest (7d average)

When analyzing Hyperliquid’s trading volume and open interest, it becomes clear that the October 10 liquidation event marked the start of the recent downtrend. That said, key metrics have since begun to recover.

Since October 10, 2025

  1. Volume: −44.3% (from $10.17B to $5.66B)
  2. Open Interest: −35.7% (from $14.75B to $9.48B)

Since December 1, 2025

  1. Volume: −3.2% (from $5.85B to $5.66B)
  2. Open Interest: +45.6% (from $6.51B to $9.48B)

Year-to-date

  1. Volume: +59.2% (from $3.56B to $5.66B)
  2. Open Interest: +24.7% (from $7.60B to $9.48B)

Overall, open interest has started recovering since the October 10 event. Trading volume, however, has not rebounded at the same pace. As a result, the Volume-to-OI ratio has declined from 0.90 on December 1 to 0.60 as of January 19. This divergence is likely driven by significantly lower market volatility, which naturally reduces trading activity.

That said, it remains a very positive signal that traders are once again opening large positions on Hyperliquid, and that volume has started to recover on a year-to-date basis. In our view, open interest is the most reliable indicator of trader confidence and long-term positioning, while volume is more influenced by broader market conditions.

Overall, metrics remain below pre-10/10 levels, as expected, but the recovery trend for Hyperliquid feels underway.

–

Our general view is that in 2025, Hyperliquid faced an exceptional level of adversity. The protocol had to navigate aggressive behavior from CEXs, large incentive programs from newly launched competitors (for instance, Lighter reportedly subsidized a single market maker by roughly $500k per day while generating only $100–150k in daily revenue), and an overall weak year for crypto assets performance. On top of that came the devastating October 10 liquidation event, which wiped out billions of dollars in positions in a single day.

Despite all of this, Hyperliquid has held up remarkably well, far more than most would have anticipated.

HIP-3 Volume and OI

One of the most exciting developments around Hyperliquid today is the emergence of equity and RWA perpetuals. Perpetual futures are arguably one of the most important financial innovations to come out of crypto, yet they have historically struggled to find strong product-market fit for real-world assets.

That said, Hyperliquid enters this space with several structural advantages: fully transparent order flow, a community-owned internal market maker, 24/7 markets, and a trading experience that can arguably be more efficient/easier than alternatives such as 0DTE options, which are widely used by retail.

While the road ahead for HIP-3 to achieve broad PMF beyond crypto-native users remains long, recent volume and open interest trends are encouraging:

  1. 7-day average volume is up more than 130% YTD, with XYZ accounting for roughly 80% of that volume.
  2. 7-day average open interest is up more than 60%, with XYZ holding approximately 83% of total HIP-3 OI.

As the first HIP-3 deployer, XYZ has been the primary driver of adoption so far, which is not surprising. Shoku and his team have executed at a very high level since launching spot trading on Hyperliquid through Unit. Markets such as Nasdaq, Gold, and Silver now offer deep liquidity, tight spreads, and have become reliable venues for onchain traders.

Other deployers are beginning to differentiate themselves as well. Felix, and more recently Markets, use USDH, Hyperliquid’s native stablecoin, as the quote asset and have seen early traction. HyENA, developed by Ethena, differentiates itself by using USDe as margin, allowing collateral to remain productive by earning yield. Ventuals, meanwhile, is focusing on pre-IPO companies and more exotic offerings such as Mag7-style baskets.

–

Overall, HIP-3 is showing early signs of success. It is steadily increasing its share of Hyperliquid’s total volume and open interest and presents a compelling pathway to expanding Hyperliquid’s user base beyond purely crypto-native traders.

Hyperliquid’s Market Share

Open Interest vs. CEX

What’s more encouraging is that Hyperliquid has recently started to regain market share from CEXs. At the time of writing, Hyperliquid’s open interest represents around 14.6% of Binance’s, and it is gaining even more momentum relative to Bybit and OKX.

Volume vs. CEX

As reflected in the volume-to-OI ratio, trading volumes are not yet recovering at the same pace. That said, Hyperliquid is also regaining market share from CEXs.

If/when broader market momentum returns, we expect Hyperliquid to capture additional share. Once again, we view OI as the most meaningful metric for assessing Hyperliquid’s relative strength versus centralized exchanges.

Portfolio Margin is game-changer

One of the most overlooked aspects of Hyperliquid so far is BLP and portfolio margin.

Portfolio margin is currently live on testnet and will allow traders to borrow and lend against their collateral. This unlocks a wide range of new use cases for traders and market participants. Liminal recently shared an article outlining how portfolio margin will be a game changer for their strategies, and this is only one example among many.

The bottom line is that portfolio margin should increase overall trading volume once deployed. Historically, this type of upgrade has been a growth catalyst for exchanges.

Bybit provides a clear case study. After introducing unified margin, Bybit gained roughly 3% market share from Binance over the following year. Applied to Hyperliquid, this would translate to roughly a 30% increase in volume, ceteris paribus.

Hyperliquid’s Revenue EMA

Revenue has taken a hit recently, as it is directly tied to trading volume, at least relative to prior highs. That said, Hyperliquid remains the top free-cash-flow–generating blockchain in the industry.

Based on 7-day, 30-day, and 60-day average revenue, Hyperliquid is currently generating approximately $520M to $620M in annualized FCF, with 99% of it used to buyback $HYPE.

Even when accounting for unlocks, the token continues to trade at attractive levels relative to current fundamentals. On a forward-looking P/E basis, it appears even cheaper.

Of course, there is no free lunch. Meaningful upside comes with uncertainties and risks.

Hyperliquid’s Daily Users

Hyperliquid’s user base is both sticky and growing. The platform is on track to surpass 1 million cumulative users, with roughly 950k at the time of writing.

If RWA perpetuals continue to gain momentum, Hyperliquid could also attract a meaningful number of non-crypto-native users.

The ongoing CEX-to-DEX rotation shows no signs of slowing down. Trust in centralized exchanges has eroded, and Hyperliquid has emerged as a clear beneficiary of this shift. Day after day, it continues to bridge the CEX trading experience onchain.

Portfolio margin should further enhance the Hyperliquid experience and strengthen this competitive positioning.

Looking Forward

In 2025, Hyperliquid faced an exceptional level of adversity on all fronts, yet emerged stronger than most would have expected. Throughout this period, the team continued to innovate relentlessly, building for its users, its community, and its broader vision of housing all of finance onchain.

Core metrics are now gradually recovering. Several catalysts lie ahead, including equity perpetuals gaining further traction and expanding the user base beyond crypto-native participants, portfolio margin likely increasing market share, USDH continuing to gain share, and more.

Ultimately, performance will still be tied to broader market conditions. At some point, Bitcoin will need to catch up with metals to fully cement its role as digital gold.

That said, if improving market conditions are combined with the catalysts outlined above, and potentially another S3 season bringing in new traders, Hyperliquid could very well surprise the market once again.

–

GLC is admittedly biased and actively building on top of Hyperliquid through HRC, the Hyperliquid Research Collective, but we do our best to remain neutral and objective in our analysis.

You can already explore dozens of research pieces on Hyperliquid on the HRC website, with many more to come. If you’re interested, go check it out. It would mean a lot to us.

Hyperliquid.

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Our latest
articles

Hyperliquid Fundamentals Update: “10/10 Recovery, Momentum, and What’s Next”

Introduction

Hyperliquid was not spared during the liquidation cascade of October 10. It was a brutal event that impacted traders and market participants across the industry. In the aftermath, trading activity declined broadly, with lower volumes observed across both centralized exchanges and DEXs.

In this update, we take a closer look at where Hyperliquid stands today. We analyze its core metrics and assess how Hyperliquid has been recovering from the October 10 liquidation event.

–

As a reminder, GLC and Four Pillars have created the Hyperliquid Research Collective (HRC) with the goal of becoming the go-to research platform for everything related to Hyperliquid. We host dozens of articles, with many of the highest-quality Hyperliquid researchers and builders sharing their work on HRC.

If you want to learn more about Hyperliquid, you can explore the HRC website here.

Let’s dive in.

Hyperliquid’s Volume and Open Interest (7d average)

When analyzing Hyperliquid’s trading volume and open interest, it becomes clear that the October 10 liquidation event marked the start of the recent downtrend. That said, key metrics have since begun to recover.

Since October 10, 2025

  1. Volume: −44.3% (from $10.17B to $5.66B)
  2. Open Interest: −35.7% (from $14.75B to $9.48B)

Since December 1, 2025

  1. Volume: −3.2% (from $5.85B to $5.66B)
  2. Open Interest: +45.6% (from $6.51B to $9.48B)

Year-to-date

  1. Volume: +59.2% (from $3.56B to $5.66B)
  2. Open Interest: +24.7% (from $7.60B to $9.48B)

Overall, open interest has started recovering since the October 10 event. Trading volume, however, has not rebounded at the same pace. As a result, the Volume-to-OI ratio has declined from 0.90 on December 1 to 0.60 as of January 19. This divergence is likely driven by significantly lower market volatility, which naturally reduces trading activity.

That said, it remains a very positive signal that traders are once again opening large positions on Hyperliquid, and that volume has started to recover on a year-to-date basis. In our view, open interest is the most reliable indicator of trader confidence and long-term positioning, while volume is more influenced by broader market conditions.

Overall, metrics remain below pre-10/10 levels, as expected, but the recovery trend for Hyperliquid feels underway.

–

Our general view is that in 2025, Hyperliquid faced an exceptional level of adversity. The protocol had to navigate aggressive behavior from CEXs, large incentive programs from newly launched competitors (for instance, Lighter reportedly subsidized a single market maker by roughly $500k per day while generating only $100–150k in daily revenue), and an overall weak year for crypto assets performance. On top of that came the devastating October 10 liquidation event, which wiped out billions of dollars in positions in a single day.

Despite all of this, Hyperliquid has held up remarkably well, far more than most would have anticipated.

HIP-3 Volume and OI

One of the most exciting developments around Hyperliquid today is the emergence of equity and RWA perpetuals. Perpetual futures are arguably one of the most important financial innovations to come out of crypto, yet they have historically struggled to find strong product-market fit for real-world assets.

That said, Hyperliquid enters this space with several structural advantages: fully transparent order flow, a community-owned internal market maker, 24/7 markets, and a trading experience that can arguably be more efficient/easier than alternatives such as 0DTE options, which are widely used by retail.

While the road ahead for HIP-3 to achieve broad PMF beyond crypto-native users remains long, recent volume and open interest trends are encouraging:

  1. 7-day average volume is up more than 130% YTD, with XYZ accounting for roughly 80% of that volume.
  2. 7-day average open interest is up more than 60%, with XYZ holding approximately 83% of total HIP-3 OI.

As the first HIP-3 deployer, XYZ has been the primary driver of adoption so far, which is not surprising. Shoku and his team have executed at a very high level since launching spot trading on Hyperliquid through Unit. Markets such as Nasdaq, Gold, and Silver now offer deep liquidity, tight spreads, and have become reliable venues for onchain traders.

Other deployers are beginning to differentiate themselves as well. Felix, and more recently Markets, use USDH, Hyperliquid’s native stablecoin, as the quote asset and have seen early traction. HyENA, developed by Ethena, differentiates itself by using USDe as margin, allowing collateral to remain productive by earning yield. Ventuals, meanwhile, is focusing on pre-IPO companies and more exotic offerings such as Mag7-style baskets.

–

Overall, HIP-3 is showing early signs of success. It is steadily increasing its share of Hyperliquid’s total volume and open interest and presents a compelling pathway to expanding Hyperliquid’s user base beyond purely crypto-native traders.

Hyperliquid’s Market Share

Open Interest vs. CEX

What’s more encouraging is that Hyperliquid has recently started to regain market share from CEXs. At the time of writing, Hyperliquid’s open interest represents around 14.6% of Binance’s, and it is gaining even more momentum relative to Bybit and OKX.

Volume vs. CEX

As reflected in the volume-to-OI ratio, trading volumes are not yet recovering at the same pace. That said, Hyperliquid is also regaining market share from CEXs.

If/when broader market momentum returns, we expect Hyperliquid to capture additional share. Once again, we view OI as the most meaningful metric for assessing Hyperliquid’s relative strength versus centralized exchanges.

Portfolio Margin is game-changer

One of the most overlooked aspects of Hyperliquid so far is BLP and portfolio margin.

Portfolio margin is currently live on testnet and will allow traders to borrow and lend against their collateral. This unlocks a wide range of new use cases for traders and market participants. Liminal recently shared an article outlining how portfolio margin will be a game changer for their strategies, and this is only one example among many.

The bottom line is that portfolio margin should increase overall trading volume once deployed. Historically, this type of upgrade has been a growth catalyst for exchanges.

Bybit provides a clear case study. After introducing unified margin, Bybit gained roughly 3% market share from Binance over the following year. Applied to Hyperliquid, this would translate to roughly a 30% increase in volume, ceteris paribus.

Hyperliquid’s Revenue EMA

Revenue has taken a hit recently, as it is directly tied to trading volume, at least relative to prior highs. That said, Hyperliquid remains the top free-cash-flow–generating blockchain in the industry.

Based on 7-day, 30-day, and 60-day average revenue, Hyperliquid is currently generating approximately $520M to $620M in annualized FCF, with 99% of it used to buyback $HYPE.

Even when accounting for unlocks, the token continues to trade at attractive levels relative to current fundamentals. On a forward-looking P/E basis, it appears even cheaper.

Of course, there is no free lunch. Meaningful upside comes with uncertainties and risks.

Hyperliquid’s Daily Users

Hyperliquid’s user base is both sticky and growing. The platform is on track to surpass 1 million cumulative users, with roughly 950k at the time of writing.

If RWA perpetuals continue to gain momentum, Hyperliquid could also attract a meaningful number of non-crypto-native users.

The ongoing CEX-to-DEX rotation shows no signs of slowing down. Trust in centralized exchanges has eroded, and Hyperliquid has emerged as a clear beneficiary of this shift. Day after day, it continues to bridge the CEX trading experience onchain.

Portfolio margin should further enhance the Hyperliquid experience and strengthen this competitive positioning.

Looking Forward

In 2025, Hyperliquid faced an exceptional level of adversity on all fronts, yet emerged stronger than most would have expected. Throughout this period, the team continued to innovate relentlessly, building for its users, its community, and its broader vision of housing all of finance onchain.

Core metrics are now gradually recovering. Several catalysts lie ahead, including equity perpetuals gaining further traction and expanding the user base beyond crypto-native participants, portfolio margin likely increasing market share, USDH continuing to gain share, and more.

Ultimately, performance will still be tied to broader market conditions. At some point, Bitcoin will need to catch up with metals to fully cement its role as digital gold.

That said, if improving market conditions are combined with the catalysts outlined above, and potentially another S3 season bringing in new traders, Hyperliquid could very well surprise the market once again.

–

GLC is admittedly biased and actively building on top of Hyperliquid through HRC, the Hyperliquid Research Collective, but we do our best to remain neutral and objective in our analysis.

You can already explore dozens of research pieces on Hyperliquid on the HRC website, with many more to come. If you’re interested, go check it out. It would mean a lot to us.

Hyperliquid.