Hyperliquid is taking crypto perps deep into DeFi’s ‘money LEGO’ land

Perps Week 2026Hyperliquid is taking crypto perps deep into DeFi’s ‘money LEGO’ landHyperliquid is capitalizing on the volume and depth of its order book by giving firms the option to compose with the platform’s shared liquidity, rather than fragmenting it.By Ian Allison|Edited by Cheyenne Ligon Jul 28, 2026, 10:49 am EDTPresented byLiquidity begets liquidity, so the saying goes.Hyperliquid, as its name suggests, has become the decentralized exchange of choice for many traders, particularly those who want to trade perpetual futures or “perps,” blockchain-based derivatives contracts that allow users to speculate on the price of an asset with leverage and no expiration date.Created by Harvard classmates Jeff Yan and a pseudonymous developer known as iliensinc, Hyperliquid, which went live at the start of 2023, is capitalizing on its volume and depth of order book by offering firms something akin to composibility: the concept from decentralized finance (DeFi), whereby permissionless smart contracts can slot together like money LEGOs, the building blocks of new tokenized financial products.Hyperliquid’s Ethereum-compatible HyperEVM connects directly to its super-fast homegrown HyperCore blockchain, allowing other applications to compose atop the platform’s shared liquidity rather than fragmenting it. In other words, applications like wallets or even other exchanges can piggyback on Hyperliquid, using it as a backend to offer perps trading and other services.As more builders deploy on and integrate Hyperliquid, liquidity deepens, the variety of assets expands, and network effects compound. There are now hundreds of developers — including big names like MetaMask, Phantom wallet and South African exchange VALR — using Hyperliquid’s system of “builder codes.” Builders have generated some $90 million in revenue so far, according to Flowscan.A growing army of acolytes can’t praise the platform enough.“Hyperliquid is not just a perpetuals exchange, it’s more like the AWS fo…

Hyperliquid is taking crypto perps deep into DeFi’s ‘money LEGO’ land

Coins in this story

Related stories

Bitcoin’s recent stability hasn't been enough to spark a broader altcoin rally

First ChatGPT, Now Claude: Frontier AI Models Are Escaping Their Sandboxes

Why the Bitcoin Rally Seems More Like a Bull Trap