Grayscale has called Hyperliquid “the breakout success story of the modern digital assets industry” and one of the fastest-growing DeFi trading platforms. The research team says the perpetual futures exchange has quietly grown into a top player in the global crypto derivatives market.
Hyperliquid’s Surge In Perps Trading
Hyperliquid, a perpetual futures-only platform, processed almost $2.9 trillion in perps volume in 2025, according to new research from Grayscale. Open interest on the platform is now above $7 billion, making it the third-largest crypto perpetuals venue in the world, alongside giants like Binance and Bybit.
Grayscale also notes that Hyperliquid has climbed into the top tier of crypto assets by market value. It says this rise comes from the performance of its HYPE token.
Separately, analytics show Hyperliquid’s user base rose sharply last year. They also show that platform activity increased over the same period. Daily trading volume sometimes reached tens of billions of dollars. Total value locked also climbed into the billions.
This growth has helped perpetual DEXs capture a larger share of the overall perps market. Grayscale and other researchers say this market has now overtaken spot trading in terms of volume.
Because Hyperliquid operates as an on‑chain exchange with its own validator network, the report frames it as a key example of how DeFi infrastructure is competing directly with centralized exchanges in derivatives. At the same time, Grayscale stresses that the platform achieved this scale without the sort of heavy venture funding many rivals relied on.
Volatility, Validator Risk, and Closed Code
Alongside the bullish language, Grayscale also calls out several risk factors around Hyperliquid. The firm says HYPE’s annualized volatility is roughly “about twice that of Bitcoin,” meaning price swings for the token can be far more extreme than those of the market’s benchmark asset.
Grayscale further notes that Hyperliquid’s validator set remains somewhat concentrated compared with more established networks. In practice, that concentration might mean governance and block creation are in the hands of fewer players, which could be a concern for DeFi users seeking greater assurances of decentralization.
Finally, the report notes that Hyperliquid’s core software has not yet been open‑sourced. Grayscale says this closed‑source approach reduces transparency for outside auditors and community reviewers, even as the protocol handles trillions in cumulative trading volume. Because of those factors, the firm presents Hyperliquid as both a major success and a case study in the trade‑offs between rapid growth, token volatility, and decentralization in the next wave of DeFi derivatives platforms.
READ MORE: Sandisk Stock is Firing on All Cylinders: Is a Moment of Reckoning Coming?
