Hyperliquid shifts from exchange to infrastructure

This is the tradeoff of turning Hyperliquid from one exchange into exchange infrastructure. HIP-3 lets outside teams launch their own perp venues on Hyperliquid, set market parameters, and add their own deployer fee share on top of the base trading fee. That grows volume and broadens the kinds of markets Hyperliquid can host, but a larger slice of each trade now goes to builders, rebates, HLP, and other community pathways instead of staying with the protocol, which lowers retained revenue even when gross fees stay strong.1 2 3 4

• HIP-3 is permissionless exchange deployment, not just a new listing format. A builder can launch a separate perpetual market with its own oracle and contract setup, which makes Hyperliquid closer to onchain market plumbing that others build businesses on top of.1
• The fee split changes at the market level. Hyperliquid says HIP-3 deployers can add an extra fee share, and protocol fees are routed to community buckets including HLP, the Assistance Fund, and deployers. More activity in builder markets therefore means less of gross fees remain as protocol retained revenue.2 3
• That retained share matters because it funds HYPE buybacks. Hyperliquid generated about $972M of gross fees in 2025 and retained about $818M after roughly $154M of distributions, and most retained revenue flows to the Assistance Fund, which buys HYPE on the open market.3 4

Going forward, Hyperliquid is likely to look more like Shopify for perpetuals than a single venue. If HIP-3 keeps taking share, the key metric shifts from raw trading volume to take rate after payouts, because that determines how much economic value Hyperliquid still captures from the ecosystem it is enabling.1 2 3