Hyperliquid Revenue Falls as RWA Perps Surge

RWA perps tied to commodities and stocks are driving trading on Hyperliquid, but HIP-3 and higher fee-sharing are weighing on protocol revenue. ESMA and Singapore are also taking a closer look at these derivatives.

Key Takeaways

• Hyperliquid saw gross protocol revenue fall for four straight quarters, even with record volumes and open interest above $11 billion.
• HIP-3 and builder markets are lowering the take rate, while real-world asset perps are becoming the biggest market on Hyperliquid.
• Concentration in Trade.xyz and rising regulatory pressure in Europe and Singapore are adding to the risks around the rapid growth.

Hyperliquid is drawing more trading activity than ever, but a growing share of that volume is generating less revenue for the protocol itself. Open interest rose above $11 billion (€9.5 billion) in July, and perpetual futures volume reached nearly $178 billion (€154 billion) over the past 30 days, yet gross protocol revenue still declined for a fourth straight quarter. The trend shows how much builder markets and real-world asset perps are now shaping HYPE's income.

Growth and a Lower Take Rate

According to DefiLlama, gross protocol revenue reached a high of about $357 million (€309 million) in the third quarter of 2025. It then slipped to nearly $295 million (€256 million), fell again to around $217 million (€188 million), and came in at about $202 million (€175 million) in the second quarter of 2026. That marks a 43% drop from the peak, even as transaction counts continued to climb.

One reason is Hyperliquid Improvement Proposal 3, or HIP-3. Since October 2025, anyone staking 500,000 HYPE, worth about $28 million (€24.3 million) at current prices, has been able to launch a perpetual futures market on Hyperliquid's order books and keep as much as half of the trading fees. At the beginning of 2026, those markets made up about 2% of perp volume. Now they account for roughly half.

The fee mix is also changing. Cost of revenue, which includes the fees Hyperliquid pays out to builders, market makers, and its own liquidity vault, rose from less than 6% of gross revenue in the second quarter of 2025 to 18% one year later. Builder code fees, such as the ones front ends like Phantom charge for order routing, are also booked fully as an expense.

RWA Perps Are Pulling in Trading

Most of the growth is coming from new markets. Real-world asset perps tied to commodities, stocks, and indexes, including crude oil, gold, Nvidia, Tesla, a Nasdaq-100 tracker, and pre-IPO names like SpaceX, hit a record $3.6 billion (€3.1 billion) in open interest this month. That makes them Hyperliquid's largest market by open interest, ahead of bitcoin.

From July 13 to July 19, tokenized stocks and commodities generated $25 billion (€21.7 billion) in volume, or 52% of the weekly total. These contracts settle in stablecoins, never expire, and remain open on weekends as well, when the New York Stock Exchange is closed. For traders who want leveraged Nvidia exposure on a Sunday night, that is a major difference from traditional markets.

The risk is concentration. Trade.xyz now represents more than 90% of all HIP-3 open interest, which means Hyperliquid's record figures depend heavily on one platform's oracle setup, margin rules, and risk controls. Earlier this week, a single trade on a thin Korean pre-market venue triggered a 19% drop in Trade.xyz's SK Hynix contract, followed by liquidations that the company has said it will reimburse. Events like that are also likely to keep regulators watching closely; the SEC recently met with representatives from Hyperliquid and Trade.xyz about the rules for onchain derivatives.

Why This Matters for Europe

For European crypto readers, Hyperliquid stands out because perpetual futures growth is increasingly running into the limits of existing rules. ESMA has previously said that derivatives offered as perpetual futures or perpetual contracts may fall under existing CFD oversight in the EU. That means the rapid rise of RWA perps is not just a market story, but a regulatory one too.

The same tension is showing up outside Europe. Singapore added the platform to its investor alert list in late June, following earlier warnings in the UK. At the same time, the market still values HYPE based on the exchange's economics: through its Assistance Fund, Hyperliquid has already removed about 44.5 million HYPE from circulation, but that buyback mechanism moves with revenue, so it loses strength when income falls.

HYPE traded around $55 (€48) on Friday, about 5% lower on the week and roughly 28% below the June 16 record of around $77 (€67). Institutional holders like Multicoin Capital and Bitwise have also sent large amounts of HYPE to exchanges over the past month, while spot HYPE ETFs recorded their first weekly outflow in the week ending July 17 after nine straight weeks of inflows.