Hyperliquid pursues US perp compliance as revenue slides 43%

Hyperliquid's push into the US perpetual futures market arrives as the platform's revenue falls for a fourth straight quarter.

Hyperliquid is pursuing a compliant path to offer perpetual futures to US users, potentially unlocking billions for its $11 billion open-interest platform.

The compliance effort comes as the exchange's gross revenue fell to about $202 million in the second quarter of 2026, down 43 percent from its $357 million peak in Q3 2025, DefiLlama data shows. The platform now settles roughly 9 percent of all open perp positions worldwide, up from under 7 percent in late May.

The revenue decline tracks a shift to builder-deployed markets under HIP-3, which now drive roughly half of Hyperliquid's volume. Cost of revenue rose from under 6 percent of gross revenue in Q2 2025 to 18 percent a year later. RWA perps reached $3.6 billion in open interest this month, overtaking bitcoin as the platform's largest market by that measure.

US compliance could reverse the trend by unlocking a large pool of retail and institutional capital, potentially boosting trading volume and HYPE token demand. The move also sets a precedent for other DeFi derivatives platforms seeking compliant US entry, intensifying competition against centralized exchanges and legacy DeFi perp platforms.

RWA perps reshape Hyperliquid's revenue mix

Tokenized real-world asset contracts now account for 32.2 percent of Hyperliquid's quarterly trading volume, up from 20.7 percent in Q1 and 1.8 percent in Q4 2025. RWA trading volume reached $213 billion during Q2, generating 6.6 percent of the protocol's $169 million quarterly revenue, according to the platform's quarterly report.

RWA holders increased 56 percent to 1.6 million investors over the past month, while the total value of onchain tokenized assets rose 3.3 percent to $37.8 billion, according to data provider RWA.xyz. Between July 13 and July 19, tokenized stocks and commodities did $25 billion in volume, 52 percent of the weekly total, outpacing crypto perps for the first time.

The growth sits largely on one set of shoulders. Trade.xyz accounts for more than 90 percent of all HIP-3 open interest, which means Hyperliquid's record numbers depend on a single deployer's oracle choices, margin settings and risk management. That concentration showed earlier this week when a single trade on a thin Korean pre-market venue dropped Trade.xyz's SK Hynix contract 19 percent and triggered liquidations the firm has since agreed to reimburse.

US compliance could unlock new capital flows

Hyperliquid routes about 97 percent of trading fees into its Assistance Fund, which buys HYPE on the open market and retires it, taking roughly 44.5 million tokens out of the total supply so far. The buyback is a fixed share of earnings, so it contracts when earnings contract. The fund bought nearly $290 million of HYPE in Q3 2025 but only about $149 million in Q2 2026.

HYPE traded near $55 on Friday, down 5 percent on the week and roughly 28 percent below the June 16 record near $77, CoinDesk data show. Nearly 10 million HYPE unlocked to core contributors on Aug. 6, about $550 million at current prices, one of a monthly series running through 2027 against a circulating supply of only 222 million.

Competition has also arrived from an unexpected direction. Robinhood Chain, the brokerage's month-old network, has been clearing more than $600 million in daily decentralized-exchange volume on memecoin trading, and by some measures now draws more daily speculative activity than Hyperliquid does.

US compliance could change the calculus. A compliant path to offer perpetual futures to US users would give Hyperliquid access to a market that has been largely closed to offshore DeFi derivatives platforms. The move could also pressure centralized exchanges like CME and ICE, whose executives have pushed the CFTC to review commodity perps.

This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.