Lessons watching Hyperliquid grow TVL by 15x in 4 months
Max Segall
|Apr 16, 2024
Hyperliquid is one of the fastest growing projects in crypto, and their innovative approach to building is paying off. They recently crossed $100B in lifetime volume and $350M in TVL, and they’re just getting started.
We’ve had the chance to partner with them as their TVL skyrocketed by more than 15x and we’ve learned a ton seeing how they’ve been able to grow users and volume along the way. We’re excited to dive in on what makes this project so special.
What is Hyperliquid?
Hyperliquid is a performant L1 with the vision of creating an onchain open financial system with user-built applications interfacing with reliable native components, all without compromising on end user experience.
Their flagship native application is a fully onchain order book perpetuals exchange - the Hyperliquid DEX - offering world-class speed, liquidity, and price. Their novel order book design and relentless focus on end-users have created a unique combination of great UX and market-leading value, driving impressive retail volume.
There are a few core product innovations that set the Hyperliquid DEX apart from others in DeFi:
Hyperliquid L1: They’re deployed on a custom-built L1 capable of processing 20K TPS with very rapid finality.
Wide selection of assets to trade: There are 100+ different assets to trade, with new listings every week.
Vaults for copy trading: Users can automatically replicate pro trader strategies using “vaults”, helping users achieve impressive returns and creating new social dynamics amongst traders.
Onboarding for everyone: Users can sign in via external wallets or via email to trade via self-custodial embedded wallets, powered by Privy.
Building on this innovative product foundation, the two biggest drivers of recent growth have been Hyperliquid’s relentless retail focus and their points strategy.
Retail focus
One of the most interesting things about Hyperliquid is that they’ve attracted >100K users, tens of thousands of which are active each week. By relentlessly focusing on building seamless, intuitive UX for retail end-users, Hyperliquid has driven much of their growth by tapping a long-tail of active retail users.
Take their onboarding for instance (something we spend a lot of time thinking about). Email-based embedded wallets via Privy have helped Hyperliquid unlock a valuable high-retention user base for the protocol:
~10K embedded wallets have been provisioned since launch, representing ~10% of Hyperliquid’s overall user base
40%+ of these embedded wallet users were active on the app over the last month
Points strategy
Over the last several months, we’ve seen many of the most innovative consumer apps incentivize user behavior via points systems. The Hyperliquid team played an important role in pioneering these efforts in the DeFi market, and over the last several months, they’ve executed one of the most impressive points-based growth strategies we’ve seen.
Each Thursday, Hyperliquid distributes 1M points based on a combination of user referral volume and trading activity in the app. During the most recent distribution 22K unique users received points, a number that’s been steadily increasing since the program launched in November.
In the past, apps have used point tracking as a way to guide airdrop distributions for users as their underlying protocols decentralize.
Where we go from here
Hyperliquid’s breakout growth over the last several months is no accident. We’ve been blown away by the team’s core product innovations, masterful growth tactics, and relentless focus on retail end users, notably by enabling users to come in via email.
With >100K users and ~$350M of TVL within a few months of launch, Hyperliquid is a team worth keeping an eye on. They’re just getting started, and we’re proud to support them as they continue to shape their market.
