Advertisement

Hyperliquid's New Edge

Olivia Capozzalo & Jona Jaupi
November 20, 2025

gm, Defiers!

Today’s big story:

  • Hyperliquid unveiled Growth Mode for its HIP-3 protocol, lowering trading fees for permissionless perps

In other news:

Read more below! But first, please give our sponsors some love; they make this newsletter possible.

the-defiant

Staking MON launches next Monday! Prepare to earn yield and Points with Magma, the leading native LST protocol on Monad. Learn more here: https://www.magmastaking.xyz/

the-defiant

Building a lasting DeFi ecosystem is about more than chasing TVL; it’s about architecting a system that people can use to conduct business. After the initial gold rush, Avalanche is focused on a calculated new beginning, building a sustainable financial future for institutions.

Camila Russo explores this shift with Ava Labs’ Luigi D’Onorio DeMeo and the founders of BENQI, Euler Finance, and LFJ. They unpack the strategy, the tech, and the mission to build an ecosystem that is designed for the long term.

Watch Episode 2

the-defiant

Filecoin Onchain Cloud is live! Verifiable and programmable storage, fast retrievals, and onchain payments so builders can run real workloads without Big Cloud lock-in. Let's open the cloud: Filecoin.Cloud

We’re back! Here’s what you need to know in web3 today

📈 Markets in the Past 24 Hours

TICKERVALUE24H
BitcoinBitcoin$90,265
0.00 %
EthereumEthereum$2,973.03
-0.28 %
XRPXRP$2.09
-0.19 %
BNBBNB$892.41
-0.97 %
SolanaSolana$139.54
3.28 %

Today’s Big Story

High Costs Stalled HIP-3 Perps. Hyperliquid’s Growth Mode Tries to Fix That.

Decentralized perpetuals exchange and Layer 1 blockchain Hyperliquid unveiled Growth Mode for its HIP-3 protocol on Wednesday, roughly a month after HIP-3 went live.

For background, HIP-3 allows anyone staking 500,000 HYPE tokens (around $19.3 million USD) to create their own perpetual futures markets on Hyperliquid, which has a total value locked of around $4.5 billion.

While HIP-3 opens the door to a wider range of assets beyond just standard crypto pairs, newly launched markets often struggle to attract traders. This can leave liquidity low and trading activity light.

Enter Growth Mode, which aims to tackle this challenge by cutting all-in fees for new perp markets by at least 90%, giving users a much stronger incentive to trade in these markets.

Charlie from HIP-3 protocol Felix – which boasts a suite of on‑chain borrowing and lending products running on Hyperliquid L1 – told The Defiant that early HIP-3 markets were expensive to trade, which made it harder to attract users.

“HIP-3 was a bit more expensive than validator-deployed perps,” he said. “Using USDH as margin helped a little, but it was still costly compared to other platforms. With Growth Mode, HIP-3 teams can finally compete on costs.”

The upgrade also reduces rebates and volume contributions by 90% or more, and the discounts stack with other perks like aligned stablecoin collateral benefits and staking-based fee reductions.

Charlie, who recently launched the TSLA-USDH perp market on HIP-3, added that while there’s a potential risk of a “race to the bottom” on fees, the priority should remain focused on building activity first.

“Currently, a fair amount of the HIP3 volume is farming, but over time, we will need ways to drive down cost so equities/commodities/fx traders on these markets can get competitive execution cost,” he said.

Meanwhile, TradeXYZ, the largest HIP-3 protocol by volume and open interest, reported today that it had crossed $200 million in 24-hour volumes. It also saw a new all-time high in OI of $103 million, as traders swapped TradeXYZ’s NVDA during Nvidia’s Q3 earnings call, which began as the Nasdaq closed — showcasing a clear use case for the decentralized asset.

Perp Mania

Hyperliquid remains one of the most active decentralized perpetuals venues in crypto, posting $264 billion in trading volume over the past 30 days and about $9.5 billion in the last 24 hours, according to DefiLlama.

This comes as perps mania continues across DeFi, with Hyperliquid-competitors Aster and Lighter adding to pressure. In September, Aster’s token launch quickly soared to a $1.9 billion market capitalization. Meanwhile, Lighter, the week of Nov. 12, quietly became the largest decentralized perp exchange by trading volume.

As of today, Aster is currently the largest perp DEX on the day with just over $11.5 billion in trading volume. Lighter is in second place with $9.9 billion and Hyperliquid is holding down third place today.

Jona, staff reporter at The Defiant

Forwarded this newsletter? Subscribe for daily insights and curated news from The Defiant team, Monday-Saturday. It’s free.

Subscribe to Defiant Daily

🎬WATCH

Tokenize Everything: Robert Leshner’s Vision for On-Chain Finance

In the latest episode of The Defiant Podcast, Cami sits down with Robert Leshner — the mind behind Compound, and now the founder of Superstate — to discuss why DeFi itself shouldn’t change, but assets will, how tokenized T-bills, basis strategies, and even equities are finally getting institutional traction, and what happens when DeFi becomes the infrastructure powering TradFi.

Pluis. what he’d do differently after Compound’s messy transition to decentralized governance.

The End of the Chain? FastSet’s Parallel Settlement Layer for Instant Micropayments [SPONSORED]

We build systems on the belief that one step must follow another, a total order enforced on every action. But what if that sequence is the very thing holding us back? What if, to achieve true scale, we must abandon the chain?

This episode of Defiant Voices features Grigore Roșu, co-founder and CEO of Pi Squared. He introduces FastSet, a massively parallel settlement layer designed for a future of AI agents and instantaneous micropayments. Drawing from a deep background in formal verification, Gregor details how FastSet’s “embarrassingly parallel” design achieves uncapped speed by allowing validators to work independently, yet still reach consensus through mathematically proven properties. We explore its unique tokenomics, EVM compatibility, and the roadmap to its mainnet launch.

Top News in the Past 24 Hours

  • BlackRock Registers Staked Ethereum Trust The world’s largest asset manager is making preparations for a staked ETH ETF, nearly four months after the SEC acknowledged BlackRock’s filing to permit staking in the firm’s current Ethereum ETF.Why it matters: A staked Ethereum ETF would mark BlackRock’s first crypto product to offer yield to its investors, and a first of its kind product in the U.S.
  • Kraken Reveals Confidential IPO Filing After Fresh $800M RaiseThe parent company behind U.S. centralized crypto exchange Kraken took its first formal step toward going public, confidentially filing with the SEC.Why it matters: The move marks the latest crypto firm looking to go public, following Circle’s blockbuster NYSE debut.
  • S&P Ratings Gives Justin Sun-Linked TrueUSD Lowest Score Credit rating agency S&P Global Ratings assigned TrueUSD (TUSD) its lowest possible score, concluding that the stablecoin’s ability to maintain its dollar peg is “weak.” Why it matters: The rating comes as TUSD’s issuer — a firm advised by Justin Sun — is engaged in a legal battle over nearly $500 million of the stablecoin’s reserves, which it alleges were misappropriated, and where recently frozen by a Dubai court order.

Trending on The Defiant

That’s it for today — if you enjoyed this newsletter, tell your friends! https://thedefiant.io/subscribe