Hyperliquid’s RWA perps boom is eating into the revenue that backs HYPE
Revenue has fallen four quarters running while open interest hit a record high. The gap is a fee-sharing program that hands half the platform's volume to outside builders.
Hyperliquid's perpetual futures contracts have surged in popularity, with open interest reaching nearly $11 billion as of July 13, 2026, marking its highest value in 2026. The platform now settles approximately 9% of all open perp positions globally, up from under 7% in late May. However, Hyperliquid's revenue has experienced a decline, falling from $357 million in Q3 2025 to nearly $202 million in Q2 2026.
This decline is attributed to the introduction of Hyperliquid Improvement Proposal (HIP-3), which allows users to deploy their own perpetual futures markets using HYPE token and keep half of the trading fees. Since October 2025, these builder-deployed markets have grown to make up roughly half of Hyperliquid's perp volume. The cost of revenue, which includes fees passed on to builders, market makers, and the liquidity vault, rose from under 6% of gross revenue in Q2 2025 to 18% in the same quarter in 2026.
The market for real-world assets, such as crude oil, gold, and Nasdaq-100 trackers, has seen significant growth, with tokenized stocks and commodities accounting for $25 billion in volume between July 13 and July 19, 2026, outpacing crypto perps for the first time. Despite this growth, Hyperliquid's revenue remains stagnant, and the value of its native token, HYPE, has dropped 5% over the past week and 28% below its June 16 record.
The token's supply is also thin, with nearly 10 million HYPE unlocked to core contributors recently and a first weekly outflow from Spot HYPE ETFs in the week to July 17.
Written by urgent.news from CoinDesk's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — it may contain errors, so check the original before relying on it.
