Perp DEX Chaos: Hyperliquid Under Siege by Aster and Lighter, Can the $1 Billion HYPE Treasury Plan of the Public Company Turn the Tide?

The decentralized perpetual futures trading exchange (Perp DEX) Hyperliquid is facing intense “siege” from a new generation of competitors such as Aster, Lighter, and EdgeX, who are quickly capturing trading volume through incentive mining and aggressive airdrop strategies. Although Hyperliquid still leads in open contract volume and active user count, market competition has dispersed short-term funds and trading volume. Meanwhile, Hyperliquid Strategies, a crypto treasury company centered around the Hyperliquid ecosystem, has submitted an S-1 registration statement to the SEC, planning to raise up to $1 billion through a public offering, with former Barclays CEO Bob Diamond serving as chairman, indicating that external institutional capital is increasingly participating in the Perp DEX field in new ways, and the industry is moving toward consolidation and specialization.

Hyperliquid's Dominance Challenged: The Incentive Offensive of the New Generation DEX

Hyperliquid once held over 70% market share in the Perpt DEX market with its self-developed Central Limit Order Book (CLOB) model on its blockchain, but new competitors are launching a rapid liquidity grab battle using high incentives.

· Success of CLOB Mode: Hyperliquid brings the Orderbook model on-chain, differing from traditional AMM models, providing a trading experience closer to centralized exchanges (CEX), achieving secure and efficient operations.

· The “siege” of new competitors: New-generation perpetual DEXs such as Aster, Lighter, EdgeX, Pacifica, and Avantis are emerging, employing the same core strategies: point mining, aggressive airdrop promises, and highly attractive high incentives.

· Trading volume temporarily surpassed: On a certain day at the end of September, the daily trading volumes of Aster and Lighter reached 42.8 billion USD and 5.7 billion USD respectively, both exceeding Hyperliquid's approximately 4.6 billion USD.

· The “mercenary” characteristic of liquidity: Liquidity in the crypto market has a “mercenary” characteristic, flowing towards the places with the highest returns. The token incentives of new platforms often far exceed trading fees, causing short-term funds to migrate quickly.

Core Metrics and Lasting Advantages: Hyperliquid's Deep Resilience

Despite facing fluctuations in short-term trading volume, Hyperliquid still maintains a significant leading advantage in the key indicators of measuring user stickiness and capital investment levels.

· Long-term trading volume remains dominant: In just one month, Hyperliquid's trading volume is still close to $300 billion, a scale that all new entrants have yet to approach in the long term.

· Dominance of Open Interest and Active Users: Hyperliquid continues to lead in Open Interest and active user numbers, which are more reflective of the level of capital investment and the “stickiness” of the core trader group than single-day trading volume.

· Infrastructure and ecological layout: Hyperliquid is a complete L1 chain, equipped with the industry's leading CLOB engine and a strong developer community (building on HyperEVM), which is a foundation that is difficult for competitors operating as independent DEXs to replicate.

· Huge incentive pool: Hyperliquid has 38.8% of the $HYPE token supply reserved for community rewards (currently valued at approximately 5.8 billion USD), and no competitor can match the scale of this incentive pool.

Giant Competition and Market Strategy: Competitive Pressure from Mainstream CEX

Hyperliquid faces challenges not only from emerging competitors, but also from well-resourced strategic opponents such as mainstream CEX, reflecting the escalation of competition between decentralized and centralized markets.

· Strategic interference by mainstream CEXs: Some analysts believe that mainstream CEXs launch relevant Perptual Futures at the peak of events, intending to exacerbate volatility and create pressure on Hyperliquid's liquidity pool (HLP) by increasing margin and liquidation risks.

· “Divide and conquer” strategy: The support of mainstream CEX for their invested decentralized exchanges (such as Aster) is more reasonably speculated to be aimed at disrupting the growth momentum of Hyperliquid, forcing market capital and attention to be dispersed among multiple competitors to prevent any single on-chain rival from accumulating too much power.

Recognition of Institutional Capital: Hyperliquid Strategies Plans to Raise $1 Billion through NASDAQ Listing

In the current fiercely competitive landscape of Perp DEX, the actions of traditional external finance have cast a vote of trust for the Hyperliquid ecosystem's long-term value and introduced new capital and professional management capabilities.

· Public Issuance Plan: Hyperliquid Strategies has submitted an S-1 registration statement to the SEC, planning to publicly issue up to 160 million shares of common stock, raising up to $1 billion.

· Focused on the Hyperliquid ecosystem, Hyperliquid Strategies is a merging entity formed by the merger of Nasdaq-listed biotechnology company Sonnet BioTherapeutics and SPAC company Rorschach I LLC, aiming to establish a cryptocurrency treasury company that focuses on the Hyperliquid ecosystem.

· Executive Team and Strategy: The merged entity will be chaired by former Barclays Bank CEO Bob Diamond, and plans to use the raised funds for general corporate purposes, including acquiring Hyperliquid's HYPE tokens to expand its treasury.

· Staking of HYPE tokens: The company plans to primarily generate ongoing staking rewards by staking its held HYPE tokens and may seek other non-staking DeFi-related activities after internal review.

Conclusion

Hyperliquid is at the center of the storm in the Perp DEX market, facing dual pressure from incentive-driven competitors and traditional financial giants. Despite fluctuations in short-term volume, its L1 infrastructure, massive community reward pool, and dominance in open interest still constitute a strong fundamental advantage. The action of Hyperliquid Strategies seeking to go public on Nasdaq and raise $1 billion not only represents institutional recognition of HYPE token value but also marks a significant transformation in the Perp DEX space from wild growth to capitalization and professional operation. Investors need to distinguish between the flow of short-term incentives and the erosion of long-term fundamentals, as the DEX market is likely to undergo consolidation like the early CEX market, with a few platforms possessing core competitiveness standing out.

Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute any investment advice. The crypto market is highly volatile, and investors should make cautious decisions.