Hyperliquid, a decentralized finance protocol offering perpetual trading services and a high-performance layer-1 chain, has officially launched its native token, HYPE. The much-anticipated genesis event took place today, November 29, at 07:30 UTC, marking a significant milestone for the project.
HYPE Gets $1 Billion Market Cap Within an Hour of Launch
The HYPE token debuted with an initial trading price of $4.067, achieving a market capitalization of $1,329,032,718 within just one hour of launch. With a total supply of 1 billion tokens, Hyperliquid has allocated 31% or 310 million tokens for distribution to eligible users.
An additional 38.8%, equivalent to 388 million tokens, will go toward future emissions and community rewards, while 23.8% or 238 million tokens are reserved for current and future core contributors, according to the blog post.
Decentralized Tokenomics and Community Focus
A substantial 76.2% of HYPE’s supply is earmarked for the community, ensuring broad participation in the ecosystem’s success.
In a notable move, Hyperliquid has excluded private investors, centralized exchanges, and market makers from its tokenomics, reinforcing its ethics of decentralization.
HYPE also serves as the staked asset securing the HyperBFT consensus mechanism, a highly optimized proof-of-stake protocol. This technology enables Hyperliquid to achieve industry-leading scalability, processing up to 200,000 transactions per second with a rapid finality of just 0.2 seconds.
A Robust Ecosystem
Hyperliquid’s ecosystem is built on a modern Layer-1 blockchain powered by the HyperBFT consensus algorithm. At its core is a decentralized exchange (DEX) that combines the usability of centralized platforms with the self-custody principles of DeFi.
The DEX supports both spot and perpetual trading, including pairs like HYPE/USDC, optimized for high throughput and low latency.
Hyperliquid also intends to launch the HyperEVM, a programmable environment that supports general-purpose on-chain state in addition to native components. HYPE will function as the gas token for the HyperEVM, facilitating seamless interaction with decentralized applications and financial primitives.
Building a Decentralized Future
Hyperliquid’s founders expressed their vision in a statement, emphasizing their journey from a decentralized exchange to a full financial ecosystem. “The HYPE genesis event marks a key milestone, unlocking core functionality at every level of the stack,” the team stated.
They highlighted that Hyperliquid’s infrastructure, with on-chain monetization built into the protocol, is poised to serve as a foundation for the next generation of trustless and high-performance finance.