How Hyperliquid Is Looking to Maintain Its Lead Among Perp DEXes

The saying goes, "If you come for the crown, you best not miss." And in the land of perp DEXes, there are plenty of new players coming for Hyperliquid.

After notching nearly $1 billion in fees in 2025 by popularizing perpetual futures, it shouldn't come as a surprise that competitors — both onchain and off — are looking to chase the leader.

But according to the CEO behind one of the largest HYPE digital asset treasury companies, not only does Hyperliquid still have more planned in 2026 to survive the wave of competition — it's still incredibly early days for the project.

“If you went out to the average man or woman on the street, or even people who are crypto knowledgeable, and said to [them], 'Who do you think the top 2 or 3 revenue-generating blockchains are right now?' Not many people would say Hyperliquid," Hyperliquid Strategies CEO David Schamis tells Coinage.

And that thinking basically captures the strange position Hyperliquid finds itself in entering 2026: it’s already operating like one of the biggest businesses in crypto — but it still feels like a secret outside the most online corners of the industry. With the launch of Lighter, Binance's Aster, other perp DEXes, and even former FTX President Brett Harrison's centralized player in Architect, there's always the threat someone else edges HYPE out.

According to DeFi Llama data, Hyperliquid's market share for perps volume has dropped considerably, falling from around 60% in January 2025 to just about 20% now.

Hyperliquid was nominated as part of Coinage's Crypto Project of the Year series. Schamis joined in a new interview to explain what Hyperliquid has accomplished, why the market is suddenly getting more crowded, and how strategies might change when everyone is trying to copy what you've built.

“A year ago or nine months ago, Hyperliquid, had no competition,” Schamis said. “To think that the company would never have competition was kind of crazy. Of course they will. That’s the world we live in.”

Perhaps most notably, Lighter has just launched as the largest new competitor built on Ethereum. Not only does that distinguish itself from Hype's strategy as its own blockchain — but Lighter also does not charge fees for trades. As Schamis explains — similar to Robinhood's model in traditional equities, there's always a fee somewhere — whether in a larger spread or worse price execution.

"I'm not all that worried when we say that Lighter has free trading ... because what really matters is your net execution. In other words, you might not pay a fee, but if there's not as much liquidity or not as good execution or it's down during a difficult time, who cares about a tiny basis point fee?" Schamis said.

The same argument has been made by offchain platforms as well. Former FTX President Brett Harrison recently told Coinage that onchain perp DEXes may be useful to provide access to traders unable to tap U.S. markets, but for people with access there are more liquid trading platforms.

But if there's one area where all the players in the new arena are in agreement, it's that the total addressable market for perpetual futures is growing. As everything gets tokenized, the idea of layering on leverage and derivatives to those new assets will provide new trading opportunities, and thus, new revenue opportunities. Schamis flagged prediction markets as the one area he's looking forward to the most in regards to what Hyperliquid could unlock.

Core to Hyperliquid's unique model is the idea of its technology being leveraged to emulate trading for other markets. As Schamis explained someone could easily build their own unique front-end, but leverage Hyperliquid's trading engines under the hood.

"If someone could build on [something] that already exists — if Hyperliquid built that and allowed it, that would be an amazing thing. And it just allows for more growth because, I mean, no one's dying to be the back end, right?" Schamis said. "People want to be the front end. They want to be the thing — the brand — that you go to and all that. Hyperliquid is happy to be the AWS for things like that, and that's what's really cool about it."

Coinage Caucus and Network NFT holders, along with $COINAGE holders on Base and BAT holders on Ethereum can vote to advance Hyperliquid or AAVE in our Crypto Project of the Year series when voting opens (must be holders by the time the snapshot is taken.)

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