Hyperliquid, a decentralized perpetuals exchange, is challenging the conventional wisdom that venture capital is essential for success in crypto. Instead, it claims it’s relying on its touted tech and community-first approach.

The DEX’s Hyper Foundation, which oversees development, announced Thursday its token generation event, slated for early Friday at 2:30 AM ET,  alongside an airdrop.

Over the past year, Hyperliquid has expanded from an exchange into a “full financial system,” claiming its liquidity now “rivals” that of “top exchanges,” its foundation said Thursday on X, formerly Twitter. 

In October, Hyperliquid surpassed Jupiter and SynFutures, clocking a record $1.39 billion in daily trading volume, DeFiLlama derivatives data shows. 

“The HYPE genesis event marks a key milestone in the journey, unlocking core functionality at every level of the stack,” it said.

Based on data from Aevo, a derivatives tracking platform, Hyperliquid has a projected valuation of $3 billion. At that valuation, the planned 310 million HYPE tokens allocated for the 31% community airdrop would be worth nearly $1 billion, marking Hyperliquid’s “genesis event” as one of the largest in DeFi, the project claims.

Once launched, the HYPE token will integrate directly into Hyperliquid’s core operations, the project said. Decrypt has reached out to Hyperliquid to learn more.

Beyond traditional governance roles, the token will also provide functionality for staking and transaction fees while enabling direct USDC trading pairs on the platform’s spot market.

What’s different?

Hyperliquid runs on a blockchain designed specifically for high-speed trading and financial applications. The platform uses HyperBFT, a proof-of-stake system that can process transactions almost instantly while maintaining security through network consensus.

The project is currently ranked as the top decentralized exchange for derivatives, posting $1.6 billion in 24-hour volume, according to data from DeFiLllama. Its all-time volume sits at roughly $428 billion.

Hyperliquid said in a blog post on Thursday there would be “no allocations for private investors, centralized exchanges, or market makers,” an approach that departs from how other projects typically allocate during launch, which often includes significant portions reserved for early backers and project leaders. 

“No investors. No paid market makers. No fees to any company. Community first,” Hyperliquid claims on its website. 

Still, roughly 24% of the tokens will be allocated to current and future core contributors of the network, and a further 6% will go towards the “Hyper Foundation budget,” the exchange said.

Edited by Sebastian Sinclair