Hyperliquid's HYPE Surpasses AAVE in Market Capital , Accounts for Nearly Half of Decentralized Perpetual Contract Volume

The Token HYPE of Hyperliquid has witnessed strong growth since the Token Generation Event (TGE) last Friday. In this event, the decentralized perpetual contract trading platform conducted an Airdrop of 310 million tokens that were fully unlocked for users, those who accumulated points by trading on the platform over the six months ending in May. With a value of around $1.2 billion at the time of issuance, these tokens have now increased in value to over $3 billion, with the current HYPE price at $9.46, bringing the market capitalization of this token to $9.46 billion. In just the past 24 hours, the value of the token has increased by over 9.3%. The current market capitalization of HYPE is around $3.15 billion, surpassing large lending platforms like Aave (AAVE), the long-standing privacy coin Monero (XMR), Layer 2 Optimism (OP), and other notable altcoins. Since first leading in daily trading volume on decentralized perpetual contract platforms in October, Hyperliquid has accounted for nearly half of the trading volume on these platforms, reaching 47% yesterday. Meanwhile, its biggest competitor, Synfutures, saw a 30% drop in trading volume from November 29 to November 30, while Hyperliquid only saw a 10% decline. HYPE plays a crucial role in the Hyperliquid ecosystem, as it can be staked to protect HyperBFT, an optimized proof-of-stake consensus mechanism that enhances network security and promotes decentralization. Additionally, HYPE is the gas token of HyperEVM, the execution environment of the network, facilitating the payment of transaction fees. "The genesis of Hyperliquid is to honor the primal spirit of Bitcoin: ownership belongs to those who believe and act, not those who seek to profit from others," Jeff Yan, co-founder of Hyperliquid, shared on X. "Hyperliquid is the evolution of finance. And Hyperliquid will only truly succeed when it encompasses the entire financial domain." However, Hyperliquid has also received criticism from some crypto founders due to the currently closed-source nature of its codebase. "How do you know the numbers, volumes, and TVL are accurate? Because their API self-reports?" Peter Kris, founder and CEO of the cross-chain swap protocol Gasp, questioned on X.