Hyperliquid Founder Slams Revenue-First Allegations - Defends DeFi Integrity
Hyperliquid's CEO fires back against claims the protocol prioritizes profits over users—crypto's latest governance storm hits decentralized exchanges.
The Core Conflict
Founder denies platform operates with revenue-maximization mindset, calling accusations fundamentally misguided. Protocol maintains traditional finance models don't apply to decentralized infrastructure.
Community Backlash
User sentiment splits as governance token holders debate whether the rebuttal addresses underlying concerns about fee structures and tokenomics—another day in DeFi governance theater.
Market Impact
Trading volumes hold steady despite controversy, proving once again crypto markets care more about yields than philosophical debates—as long as the APY keeps flowing.
Jeff said the ADL queue on Hyperliquid works much like those used by CEXs
Jeff noted that Hyperliquid’s ADL queue follows the same logic as many centralized exchanges (CEXs), combining leverage and unrealized pnl to determine the order of deleveraging.
He thanked users for their feedback on ADL, adding that while valuable, many suggestions, such as offsetting correlated positions, WOULD add extra complexity to the system. He highlighted that other major venues don’t typically employ a more complex ADL queue design, and simple systems are generally more resilient and easier for users to grasp.
In late September, the exchange debuted its native stablecoin USDH, which traded nearly $2 million during the opening period. The stablecoin, backed by cash and U.S. government securities, leverages Stripe’s Bridge platform to manage reserves. Previously, the exchange had already slashed its spot trading fees by 80% as it sought to increase liquidity ahead of the stablecoin’s debut.
The USDH ticker race began on Sept. 5, after Hyperliquid opened a governance process to decide the issuer. Native Markets arrived early, promising to issue a stablecoin on HyperEVM and allocate the reserve’s income between HYPE buybacks and ecosystem development.
Soon after, bids rolled in from Paxos, Sky, Frax Finance, Agora, Curve, OpenEden, BitGo, and Ethena — the latter eventually withdrawing and backing Native Markets’ proposal.
StandX’s TVL has crossed $200 million mark
Meanwhile, Hyperliquid’s rival StandX smashes through the $200 million total value locked (TVL) within one month – now a world record for the platform. In addition to the milestone, StandX announced the kickstart of StandX Alpha, where early users are rewarded simply for signing up. The project was created by former members of Binance’s derivatives team and is designed to merge synthetic stablecoins with a decentralized perpetual exchange model.
In a Saturday X post, Stand X announced, “New ATH achieved: $200,000,000 TVL in one month. StandX Alpha just went live. Stand in early for potential rewards.”
Despite rising competition, Hyperliquid has become the newest fixation of both crypto traders and Wall Street. Designed for perpetual futures, it has already outperformed Coinbase in certain areas, despite being far smaller than it and Binance, while handling volumes within an industry that now exceeds $6 trillion a month.
Tarun Chitra, founder of Gauntlet, recently noted that the highest growth rates are occurring in the newest and least established markets, largely because most existing participants have yet to understand their purpose.
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