Hyperliquid 2026 Q3 Report

USDC reserve income accounted for half the quarterly increase in revenue. Hyperliquid generated $190.9M in Q3 protocol revenue, up 21.7% QoQ and down 36.5% YoY. Trading and network revenue rose 10.7% to $173.6M. The remaining $17.3M came from USDC reserve income accrued from August 27. The Assistance Fund received its first payment in early October, making it available for Q4 buybacks. In Q3, the fund spent $148.7M on HYPE, 5.7% more than in Q2, but bought 26.4% fewer tokens as its average purchase price rose to $72.93.

Equities overtook commodities on HIP-3. Equity perpetuals traded $153.8B, up 161% QoQ, and accounted for 58.8% of HIP-3’s $262B in quarterly volume. Korean stocks helped drive the increase. They also exposed a weakness in how these markets price risk outside local trading hours. A July reference-price incident in the SK hynix perpetual triggered $57.4M of liquidations. Market operations remain concentrated, with trade[XYZ] handling 97.5% of HIP-3 volume in September.

The native crypto market recovered alongside the expansion into equities. Native perpetuals volume rose 72% from July to September. As a result, HIP-3’s share of perpetuals volume fell from 51% in July to 25% in September, even as its quarterly volume set a record. Across Hyperliquid, daily traders averaged a record 65,161, up 20% QoQ. Builder-code fees earned by third-party apps rose 50% to $25M. Coinbase’s decision to route Base App perpetuals to Hyperliquid gave users another way to trade against the same order books.

Payward put forward a concrete proposal for US access. On August 19, President Trump said the CFTC was working to bring Hyperliquid to the US. On September 16, Payward, Kraken’s parent, announced plans for Bitnomial, a US-regulated derivatives exchange, to operate a HIP-3 venue on Hyperliquid. For an established exchange group, the commercial decision is significant. Payward would use a potential competitor’s infrastructure to serve its own clients. Regulatory approval was still pending at quarter-end, and US clients could not yet trade on the venue.

This report was produced by the Hyperliquid Research Collective (HRC), an independent research initiative founded by Four Pillars and GLC Research.