Author | Golem, Odaily Planet Daily
As TradeXYZ's business continues to expand and it has consistently held over 90% of the Hyperliquid HIP-3 market share, recent community discussions have intensified regarding whether TradeXYZ might leave Hyperliquid and build its own independent trading platform.
Former Messari researcher Sam posted on X that investors bullish on HYPE due to the surge in the RWA perpetuals market should ask themselves three questions: First, if TradeXYZ leaves Hyperliquid and launches its own exchange, where will users trade? Second, how would TradeXYZ launching its own stock/token impact HYPE’s valuation? Third, how likely are either of these two scenarios to occur?
This post garnered over 470,000 views in just a few days. The rapid rise in discussion around this issue stems from an increasing number of market participants recognizing that the value contributions between TradeXYZ and Hyperliquid are shifting, with TradeXYZ gradually gaining stronger market influence and bargaining power compared to Hyperliquid.
In business partnerships, when one party gradually gains more resources and market influence, and the distribution of benefits becomes significantly imbalanced, betrayal often occurs.
A recent example comes from the AI industry. Cursor was once the largest AI coding tool on the market, built on Anthropic’s Claude model—a partnership that seemed like a perfect match—until Anthropic turned against it by launching Claude Code, a direct competitor to Cursor. By mid-2026, Claude Code’s ARR officially surpassed Cursor’s, pushing it out of the market.
The blockchain industry has similar examples where a single product, after growing large, often separates from its original infrastructure to build its own chain ecosystem—such as Uniswap and dYdX. Polymarket, the most popular project of this cycle, has also been repeatedly rumored to be leaving the existing Polygon infrastructure to develop its own independent infrastructure.
Returning to the current issue, what is the likelihood that TradeXYZ will leave Hyperliquid to operate independently? If this were to happen, what impact would it have on both Hyperliquid and TradeXYZ? Odaily Planet Daily will provide a brief analysis in this article.
Is going it alone inevitable?
In the blockchain industry, it's a common phenomenon for projects to initially launch and scale on a public blockchain or infrastructure, then later choose to build their own independent infrastructure (L2 or standalone L1) for reasons such as performance, control,底层 fee capture, or larger narrative-driven fundraising. TradeXYZ has now truly reached that scale.
According to Flowscan data, as of now, the total trading volume of Hyperliquid HIP-3 exceeds $469.62 billion, with TradeXYZ contributing over $437.4 billion, accounting for 93%. As of the time of writing, the total open interest (OI) of Hyperliquid HIP-3 has reached $3.9 billion, with TradeXYZ contributing over $3.8 billion, representing 99.7%.
Hyperliquid HIP-3 total trading volume as a percentage of TradeXYZ
The remaining exchanges combined hold less than 10% of the market share, and HIP-3 has already created a massive Matthew effect. From this perspective, it’s not an exaggeration to say that TradeXYZ entirely controls the HIP-3 market on Hyperliquid; the narrative premium that RWA on-chain contracts have brought to Hyperliquid is essentially the narrative premium that TradeXYZ has brought to Hyperliquid.
From both valuation and protocol revenue perspectives, TradeXYZ is no longer optional for Hyperliquid—it plays a crucial role in carrying the platform forward amid a weak crypto market and declining trading volumes for crypto derivatives like Bitcoin.
According to official data, HIP-3 accounts for 71.92% of Hyperliquid’s total trading volume, setting a new all-time high. Given TradeXYZ’s dominant position on HIP-3, this means TradeXYZ contributes over 70% of Hyperliquid’s total trading volume. Additionally, HIP-3 represents 36% of Hyperliquid’s total open interest, implying that TradeXYZ’s contribution to Hyperliquid’s total open interest exceeds 35%.
HIP-3's share of Hyperliquid's total trading volume and total open interest
Thus, TradeXYZ has grown into a giant capable of influencing traditional financial markets by leveraging Hyperliquid’s infrastructure, and now its leverage and influence are beginning to dominate within its partnership with Hyperliquid. When a child grows up, should they strike out on their own? What factors would prompt TradeXYZ to build its own infrastructure?
Setting aside hard-to-predict capital maneuvers such as fundraising and token issuance, from a practical business perspective, if TradeXYZ truly chose to go independent, the most likely reason would be to capture underlying transaction fees.
On Hyperliquid’s HIP-3 markets, the revenue share for TradeXYZ and Hyperliquid is fixed at 50/50. Since the standard trading fee for HIP-3 assets is twice that of the core perp markets, Hyperliquid receives the same protocol fee per HIP-3 trade as it does on the core perp markets.
According to statistics, as of the time of writing, the total fee revenue generated by TradeXYZ has approached $50 million. Under the revenue-sharing ratio specified in HIP-3, TradeXYZ can retain at most $25 million.
Fees generated by TradeXYZ
It’s hard to imagine a project that has generated over $400 billion in trading volume earning less than one ten-thousandth of that amount in revenue. Giving away nearly half of the revenue is unacceptable for most projects. Given TradeXYZ’s current leverage over Hyperliquid, it could easily negotiate a revenue share adjustment to a 70/30 split or higher. If no agreement is reached, TradeXYZ is likely to go its own way.
Why won't TradeXYZ leave?
Of course, for TradeXYZ, going it alone is both appealing and constraining.
The first constraint is Hyperliquid’s high performance. All of TradXYZ’s perpetual contracts are deployed on Hyperliquid’s HIP-3 platform, where matching, order types, funding, liquidations, and automatic deleveraging are managed by HyperCore. Technically, TradXYZ only manages the oracle price, mark price, external price, and related components.
If TradXYZ chooses to go it alone, they would need to build their own team to develop the underlying infrastructure—a challenge in itself, but creating an L1 with the same high performance as Hyperliquid in a short time frame is no small feat. Even Shoku, the founder of TradXYZ, has acknowledged the excellence of the Hyperliquid team. In a post on X in March 2024, Shoku admitted he wasn’t certain how large Hyperliquid could grow in terms of traditional metrics like TVL and trading volume, but he was fully confident that the quality and rigor of Hyperliquid’s on-chain products and dApps have no equal in the entire crypto space.
Of course, one of these competitors is himself—if TradXYZ’s independently built infrastructure proves insufficient to compete with Hyperliquid, it will negatively impact its product experience and the narrative of earlier price discovery compared to traditional financial markets.
The second constraint is that channels and distribution are also critical. Why is Circle willing to give over 50% of USDC’s savings yield to Coinbase? Because Coinbase has made tremendous contributions to the market distribution and promotion of USDC—according to Coinbase’s latest Q2 earnings report, over 30% of circulating USDC is held on Coinbase. Controlling channels and distribution means controlling everything—and this principle applies equally between TradXYZ and Hyperliquid.
At its core, Hyperliquid’s frontend is merely an interface to access the TradeXYZ liquidity market, but it is not the only way. Users can currently also access the TradeXYZ liquidity market directly through the TradeXYZ website, where the trading interface is highly similar to Hyperliquid’s. Moreover, to further enhance user convenience, TradeXYZ’s internal accounts are integrated with Hyperliquid’s, meaning that by connecting the same wallet on the TradeXYZ website, users can directly use their balances from Hyperliquid.
TradeXYZ's own trading frontend
Even so, among TradeXYZ’s over 350,000 trading users, the majority still access TradeXYZ’s liquidity markets through Hyperliquid’s frontend—a behavior shaped by long-standing user habits that are difficult to change. Additionally, a significant portion of traders cannot even distinguish between TradeXYZ and Hyperliquid, simply choosing to trade TradeXYZ products out of trust in the Hyperliquid brand.
Therefore, Hyperliquid not only provides technical support to TradeXYZ but also serves as its primary channel for liquidity distribution; the cost and time to build infrastructure can be calculated, but the value of losing this channel cannot be measured.
The third constraint is that the two project founders already trust each other deeply and have a strong, harmonious relationship. Solana KOL Ansem believes the likelihood of TradeXYZ going independent is nearly zero, as he considers TradeXYZ and Hyperliquid to be the most perfectly aligned teams in the crypto space. “Neither founder has any greed, and both are extremely intelligent—I believe they will choose a path that benefits both teams the most.”
This statement is not without merit; Shoku was among the earliest investors to bet on Hyperliquid. Back in 2023, Shoku connected with Jeff and began contributing to the Hyperliquid ecosystem. In 2024, he developed Unit, Hyperliquid’s Bitcoin cross-chain bridge, and has previously told friends that Hyperliquid is one of the few things in the crypto world that truly excites him.
Various indications suggest that Shoku greatly admires Hyperliquid and Jeff, making it unlikely that he would act against them from a personal standpoint.
If TradeXYZ goes independent, the result will be a lose-lose situation.
If we are to thoroughly explore this topic, this article should not end here—we should also examine an extremely unlikely scenario: what if TradeXYZ were to truly break away from Hyperliquid and operate independently? My conclusion is that it would result in a lose-lose situation.
Currently, TradeXYZ and Hyperliquid are in a win-win situation; if TradeXYZ splits off, the significant uncertainty would harm both parties. After separating, Hyperliquid could easily support other HIP-3 market participants, but it would shift from being a collaborator to a competitor of TradeXYZ. This change would have minimal impact on Hyperliquid’s revenue, as over 70% of its core income still comes from its main Perp products, with the HIP-3 market accounting for only a small portion—the greatest impact would be on its valuation.
First, after the migration of TradeXYZ, Hyperliquid’s total trading volume will drop by more than 50%, and HYPE may also be halved, as Hyperliquid will no longer be the leading on-chain RWA perpetuals trading platform but will instead be redefined as a crypto derivatives platform that has lost its largest growth driver and narrative foundation.
TradeXYZ is no better off—it must build its infrastructure and user habits from scratch. As mentioned earlier, performance and distribution channels have become the biggest constraints on TradeXYZ’s growth, and such a betrayal could also trigger public backlash, further damaging TradeXYZ’s credibility.
Moreover, TradeXYZ and Hyperliquid are not only competing with each other; the entire RWA trading market has other competitors. As the saying goes, “When two quarrel, a third gains.” Hyperliquid needs time to develop its new HIP-3 markets, and TradeXYZ requires time to build its infrastructure—by the time they turn their attention back, market gaps will already have been filled by other competitors.
In summary, although TradeXYZ is becoming increasingly important on Hyperliquid, going it alone would clearly be unwise. Even if TradeXYZ aims to improve profitability, the best approach may be to gradually shift focus toward its own issuance and user ownership while preserving the existing advantages of its integration with Hyperliquid.