Hyperliquid has recently faced intense competitive pressure, not only losing its top position in the decentralized derivatives exchange arena but also seeing its daily trading volume surpassed by competitor Aster by approximately tenfold. Concurrently, security incidents within its ecosystem are frequent, and its stablecoin plan is still in its infancy. Amidst these internal and external challenges, is Hyperliquid making a last stand or preparing for a major comeback?

Winter is Here: The Lost Throne and the "Data Black Hole"
Hyperliquid's recent situation can be described as being besieged on all sides. After the market witnessed the strong performance of the decentralized derivatives market and the HYPE token, this track quickly attracted a flood of competitors.

The strongest among them is Aster on BNB Chain, which not only swiftly seized the number one market share spot in decentralized derivatives that Hyperliquid had long held but also leads by about tenfold in metrics like daily trading volume.

In July of this year, Hyperliquid's share among decentralized derivatives exchanges was still about 65%, a position it had maintained since its mainnet launch at the end of 2024. However, data from September 22 shows Aster's market share had soared to 70%, squeezing Hyperliquid's share down to just 8.3%.

However, this shift in market share didn't occur in a stagnant market. Hyperliquid's trading volume hasn't actually changed much and has even seen some growth. With Aster entering the competition, its trading incentive activities brought massive increments to the overall market. For instance, during the week of September 22 to 29, Hyperliquid's trading volume was $80 billion, still at a high level since its launch. It just pales in comparison to Aster's staggering $270 billion volume during the same period.

Furthermore, in terms of user data, as of now, Aster's total number of users has exceeded 3 million, while Hyperliquid, after a year of development, has only reached 719,000 total users. In comparison, Aster's traffic effect is indeed far stronger than Hyperliquid's.

Data from October 1 shows that Aster's perpetual contract trading volume in the past 24 hours was approximately $72.8 billion, with about 60,000 addresses participating in trading, averaging $1.21 million per address. During the same period, the trading volume per user on Hyperliquid was about $165,200.

Additionally, besides Aster, several other competitors like Lighter and edgeX have also shown strong performance recently. Hyperliquid is truly besieged on all sides.

Combo Counterattack: The Three-Pronged Approach of Culture, Infrastructure, and Ecosystem
Facing the fierce challenge, Hyperliquid did not succumb to mere data anxiety but also launched a "combo" of moves to consolidate long-term value.

On September 28, Hyperliquid airdropped 4,600 NFTs called "Hypurr" to early users and contributors. This move quickly ignited the community. Within just 24 hours, the trading volume for this NFT series exceeded $44.6 million, with the floor price once reaching as high as $68,700. The rarest one even sold for a whopping $75,000.

The issuance of Hypurr NFTs also quickly sparked market discussion, with the market once again beginning to explore Hyperliquid's potential airdrop farming opportunities.

On the same day the NFTs ignited the community, Hyperliquid officially launched the "Permissionless Spot Quoted Assets" feature on its mainnet. This is a seemingly technical move with profound strategic implications.

This feature allows any stable asset meeting strict on-chain standards to become a quoted currency on the platform in a permissionless manner. It requires deployers to stake 200,000 HYPE tokens (locked for 3 years) and provide extremely deep liquidity for trading pairs between this stablecoin and USDC/HYPE.

This move offers a new perspective on the recently heated competition for a Hyperliquid stablecoin. For USDH issued by Native Markets, it seems this isn't Hyperliquid's all-in bet. Furthermore, several giants previously involved in the stablecoin competition can now participate in Hyperliquid's stablecoin race under this mechanism. Most crucially, it further weakens USDC's monopolistic effect within its ecosystem. On October 1, Guy Young, founder of Ethena Labs, revealed that Ethena would partner with Liminal to launch a new stablecoin on Hyperliquid.

In addition, coinciding with a period of concentrated large-scale global crypto events recently, Hyperliquid also gained significant exposure at these events. At the offline hackathon held in Seoul, the three winning projects were: Hyperliquid Copilot, Edgescan, and HODL Bot. Category-wise, these winning projects primarily revolve around trading tools. On one hand, this might reflect the focused development of the Hyperliquid ecosystem, but from another perspective, the diversity of the ecosystem still seems somewhat limited.

The Moat Debate: After the Noise, What Remains for Hyperliquid?
The traffic and data driven by Aster's airdrop expectations are undoubtedly impressive, but this raises a more core question: when this costly incentive frenzy gradually recedes and trading volume returns to real demand, will the market return to Hyperliquid? Or will it completely rewrite the landscape of the decentralized derivatives trading market?

To answer this question, we must deeply compare the fundamental differences between the two and clarify Hyperliquid's true moat.

First, in terms of operational philosophy, the two represent distinctly different development philosophies.

Hyperliquid is a "technical idealist." Its ecosystem development to date has entirely revolved around providing an ultimate trading experience. One could even say that Hyperliquid, as a public chain, is essentially just supporting infrastructure serving Hyperliquid itself.

Aster's operational foundation follows a different logic. As a key piece deployed by Binance and the BSC chain in the decentralized derivatives track, Aster's primary role is to help the entire Binance ecosystem counter the impact from decentralized derivatives exchanges like Hyperliquid. Therefore, Aster has borne greater pressure and possesses more resources since its birth, even being called Binance's "proxy war."

In terms of product competition, whether it's multi-chain compatibility, the narrative of the economic model, or ecosystem resources, Aster holds a leading position, which is why it could achieve leadership so quickly. Hyperliquid's main advantage might lie in its sub-second latency and 100,000+ TPS performance. However, this advantage is gradually shrinking as BSC chain performance improves. On September 23, BNB Chain disclosed plans to reduce block time from 750ms to 450ms to maintain competitiveness with the fastest blockchains in the crypto space.

So, what is Hyperliquid's core moat? Setting aside these surface-level technical and product features, it might still hold significant advantages in the following aspects:

1. High-Quality User Base Sedimentation: Although Aster's trading volume data is significantly ahead, there is a huge contrast in the Open Interest (OI) metric. On September 29, Hyperliquid's OI was $12.9 billion, while Aster's figure for the same period was only $200 million—a difference of over 60 times. Higher OI means Hyperliquid has sedimented more real, long-term, large-capital trading positions. Its user quality and stickiness are far superior to the short-term users primarily engaged in volume washing and arbitrage.

2. Higher Total Value Locked (TVL): Hyperliquid's TVL is approximately $5.77 billion, while Aster's figure is around $2.2 billion. The difference seems only slightly over twofold. However, the premise is that Aster's TVL is stimulated by the airdrop, whereas Hyperliquid's data represents a relatively stable performance. Fundamentally, currently, Aster represents more speculative force, while Hyperliquid has clearly accumulated longer-term value investment force.

3. Independent Ecosystem: Compared to the powerful resources of the Binance ecosystem, Hyperliquid's independence might seem isolated on one hand, but on the other hand, it represents higher decision-making independence. Especially in crisis situations, the Hyperliquid system might make decisions entirely from the perspective of trading system stability, as seen in previous multiple trading manipulation incidents. Even facing external质疑, Hyperliquid would proceed unflinchingly to maintain the stability of the trading system. In contrast, Aster hasn't encountered such events yet, but if a similar incident occurs, would the BSC chain take emergency measures similar to Hyperliquid's to protect Aster's users or treasury interests? The possibility is not high.

Overall, even though Hyperliquid still possesses multiple moats, the situation remains pessimistic. It faces not just Aster in the market; challengers are currently lining up like the six major sects besieging the Bright Peak, waiting for their turn to challenge. At this time, Hyperliquid must not only innovate to address the crisis of declining traffic but also make careful decisions, as any major misstep could plunge it into extreme difficulty.