If Hyperliquid is the new Nasdaq, which projects are developing broker-dealer services?

In the context of the continuous slump in the cryptocurrency market and the shrinking liquidity, entrepreneurs in the industry are facing unprecedented pressure to break through the current situation.

However, Odaily recently learned that multiple startup teams have begun to regard the Hyperliquid ecosystem as a way to break the deadlock. They hope to attract users for Hyperliquid and capture their own value by building trading front - ends, strategy platforms, AI Agents, and HIP - 3 custom markets (which allow customizing oracles, leverage limits, and settlement rules).

In the past, doing front - end user acquisition for a DEX seemed unimaginative. There was always an inertial perception in the market that the real value was captured by liquidity, matching engines, and underlying protocols, rather than the front - end interfaces that relied on them.

However, as the market elevates Hyperliquid's positioning to the level of the "Nasdaq on the blockchain", the value and imagination of this business are changing.

Note from Odaily: Refer to "220 days after the launch of Trade.xyz, Hyperliquid is becoming the 'New Nasdaq'".

Analogous to the traditional stock market, retail investors do not directly trade on the Nasdaq or the New York Stock Exchange. It is usually brokerage platforms like Robinhood, Interactive Brokers, and Charles Schwab that build relationships with users. The exchanges are responsible for providing the underlying market, liquidity, and matching capabilities, while the brokerages are in charge of user entry points, product design, and experience optimization.

If the assumption that Hyperliquid becomes the new - generation Nasdaq holds true, then the applications built on Hyperliquid that are responsible for directly connecting with users and optimizing the trading experience are no longer just simple front - ends, but are more like "brokerages" in the traditional financial system.

Starting from HIP - 3, how do these "brokerages" make profits?

Before getting to know these specific "brokerage" platforms, we need to briefly answer two questions. One is what is HIP - 3? The other is how do projects based on HIP - 3 make profits?

First of all, it should be noted that it's not only HIP - 3 projects that can "start a business" around Hyperliquid. In theory, any team can build their own products based on Hyperliquid's underlying liquidity and trading capabilities. Some choose to build trading front - ends, some develop mobile applications, and some create strategy platforms, AI Agents, or asset management tools. They all share the responsibility of attracting users to Hyperliquid and expanding its user base.

Among all these directions, HIP - 3 is a track with relatively high imagination and some successful cases. Simply put, HIP - 3 allows third - party teams (Builders) to deploy perpetual contracts on their own and operate their own trading markets based on Hyperliquid's underlying liquidity and matching system.

This means that startup teams don't need to build a new blockchain from scratch, set up a new matching system, or bear the R & D and security costs of high - performance trading infrastructure. Instead, they can directly build products that are closest to users based on Hyperliquid's mature infrastructure.

In a sense, this is highly similar to the brokerage system in traditional finance. The Nasdaq itself doesn't help users with investment advice, UI design, community operation, or provide strategy products. These tasks are ultimately carried out by brokerages like Robinhood. Therefore, the significance of HIP - 3 can be understood as further opening up the "brokerage" market space above Hyperliquid.

As for the profit models of these "brokerages", although some projects generate revenue through derivative services (such as performance income from asset management and strategies), currently, the most direct source of income for such "brokerage" projects is still the sharing of transaction fees and the appreciation expectation of HYPE.

According to Hyperliquid's current mechanism, third - party deployed markets will adopt a higher transaction fee standard than the native market, and a significant portion of it will be returned to the deployer or the front - end operator. This means that once a front - end successfully controls the user entry point, it will unlock real, continuous cash flow directly linked to trading volume. If a front - end can achieve daily trading volume in the billions of dollars, the commission from transaction fees alone will be enough to form an income scale full of imagination.

In addition, Hyperliquid officially requires third - parties to stake at least 500,000 HYPE tokens when deploying custom trading applications (the official has stated that this requirement will be gradually reduced in the future). Considering the recent strong performance and fundamental situation of HYPE, the appreciation potential of HYPE itself is also one of the core sources of income for such projects.

As for the future, the token issuance of the upper - layer "brokerage" projects themselves will also become a potential source of income, which won't be elaborated here.

Review of typical projects

Trade.xyz: Bringing US stocks, commodities, and indices to Hyperliquid

If you're looking for a project that best showcases the imagination of the Hyperliquid ecosystem, Trade.xyz is undoubtedly the top choice.

If we were to summarize what Trade.xyz is doing in one sentence, it would be "bringing the assets of the traditional financial market to Hyperliquid". Currently, Trade.xyz has successively launched perpetual contract products including the Nasdaq index, S&P 500 index, gold, crude oil, and some US stocks. For cryptocurrency users, this means they can directly participate in the price fluctuations of the traditional financial market through Hyperliquid's liquidity system without leaving the on - chain environment.

As of now, Trade.xyz dominates both in open interest (OI) and daily trading volume. Real - time data from Artemis and The Block shows that it has monopolized more than 90% of the current HIP - 3 market.

For Hyperliquid, the significance of Trade.xyz lies in expanding the asset boundary of the ecosystem. In the eyes of many, whether Hyperliquid can ultimately grow into the "Nasdaq on the blockchain" doesn't depend on how much trading volume it can generate, but on whether it can become a unified trading network covering diverse asset classes, thus accommodating new user groups and market demands.

For Trade.xyz itself, its value lies in being the first to occupy the potential track of on - chain traditional financial asset trading. To date, the explosive trading volume and revenue data of Trade.xyz have proven the strategic success of the platform.

Dreamcash: Capturer of mobile traffic

If the goal of Trade.xyz is to expand the asset boundary of Hyperliquid, then Dreamcash focuses on the user boundary.

For a long time, there has been a common problem with cryptocurrency trading products - they are often designed for professional traders. Complex on - chain operations, obscure professional terms, and high - threshold fund management methods have kept a large number of potential users out. Even a platform like Hyperliquid, which already has a fairly good trading experience, still mainly serves the native cryptocurrency trading community.

Dreamcash aims to solve this problem. Different from many products that emphasize trading functions, Dreamcash is more like a trading app in the mobile Internet era. The project team has invested a lot of effort in the mobile experience, points - based incentive system, and user growth mechanism. They hope to lower the threshold for ordinary users to access on - chain trading through a lighter and more game - like product design. Users only need to log in with their email or social accounts and can, within seconds, add leverage to cryptocurrencies or global macro assets with a single click, just like trading stocks.

As of the time of publication, the cumulative number of downloads of Dreamcash on both iOS and Android platforms has exceeded 100,000 times.

Ventuals: Pioneer in the pre - IPO market

Ventuals didn't choose to focus on the existing mainstream assets in the market. Instead, it extended its reach to the area with the highest threshold and the most difficult access for ordinary investors in the traditional financial system - the primary market private equity.

In the traditional financial market, the equity subscription of technology unicorns with great imagination like OpenAI, SpaceX, and Anthropic is often monopolized by top - tier investment banks and billion - dollar funds. Retail investors not only lack the access threshold but also face extremely long lock - up periods and poor liquidity. The core logic of Ventuals is to use the feature of HIP - 3 that allows customizing clearing and settlement rules to package the pre - IPO equity of these unlisted companies into on - chain perpetual contracts, allowing global retail investors to directly participate in the long - short game of their valuations before these unicorns go public.

One of the key reasons why the Nasdaq has become one of the most important capital markets in the world is that it continuously meets the financing and pricing needs of new - economy enterprises. To some extent, what Ventuals is trying to do is similar - enabling the on - chain market not only to trade existing assets but also to provide a price discovery mechanism for future assets.

Of course, this direction is still a long way from maturity, but it is one of the most worthy evolutionary directions in the on - chain capital market.

Based: The next stop, the "super app"

Based aims to build a cryptocurrency "super app" covering trading, prediction markets, payment, and consumption scenarios.

Currently, Based provides trading terminal products on the web, desktop, and mobile (iOS, Android) platforms. Through Based, users can trade spot and perpetual futures on Hyperliquid, access prediction markets through Polymarket, and use the Based Visa to consume cryptocurrencies in the real world.

After the implementation of HIP - 3, Based took another step forward from simply integrating the Hyperliquid front - end. It cooperated with Ethena to launch the custom trading protocol HyENA based on Hyperliquid. Different from other HIP - 3 projects that mainly innovate around trading targets, HyENA focuses on the margin itself. This protocol introduces a margin system centered on the income - generating stablecoin (USDe), hoping that users' idle margins can continue to generate income while trading.

In a sense, this is like introducing the logic of money market funds in the traditional financial market into the on - chain trading scenario. In the traditional brokerage system, the idle funds in customers' accounts are often automatically allocated to money market funds to improve capital utilization efficiency. What HyENA is trying to do is to reconstruct this experience in the on - chain environment.

Minara AI: When Agents start becoming users

If projects like Trade.xyz, Dreamcash, and Based are still competing for human user entry points, then Minara AI represents a more futuristic direction - the Agent entry point.

Minara's core product is a financial execution layer for AI. Users can directly issue trading instructions to AI tools like Claude and Cursor through natural language, and Minara will call Hyperliquid's underlying trading capabilities to complete operations such as opening and closing positions and leverage management. In other words, in Minara's vision, in the future, it may no longer be humans but the AI Agents configured by users that directly use the trading interface.

In a sense, this is not only a trend in the Hyperliquid ecosystem but also one of the most worthy trends to watch in the entire Internet world.

The open combination relationship has created the strongest moat for Hyperliquid

As more and more teams choose to build upper - layer applications based on Hyperliquid, an industry - wide question is being considered by more and more people - what does this combination relationship between Hyperliquid and these on - chain "brokerages" mean for the competition in the exchange track?

In the past, most people's understanding of exchanges remained at the stage of "competing on products". Everyone was competing on who had a better UI, who listed more coins, who had lower transaction fees, and who could attract more users.

However, Hyperliquid is driving a completely different direction of competition. More and more market participants are beginning to realize that what Hyperliquid wants to do is not a trading platform that directly faces users, which we are familiar with, but a set of financial infrastructure that can be directly called by APIs, programs, and even AI systems. Then, the upper - layer "brokerages" built on it will connect with users.

In a sense, this is very similar to the evolution path of software in the AI wave. In the traditional Internet era, products competed in terms of UI, entry points, and user time. But in the AI era, more and more products are degenerating into "capability layers" - the API itself is becoming the new traffic entry point.

This is the new evolutionary direction that Hyperliquid is leading. That's why more and more practitioners have begun to understand Hyperliquid as a "Financial OS". It only needs to unify capabilities at the bottom, and the upper - layer "brokerages" will be responsible for creating specific scenarios.

Once this structure is formed, a strongly - bound symbiotic relationship will be established between Hyperliquid and these upper - layer "brokerages". For Hyperliquid, each additional upper - layer application means a new traffic entry point, a new user channel, and a new trading scenario. The protocol itself doesn't need to operate these products directly but can continuously share transaction fees and expand the liquidity depth of the entire network. For these upper - layer applications, they highly rely on the liquidity, matching efficiency, and on - chain trading experience established by Hyperliquid. They don't need to build a new blockchain, rebuild the order book, or cold - start liquidity. They only need to do two things - bring users in and keep them.

This means that the future competition logic may no longer be the competition between one exchange and another but may gradually evolve into the competition between different financial networks. When more and more applications, Agents, and trading entry points choose to be built on the same liquidity network, the network itself will form an increasingly strong adsorption effect. And the platforms that successfully attract the most developers, applications, and user entry points will also have the deepest liquidity and the broadest market coverage.

Perhaps this is the strongest moat of Hyperliquid and the most imaginative aspect of the new Nasdaq.

This article is from the WeChat official account “Odaily” (ID: o - daily), author: Azuma, published by 36Kr with authorization.