Hyperliquid is gaining huge amounts of attention and there are opportunities in its ecosystem to earn yield, points rewards, and future airdrop eligibility. One approach to get started is to bridge assets across to Hyperliquid and get familiar with the perps trading DEX, which also offers rewards for liquidity providers. From there, users can also transfer assets to HyperEVM, the general purpose layer of the ecosystem, and explore further protocols including Hyperbeat, a platform currently offering 25% APY on deposits to its USDC vault.
If you’re holding HYPE then you won’t have been concerned about whether or not an alt season is coming, as Hyperliquid has already been one of the leading chains this year. So this week we’ll look at why Hyperliquid is running it up, how to bridge across to its ecosystem, and we’ll focus also on the Hyperbeat protocol, which is easy to use and offers good returns on stablecoin deposits.
What Is Hyperliquid?
Hyperliquid is a Layer-1 blockchain and ecosystem in which the showcase app is the Hyperliquid perps trading DEX. This exchange has an onchain order book, low fees, and allows users to trade with leverage, and from a user perspective it operates extremely smoothly and is comparable to a centralized exchange.
Within the Hyperliquid stack, at its heart is a consensus mechanism called HyperBFT, and above that are two adjacent layers: HyperCore, which deals with onchain perps contracts and spot order books, and HyperEVM, which is for general purpose smart contract use.
The native token of Hyperliquid is HYPE, and 31% of supply was airdropped to early users in November last year. There are further tokens still to be distributed, incentivizing protocol use, and notably, Hyperliquid operates a token burn mechanism.
Since the first airdrop, the market cap of HYPE has grown to over $12 billion, making Hyperliquid the eleventh biggest blockchain by market cap. Also working in its favor, Hyperliquid is not a VC-funded project, and it stands out for preferring a community-driven approach.
Before we continue with how to navigate Hyperliquid, please be aware of the risks involved when using DeFi, which can include smart contract vulnerabilities, stablecoin de-pegs, frontend attacks, and high volatility.
How to Bridge and Deposit on Hyperliquid
To get started, you can bridge some assets across, look at depositing on Hyperliquid for passive returns, and of course, you can trade spot and perps there too.
To do all this, open the Hyperliquid app, click on the Portfolio tab, and then connect up your wallet. You can use MetaMask and various other options here.
If you then click on Deposit, you’ll be prompted to click Establish Connection, so do that, also confirming the action in your wallet (something you won’t have to do later after you’ve bridged funds and you’re trading).
You’ll then have the option to bridge stables directly across on Arbitrum, but you can also alter the deposit chain to Bitcoin, Solana, or Ethereum, and in those cases you’ll be provided with a deposit address to which you can send funds from your wallet. Note that on Bitcoin you can only send BTC, on Ethereum only ETH, and on Solana only SOL or–for some reason–FARTCOIN.
The Hyperliquidity Provider
If you go across to the Vaults tab, you’ll…
