TLDR
- HYPE rose 5.25% to $75 on Friday, then traded near $73.84.
- Open interest hit a record $16.8 billion, up nearly 80% since June.
- Q3 protocol revenue reached $190.9 million, up 21.7% from Q2.
- Daily active traders averaged a record 65,161.
- The Assistance Fund spent about $148.7 million on HYPE buybacks.
Hyperliquid ended the third quarter with $16.8 billion in open derivatives positions, a record for the platform. The figure was nearly 80% higher than at the end of June, following a slower July.
That growth moved Hyperliquid past Bybit, Kraken and OKX in open interest. According to a Q3 report from the Hyperliquid Research Collective, its share across itself and eight major exchanges rose to 11.7% from 9.6%.
3Q26 Hyperliquid Quarterly Report
Our Q3 report on Hyperliquid is out today.
On August 19, President Trump told a room of technology and crypto executives at the White House that the CFTC was working to bring Hyperliquid to the United States. Less than a month later, Kraken’s… pic.twitter.com/hNdvozwe9M
— Hyperliquid Research Collective (HRC) (@HyperliquidR) November 12, 2026
Native perpetuals volume climbed from $109.5 billion in July to more than $188 billion in September. Average daily traders reached a quarterly high of 65,161, up 20% from the second quarter.
Protocol revenue came in at $190.9 million, up 21.7% from the prior quarter. It was still 36.5% below the level from the third quarter of 2025.
Where the revenue came from
Trading and network activity produced $173.6 million, a 10.7% rise from Q2. The other $17.3 million came from USDC reserve income, which began on August 27.
That reserve income made up nearly half of the quarter’s revenue growth. It also gave the platform earnings that do not rely on trader fees.
Priority fees reached $9.6 million, about 3.3 times the Q2 level. These are payments traders make to have their orders handled first.
Third-party apps earned $25 million in builder-code fees, a 50% increase. Those fees go to teams that build trading tools on top of Hyperliquid.
Stock-linked perpetuals drove much of the activity. Equity perps volume rose 161% to $153.8 billion, or 58.8% of the $262 billion traded through HIP-3.
Korean stocks helped lift those numbers. A July pricing incident involving SK hynix perpetuals led to $57.4 million in liquidations.
Trading in HIP-3 was also concentrated. The venue trade[XYZ] handled 97.5% of its volume in September.
Buybacks, big traders and a possible US venue
The Assistance Fund spent about $148.7 million on HYPE in Q3, 5.7% more than in Q2. Because the average price rose to $72.93, it bought 26.4% fewer tokens.
The fund received its first payment in early October, leaving money available for Q4 purchases. Questions were also raised over whether some of that money could go toward drawing in more traders and developers.
Wintermute has become a heavy user of Hyperliquid’s auctions for early access to order data. Bloomberg reported Thursday that a wallet linked to the market maker won 76% of top-priority slot auctions over the past month, based on analysis from Loris Tools.
The system lets traders see incoming orders and adjust positions before others are processed. Critics say it favors larger firms, while Wintermute calls it a transparent way to compete on speed.
On August 19, President Donald Trump said the CFTC was working to bring Hyperliquid to the US. On September 16, Kraken’s parent company Payward proposed using the US-regulated exchange Bitnomial to run a HIP-3 venue, which was still awaiting approval at the end of Q3.
HYPE rose 5.25% to $75 on Friday after the report, then eased to $73.84 by 15:06 UTC, per CoinMarketCap. It bounced from an intraday low below $70. Market cap stood near $18.67 billion, with 24-hour volume of about $1.11 billion, up 28.16%.
