Original | Odaily Planet Daily (@OdailyChina)
Author| Golem (@web3_golem)
As TradeXYZ's business scale continues to expand and it consistently holds over 90% of the market share in the Hyperliquid HIP-3 market, recent community discussions have been heating up around whether TradeXYZ might break away from Hyperliquid to build its own independent trading platform.
Former Messari researcher Sam posted on the X platform, stating that as an investor bullish on HYPE due to the explosion of the RWA perpetual contract market, one should ask themselves three questions: First, if TradeXYZ leaves Hyperliquid and launches its own exchange, where would users go to trade? Second, what impact would TradeXYZ launching its own stock/token have on HYPE's valuation? Third, how likely are the above two scenarios to actually happen?
Within just a few days, the post garnered over 470,000 views. The reason for the rapid rise in this discussion's popularity is essentially that more and more market participants are starting to realize that in the cooperative relationship between TradeXYZ and Hyperliquid, the value contribution of both sides is changing, and TradeXYZ is gradually accumulating stronger market influence and bargaining power compared to Hyperliquid.
In business partnerships, "backstabbing" often occurs when one party gradually gains more resources and market clout, and a significant imbalance in benefit distribution emerges between the two parties.
A recent example comes from the AI industry. Cursor was once the largest programming AI Coding tool on the market, built on top of Anthropic's Claude model. They were like a "golden partnership," until Anthropic delivered the backstab—launching Claude Code, a direct competitor to Cursor. By mid-2026, Claude Code's ARR officially surpassed Cursor's, pushing it off the table.
Similar examples exist in the blockchain industry, where individual products, after becoming large, often break away from their original infrastructure to build their own chain ecosystems, such as Uniswap and dYdX. Polymarket, one of the hottest projects this cycle, has also been rumored multiple times to be leaving the existing Polygon infrastructure to build its own.
Returning to the current question, how likely is it for TradeXYZ to leave Hyperliquid and become independent? If this were to actually happen, what impact would it have on both Hyperliquid and TradeXYZ? Odaily Planet Daily will provide a brief analysis in this article.
Is Going Solo Inevitable?
A phenomenon exists in the blockchain industry: projects start and grow on a certain public chain or infrastructure, and later, for reasons of performance, control, underlying fee capture, or larger narrative financing, they choose to independently build their own infrastructure (L2 or independent L1). TradeXYZ has indeed become large enough now.
According to flowscan data, as of now, the total trading volume on 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) on Hyperliquid HIP-3 is $3.9 billion, with TradeXYZ contributing over $3.8 billion, a share of 99.7%.
Hyperliquid HIP-3 Total Trading Volume and TradeXYZ's Share
The combined share of the remaining few trading platforms is less than 10%, indicating a massive Matthew Effect in the HIP-3 market. From this perspective, it's not an exaggeration to say that TradeXYZ essentially dominates the Hyperliquid HIP-3 market. The narrative premium that RWA on-chain contracts development has brought to Hyperliquid is, in essence, the narrative premium that TradeXYZ has brought to Hyperliquid.
From both valuation and protocol revenue perspectives, TradeXYZ is no longer just optional for Hyperliquid; it has become a crucial player holding up the fort, especially during a sluggish crypto market and shrinking trading volumes for Bitcoin and other crypto derivatives.
According to official data, HIP-3 now accounts for 71.92% of Hyperliquid's total trading volume, hitting a record high. Based on TradeXYZ's dominant position in HIP-3, this means TradeXYZ contributes to over 70% of Hyperliquid's total trading volume. HIP-3 accounts for 36% of Hyperliquid's total OI, which similarly implies TradeXYZ's contributed OI accounts for over 35% of Hyperliquid's total OI.
HIP-3's Share in Hyperliquid's Total Trading Volume and Total OI
Therefore, TradeXYZ has already leveraged Hyperliquid's infrastructure to grow into a behemoth capable of influencing traditional financial markets. Now, within its cooperative relationship with Hyperliquid, its leverage, influence, and bargaining power are starting to take a leading role. So, when a child grows up, should it become independent? Under what triggers might TradeXYZ choose to build its own infrastructure?
Setting aside unpredictable capital operation factors like financing and token issuance, and looking solely from a practical business perspective, if TradeXYZ were to truly choose independence, the most likely reason would be to capture the underlying transaction fees.
In Hyperliquid's HIP-3 market, the transaction fee split between TradeXYZ and Hyperliquid is fixed at 50/50. Furthermore, because the standard transaction fee for HIP-3 assets is twice that of the core perp market, the protocol fee Hyperliquid actually earns from each HIP-3 trade is the same as from the core perp market.
According to statistics, as of the time of writing, the total fee revenue generated by TradeXYZ is close to $50 million. According to the HIP-3 stipulated split ratio, TradeXYZ can take away at most $25 million.
Fees Generated by TradeXYZ
It's hard to imagine that a project generating over $400 billion in trading volume has a total revenue that doesn't even reach one ten-thousandth of that volume. Handing over nearly half of its revenue is intolerable for most projects. Given TradeXYZ's current leverage and influence over Hyperliquid, it is entirely capable of negotiating with Hyperliquid to change the revenue split to 70/30 or higher. If an agreement cannot ultimately be reached, TradeXYZ could very well embark on the path of independence.
Why Wouldn't TradeXYZ Leave?
Of course, for TradeXYZ, independence is attractive, but there are also constraints.
The first constraint is Hyperliquid's powerful performance. TradXYZ's perpetual contracts are all deployed on Hyperliquid's HIP-3 platform. Their matching, order types, funds, liquidation, and auto-deleveraging are all managed by HyperCore. Technically, TradeXYZ manages only the oracle price, mark price, external price, and related components.
If TradXYZ chooses to become independent, they would need to assemble their own team to build the underlying infrastructure. This isn't a problem in itself, but constructing an L1 with performance as strong as Hyperliquid's in a short time is a challenge. Even TradeXYZ founder Shoku himself acknowledges the excellence of the Hyperliquid team. In March 2024, Shoku posted on X, saying he wasn't sure how large Hyperliquid as an L1 could ultimately become in terms of traditional metrics like TVL and trading volume, but he was completely certain that the quality and rigor of Hyperliquid's on-chain products and dApps would have no rivals across the entire crypto field.
These rivals, of course, include himself. If the infrastructure built by an independent TradXYZ cannot compete with Hyperliquid, it would negatively impact its product experience and the narrative of early price discovery ahead of traditional financial markets.
The second constraint is that channels and distribution are also crucial. Why is Circle willing to hand over over 50% of USDC's savings interest to Coinbase? The reason is that Coinbase has indeed made huge contributions to the market distribution and promotion of USDC. According to Coinbase's latest Q2 earnings report, over 30% of circulating USDC is stored on Coinbase. He who controls the channels and distribution controls everything, a rule that also applies between TradXYZ and Hyperliquid.
Essentially, Hyperliquid's frontend is just one interface for accessing TradeXYZ's liquidity market, but it's not the only way. Users can currently also access the TradXYZ liquidity market directly through the TradeXYZ official website, and the trading interface is highly similar to Hyperliquid's. To further facilitate users, TradeXYZ's internal accounts are even interoperable with Hyperliquid's, meaning connecting the same wallet on the TradeXYZ website allows direct use of any balance present on Hyperliquid.
TradeXYZ's Own Trading Frontend
Even so, among TradeXYZ's over 350,000 trading users, most still access TradeXYZ's liquidity market through Hyperliquid's frontend. This is a usage habit cultivated over time among users and is not easy to change. There might even be a certain proportion of trading users who fundamentally don't understand the difference between TradeXYZ and Hyperliquid, trusting the Hyperliquid brand and passively choosing to trade TradeXYZ's products.
Therefore, Hyperliquid not only provides technical support for TradeXYZ but is also the primary channel for distributing TradeXYZ's liquidity. The cost and time of building infrastructure can be calculated, but the value of losing a channel cannot be measured.
The third constraint is the mutual trust and longstanding rapport between the founders of the two projects. Solana's well-known KOL Ansem believes the possibility of TradeXYZ going independent is almost zero, reasoning that tradexyz and Hyperliquid are the most compatible two teams in the cryptocurrency space. "The two founders are completely devoid of greed and are both very intelligent. I believe they can choose a development path that is most beneficial for both teams."
This view holds merit. Shoku was one of the earliest investors to bet on Hyperliquid. As early as 2023, Shoku connected with Jeff and began contributing to the Hyperliquid ecosystem. In 2024, he developed Unit, Hyperliquid's Bitcoin cross-chain bridge. He once confided to friends that Hyperliquid was one of the few exciting things in the crypto world. (Related reading:TradeXYZ's Mysterious Founder Shoku: A Man Forever Searching for Asymmetric Opportunities)
All signs indicate that Shoku greatly admires Hyperliquid and Jeff. From a human relationship perspective, the likelihood of a "backstab" is relatively low.
If TradeXYZ Goes Independent, The Result Would Be Lose-Lose
If we are to discuss this topic thoroughly, this article should not end here. We should also discuss an extremely low-probability event: if TradeXYZ truly does break away from Hyperliquid and become independent, what would the outcome be? The conclusion I've derived is a lose-lose situation.
Because in the current state, TradeXYZ and Hyperliquid are in a win-win situation. If TradeXYZ splits off, the immense uncertainty would bring harm to both sides. After TradeXYZ becomes independent, Hyperliquid could certainly support other participants in the HIP-3 market, but its relationship with TradeXYZ would shift from collaborators to competitors. This wouldn't significantly impact Hyperliquid's revenue, as over 70% of Hyperliquid's main revenue still comes from the core Perp market, with the HIP-3 market being only a smaller part. The biggest impact would be on its valuation.
First, after TradeXYZ migrates, Hyperliquid's total trading volume would decrease by over 50%, and HYPE's price might also be halved. This is because Hyperliquid would no longer be the leading on-chain RWA perpetual contract trading platform; it would be redefined as a crypto derivatives trading platform that has lost its biggest growth driver and narrative foundation.
TradeXYZ itself wouldn't fare much better. Infrastructure and user habits would need to be cultivated from scratch. The performance and channel constraints mentioned earlier would become major hindrances to TradeXYZ's development. Moreover, such a backstabbing act could very likely spark public controversy, further damaging TradeXYZ's credibility.
Additionally, TradeXYZ and Hyperliquid are not just competing with each other; the entire RWA trading market has other competitors. "When the snipe and the clam grapple, the fisherman profits." Hyperliquid would need time to cultivate new HIP-3 markets, and TradeXYZ would need time to build its infrastructure. By the time they look back, the market gap would likely already be filled by other competitors.
In summary, although TradeXYZ is becoming increasingly important to Hyperliquid, going independent is clearly irrational. Even if TradeXYZ wants to increase its profitability, the best approach might be to gradually shift focus to its own distribution and user ownership while preserving the existing integration advantages with Hyperliquid.
