Felix and Hyperlend : Hyperliquid's Lending Ecosystem

Introduction  

On the back of growing perpetuals trading volume on HyperCore, HyperEVM has experienced TVL inflows rising from $405M to $2.1B YTD, a 419% increase. Despite this growth, HyperEVM remains in a nascent stage, with key infrastructure such as Corewriter precompiles only recently launching on mainnet.

Only 8.79M WHYPE, 5.82M wstHYPE, and 21.6M kHYPE, around 12% of circulating HYPE, have been bridged to HyperEVM. Its native asset market cap is $250M, with only six ecosystem tokens valued above $10M and another twelve between $1M and $10M.

This relatively low market capitalization reflects the fact that most HyperEVM protocols are still pre-TGE and in their points phases. These early-stage programs are core to every protocol on HyperEVM, in line with Hyperliquid’s ethos of rewarding community alignment. We believe HyperEVM is likely to mirror Solana’s 2023 to 2024 cycle, when ecosystem projects such as Jupiter, Kamino, and JTO distributed over $1.5B at launch and peaked around $3.15B in value, despite modest user allocations (Jupiter: 10% initial plus 10% future, Kamino: 7.5%, JTO: 9%).

Hyperliquid has allocated 31% of supply directly to users, with another 38.8% for future community incentives, and HyperEVM teams have signaled they intend to follow this model. On that basis, current points programs could offer above-average returns, roughly 3.87x the average allocation of Solana projects. For existing HYPE holders, this provides a way to leverage their position. For sidelined capital, it offers a path to gain HyperEVM exposure through ecosystem projects without directly risking capital.

Lending protocols, in particular, offer a low-risk way to gain exposure and capture future airdrops. By depositing into secure lending architectures such as Aave forks or Morpho vaults, users can earn stable base yields and accrue points functioning as call options on protocol upside.