There has been much concern around Hyperliquid’s unlock heading into the coming week. We have been long-term investors in the token, and the following is our assessment of what is happening. Our thesis on the ecosystem in Hyperliquid can be read in the tweet below. There are around 373 million $HYPE tokens in circulation today. Core members’ tokens were locked for 1 year after the TGE, meaning they are unlocked on November 29 and start hitting the market according to the vesting schedule. There’s a discrepancy around how many tokens will be unlocked every month. 1) The Hyper Foundation blog, released just before TGE, states that most vesting schedules will complete between 2027 and 2028; some will continue after 2028. 2) But data providers like CoinGecko and Tokenomist assume a linear unlock of 24 months. At 23.8% of core member allocation, that number is ~9.92 million tokens per month. According to the blog, most vesting is expected to be completed by the end of 2028. We’ve assumed most - as all. Linear vest till the end of 2028 comes to ~6.26 million tokens a month. The chart below shows HYPE supply hitting the market, assuming: 1) conservative unlocks (6.26 million / month) and 2) aggressive unlocks (9.92 million / month). This is also adjusted for an average monthly fee of ~$90 million; at $35, that’s about 2.57 million HYPE tokens. The actual unlocks % will be somewhere in between. At $31, the market needs to find additional demand of $114 million to $227 million per month to offset the core team unlock. Of course, this assumes that every token the team unlocks will be sold, which is unlikely. This means that if Hyperliquid generates between $204 million and $317 million in fees per month, the token doesn’t need additional purchases from market participants to support the HYPE price. One way to assess where hyperliquid is through its comparables. Lighter and Aster have emerged as competition for Hyperliquid, and the market was concerned about Hyperliquid maintaining its share. So far, these fears have remained hypothetical. Looking at volume alone may make you feel that Hyperliquid has lost ground. But we think volume numbers can be gamed. Lighter’s volume is partly fueled by its pending token release and low fees. Lighter charges no fees, and Aster charges a 0.005% maker fee and a 0.04% taker fee vs Hyperliquid’s base rate of ~0.015% maker and 0.045% taker fees (discounts based on volume and HYPE staked) for standard perpetual futures. So the volume on Lighter and Aster can be thought of as coming at no cost and at a lower cost, respectively. If you look at open interest (OI) and DAUs, you will see that Hyperliquid still dominates the perp DEX space by a wide margin. It has more than 50% of the OI share with Lighter and Aster at a combined OI of ~40%. Hyperliquid has more than 75% of the DAU share, suggesting that it has lower volume or OI per DAU. This means that it is not reliant on a handful of users for its revenue. It has a much broader user base that contributes to its fee generation, making it much more sustainable than its competitors. We continue to hold Hype in our treasury while remaining optimistic for where the asset could trend. Sources: 1. CoinGecko – 2. Tokenomist – 3. Hyper Foundation blog –

Read more about the Hyperliquid ecosystem thesis here -