HYPE is the token of Hyperliquid, the decentralised platform where every market on Based settles, so if you trade through Based you're already using it. What makes HYPE unusual is where the platform's money goes: roughly 97 percent of Hyperliquid's trading fees are spent buying HYPE back on the open market. It's also one of the most traded markets on the platform.
What HYPE is
Hyperliquid is its own layer 1 blockchain, built by Jeff Yan and a small team to run a fully on-chain order book exchange. Blocks settle in a fraction of a second and placing an order costs no gas. HYPE is the chain's native token, with a fixed total supply of 1 billion.
The launch was unusual for crypto. HYPE arrived in November 2024 with an airdrop of 310 million tokens to more than 90,000 early users. Over 70 percent of supply went to the community, and there were no venture capital investors. The rest is released on a vesting schedule that runs into 2027, including ongoing releases to core contributors, so new supply keeps arriving.
Staking and gas
Hyperliquid is proof of stake. Validators lock up HYPE as a bond against bad behavior, produce blocks and keep the exchange running correctly. Anyone can delegate HYPE to a validator and earn a share of the rewards, roughly 2.4 percent a year at current stake levels. That staked HYPE is what secures the chain every market on Based runs on.
HYPE is also the gas token of HyperEVM, the chain's smart contract layer, where part of each base fee is burned. So using the network destroys some HYPE, while trading on the exchange funds the buyback described below.
What staking HYPE gets you on Based
Every trade on Based carries a fee in two parts: a flat Based fee and the underlying Hyperliquid fee. Staked HYPE discounts the Hyperliquid part. The tiers are listed on the fees page, from Wood (10 staked HYPE, 5 percent off) up to Diamond (500,000 staked HYPE, 40 percent off the Hyperliquid side). Staking BASED, the Based token, discounts the Based part instead.
Whether that's worth holding a volatile token depends on how much you trade. An active trader can run the numbers on the fees page and come out ahead. Someone who trades once a month usually can't, and buying HYPE just to save fractions of a percent is a bet on HYPE's price.
The buyback engine
The Assistance Fund is what sets HYPE apart. Roughly 97 percent of Hyperliquid's trading fees flow into it, and it buys HYPE on the open market automatically, block by block, in any market. By mid-2026 it had spent more than $1.3 billion on HYPE, a pace near 7 percent of the token's market value per year and several times the intensity of any other major token's buyback.
It also runs in reverse. Buybacks follow trading volume: the fund bought $316.8 million of HYPE in the third quarter of 2025 and $192.3 million in the first quarter of 2026, a drop of about 40 percent in two quarters as markets cooled. Less trading means less buying.
Where HYPE stands in September 2026
The institutional wrappers arrived this year. US spot HYPE products launched in 2026 from Bitwise (BHYP), 21Shares (THYP) and Grayscale, whose HYPG is structured to pass through staking yield. Hyperliquid Strategies Inc, a treasury company that accumulates HYPE, trades on Nasdaq under the ticker PURR. A token launched by airdrop less than two years earlier now has exchange-traded products and a listed treasury vehicle.
September added more. HYPE set a run of record highs above $90. On September 18 Hyperliquid launched native borrowing, letting users post HYPE or BTC as collateral for USDC or USDT loans, and $269 million was borrowed on day one. Kraken's parent company Payward also said it plans to offer US clients perpetual futures on Hyperliquid through Bitnomial, its CFTC-regulated exchange. That still needs regulatory approval and has no launch date, so treat it as a possibility, not a done deal.
The underlying business still leads on-chain perpetuals by a wide margin, with billions of dollars in daily volume, and HyperEVM keeps adding applications that pay for gas in HYPE. Set against that: the vesting schedule runs into 2027, buybacks have shrunk with volume, and HYPE's price is tightly tied to the activity of a single exchange.
How to trade HYPE on Based
On Based you can trade the HYPE perpetual future on Hyperliquid, long or short, with leverage if you want it, 24/7, using USDC in your self-custodial wallet as margin. Nobody has to approve you first.
HYPE comes with an extra wrinkle. A perp tracks the token's price, but it isn't the token: it earns no staking yield, gets you no fee discount, and carries liquidation risk and funding fees while it's open. If you want the staking benefits you hold actual HYPE, which is a separate decision from trading the perp. New to the platform? Start with the Hyperliquid guide.
The bull case and the bear case
The bull case is real revenue and mechanical buybacks. The bear case is that both shrink exactly when the market turns. HYPE depends on one platform: if Hyperliquid's volume falls, fees fall, buybacks fall and the token's main source of demand weakens, all at once. Vesting releases continue into 2027, adding supply the Assistance Fund has to absorb, and protocol risk exists on any chain. Trade the perp with leverage and you stack liquidation risk on top.