Hyperliquid: The Dutch Auction Mechanism That's Challenging Opaque CEX Listings

Recently, the listing mechanism publicly announced by Hyperliquid has sparked heated discussions. However, the reason this matter has attracted market

Hyperliquid's recent rise in the crypto space can be largely attributed to the journey of its HYPE token. Following its TGE, HYPE managed to enter the top 50 in terms of market capitalization within just two weeks, briefly surpassing both new and established projects like Fantom and Bittensor, and even outpacing Arbitrum itself.

While the narrative of Perp DEX is no longer a novel concept, Hyperliquid has successfully refocused the market's attention on DEXs.

The Indispensable Listing Mechanism

Today, HYPE breached the 20 dollar mark, setting a new all-time high. Behind this new peak lies Hyperliquid's precise "market aesthetics,"敏锐地捕捉到本周期“VC to meme” 的脉络。Hyperliquid, which seems to embody the quality of a "VC gathering," did not follow the old path of first securing VC funding and then inflating trading volume before listing. Its founder, Jeff, has expressed dissatisfaction with this form and market logic multiple times in public.

On the other hand, Hyperliquid's team operations and project development are also top-notch. Hyperliquid's ambitions extend beyond Perp DEX; it is actively building a "trading" public chain characterized by low latency, high throughput, high-frequency trading, and order books. When the underlying logic shifts from Perp DEX to a public chain, it also opens up its valuation ceiling.

In addition to the reasons mentioned above, Hyperliquid's success can also be credited to its open and transparent listing mechanism. So how does Hyperliquid conduct its listings?

Dutch Auction

Hyperliquid employs a Dutch auction to auction the token ticker, and its listing process is relatively open and transparent, with detailed introductions in the official documentation.

First, if a project party wants to launch a spot token, they need to apply for the deployment rights of the HIP-1 native token (HIP-1 is the token standard established by Hyperliquid). Subsequently, a Dutch auction mechanism will be used to determine which party will ultimately acquire the token ticker. A Dutch auction, also known as a descending price auction, starts at a price higher than market expectations and continuously decreases until the first party accepts the price, at which point the transaction is completed. From a game theory perspective, a Dutch auction reflects the true psychological expectations of bidders and can achieve a fair price for the auction.

Hyperliquid's spot deployment process

When a project party deploys a token on Hyperliquid, they need to pay a gas fee, but this gas auction fee will later be returned to the HLP Vault.

Additionally, Hyperliquid's auctions typically occur every 31 hours, with a maximum of 282 spots available for listing throughout the year. This passive "capping" method also indirectly improves the quality of the listed projects.

In summary, compared to the opaque operations of CEXs that leave the public confused, Hyperliquid's listing mechanism is open and transparent, and the gas auction price collected will later be returned to the community in the form of staking, creating a virtuous cycle.

Derivatives of the Auction Mechanism

By adopting this public auction mechanism, more interesting routes will emerge in the future. For example, this auction mechanism may lead to "ticker" disputes. Earlier this year, when zkSync was listing on various major exchanges, the Polyhedra Network, which initially used the ZK token ticker, ceded the prestigious ZK ticker to zkSync, subsequently changing its token to ZKJ.

It is foreseeable that more projects will exhibit similar "conflicts" after launching on Hyperliquid. Project parties will fiercely compete for a ticker that better suits their tokens, and stories similar to "Sina spent 8 million yuan to purchase weibo.com" and "Finance was acquired by Moniker for 3.6 million dollars in 2007" will soon play out on Hyperliquid.

The "Big Fool" Who Spent 180,000 Dollars

After completing its "epic" airdrop at TGE, Hyperliquid's auction prices have continuously broken new highs. Back in June this year, its auction ceiling hovered around 35,000 dollars, failing to break the previous hard cap of 35,000 dollars. However, after TGE, Hyperliquid received unprecedented market attention, directly "pushing" the price to 128,000 dollars, breaking through previous constraints. On December 11, it achieved a historical high of 180,000 dollars in the FARM auction.

The previous record-breaking 128,000 dollar ticker dispute stemmed from "SOLV," and it is noteworthy that the Solv Protocol will have its TGE soon, so it is highly likely that this ticker was acquired by Solv Protocol. Previously, the token tickers auctioned by Hyperliquid were mostly meme-related, such as PIP, CATBALL, etc.