Hyperliquid Unveils HyperEVM to Expand Programmability in DeFi Ecosystem

Hyper Foundation, the entity behind the popular decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol, Hyperliquid, has announced the launch of HyperEVM, in a significant step toward integrating general-purpose programmability into its financial system.

The initial mainnet release includes HyperEVM blocks built as part of Layer 1 execution, inheriting security from HyperBFT consensus. It also enables spot transfers between native spot HYPE and HyperEVM HYPE, with HYPE serving as the native gas token. Additionally, a canonical WHYPE system contract, deployed at address 0x555…5, has been introduced to support DeFi applications on the platform.

HyperEVM Hits Mainnet

In its official announcement, Hyper Foundation said that tooling and analytics may “not be polished” at the launch of the mainnet HyperEVM. However, the foundation assured that many experienced builders are working to improve these areas. To assist them, HyperEVM block data is streamed live to S3, allowing indexing without operating a node.

A future network upgrade will enable general ERC20 native transfers and precompiles. The community can provide Feedback on these features during the testnet phase. Although they are already available on testnet, their mainnet rollout is staggered to ensure minimal disruption to current L1 users. The foundation maintained that HyperEVM is composable with the L1 state while not affecting the low-latency trading experience of existing users.

“Thank you to all the builders and users who have shared feedback on testnet so far. It will be exciting to see new applications leveraging and building upon the existing on-chain financial system of Hyperliquid.”

Hyperliquid Growth So Far

Hyperliquid’s native token airdrop went live in late November 2024, which involved the allocation of 310 million HYPE tokens, or 31% of the total supply, to its community. Since then, HYPE’s value has soared from nearly $3.90 to approximately $26 at the time of writing.

A month later, Hyperliquid introduced native staking on its mainnet, allowing token holders to earn rewards for helping secure the network. This feature lets users choose validators based on various criteria, including uptime, commission rates, reputation, and community contributions. At launch, the staking system included 16 validators.

Meanwhile, data from DefiLlama currently shows that Hyperliquid earned $51.41 million in revenue in January, while its total value locked (TVL) is over $677 million.