Trading volume on Hyperliquid has been sharply declining for several weeks.
On Defillama it appears that last week ended with a trading volume of only $37.2 billion on perp contracts.
This is the lowest weekly volume since the end of February, that is, in the last two months.
Summary
Trading volumes on Hyperliquid
Taking Defillama’s data as a reference again, we find that the week with the all‑time peak was the second‑to‑last of August 2025, and at the beginning of October weekly volumes exceeded $96 billion.
After a normal retracement, problems began at the end of November, when volumes had already more than halved compared to the previous month’s peak.
The weekly low of this cycle was actually reached at the end of December, when it even fell below $26 billion, but during the Christmas holidays it is obvious that volumes are so reduced. In fact, by the second week of January they had already climbed back above $40 billion.
At the end of February, however, another weekly low was hit, at just over $27 billion, although in the first half of March weekly trading volumes on Hyperliquid had returned above $51 billion.
The point is that since then they have been fading, down to the aforementioned $37.2 billion in the week that has just ended.
Looking instead at monthly volumes, with April not yet over, the peak was again recorded in August 2025 with $396 billion, followed by a drop to $169 billion in December.
From January through March inclusive they were always above $200 billion, but April’s $156 billion, with only four days left until the end of the month, is not very encouraging.
Perps on DEXs
Taking all perp futures trading on DEXs as a reference, things do not change much. After all, Hyperliquid clearly dominates this segment.
In this case, however, the week that has just ended is the weakest overall since the end of July 2025.
It ended in fact with only $119 billion in trades, compared for example to $137 billion the previous week and $169 billion at the end of February.
Moreover, at the beginning of February an annual peak of more than $290 billion was reached, although still far from the absolute all‑time weekly high of $342 billion in November 2025.
It is worth noting that the overall figure that includes all DEXs seems more solid than the one that concerns only Hyperliquid, even though in the week just ended it hit the lowest point of recent months. Most likely the downward trend is less pronounced at the overall level than it is on Hyperliquid’s DEX alone.
This suggests that Hyperliquid is paradoxically suffering more than other DEXs as a whole, but this is probably only because it dominates this market unchallenged.
The reasons for the decline
This decline, however, seems to be due more to a structural trend than to recent contingent causes.
In fact, the drop began after the price peaks of October 2025, and the perp market on DEXs cooled together with the prices of various cryptocurrencies over the past six months.
The hypothesis is that the reduction in volatility, and especially in hype, has generated a decline in speculative trading, along with a withdrawal of liquidity from the DEXs themselves.
At the same time, however, there has also been a normalization after last year’s exceptional boom, when perps on DEXs almost tripled cumulative volume.
On top of all this comes the spread of an increasingly risk‑off sentiment, and the withdrawal of retail capital.
Hyperliquid is simply no exception, even though it still maintains its dominance in this specific sector.
Underlying all this, of course, is the exhaustion of the 2025 speculation cycle.
Indeed, right after the all‑time high in October, the on‑chain derivatives market simply entered a phase of physiological cooling, which is still ongoing and could last for several more months.
In addition, Hyperliquid itself is facing some challenges at this time.
Hyperliquid’s challenges
The first challenge it is facing is increased competition.
New protocols such as Aster, edgeX and Lighter are in fact making inroads, taking market share away from Hyperliquid by offering aggressive incentives and “zero‑fee” commissions to attract liquidity.
Another important factor is farming saturation, because much of Hyperliquid’s initial explosion was driven by expectations for the airdrop and the launch of the HYPE token. With the token now fully traded, and the points campaigns having normalized, many “airdrop farmers” have moved to newer protocols.
The biggest challenge, however, is related to the relative stagnation of the crypto market as a whole.
Volatility has decreased, and perps thrive precisely on volatility. If the price moves sideways, speculative trading activity drops dramatically.
There is also an ongoing migration toward spot markets, particularly because in the current context funding rates are often unstable or excessively expensive.
