Best Decentralised Exchanges
Top rated: Uniswap 8.7
Swap venues where you never hand over your keys.
5rated →
5.8/10
Perpetual DEXs
Company file: Hyperliquid, owners, incidents →
Hyperliquid
A purpose-built chain running a genuine on-chain order book, with execution closer to a centralised exchange than anything else in this category. The record has dents: validators overrode the JELLY market price in March 2025, the 10 Oct 2025 crash triggered its first cross-margin auto-deleveraging, and POPCAT manipulation in November 2025 left HLP depositors with about $4.9M of bad debt.
Best for: On-chain order-book trading that feels like a centralised venue
Company file: Hyperliquid, owners, incidents →How this score was reached
5.8 is the weighted average of the five pillar findings below, minus one published deduction. Real weaknesses. Suitable only for a narrow, informed use case.
- Custody & Security25%
- 6.8
- Cost & Fee Transparency25%
- 8.7
- Regulation & Legal Standing5%
- 5.4
- Performance & Reliability35%
- 8.0
- Access & Support10%
- 8.2
Non-custodial: collateral sits in the bridge contract and the chain, not with a company. But the validator set delisted JELLY and settled it at a price it chose within minutes in March 2025, and in November 2025 POPCAT manipulation left the depositor-funded HLP vault with about $4.9M of bad debt, with no reimbursement announced.
Entry-tier perps cost 0.045% taker and 0.015% maker, discounted up to 40% for staked HYPE. Funding is exchanged between traders with no protocol cut; withdrawal is a flat 1 USDC.
No licence anywhere. The terms bar US persons, Ontario residents and sanctioned jurisdictions, enforced by IP blocking at the interface rather than the protocol.
Deep books and tight execution, and it absorbed more than $10B of liquidations on 10 Oct 2025 without bad debt, though only by auto-deleveraging profitable positions for the first time in over two years. A 37-minute API outage in July 2025 and repeated manipulation of thin markets count against it.
Fast, capable interface with no account or KYC. Documentation is good; the product assumes you already trade derivatives.
Deductions applied
- −2.0Unrecovered user-fund loss. Users lost funds in the last 24 months and were not made whole. Applies once, regardless of cause.
Strengths
- Order-book execution closer to a centralised venue than any other on-chain option here
- Published fees: 0.045% taker, 0.015% maker at the entry tier, no protocol cut on funding
- Took more than $10B of liquidations on 10 Oct 2025 without bad debt
Against it
- Validators overrode the JELLY market price in March 2025, a trust assumption the chain makes quietly
- HLP depositors absorbed about $4.9M of bad debt from POPCAT manipulation in November 2025
- Thin, high-leverage markets have been manipulated more than once despite later open-interest caps
The best book on-chain, and a vault that keeps paying for thin markets
Hyperliquid runs a genuine order book on a purpose-built chain, and its execution is the closest thing in this category to a centralised exchange. On 10 Oct 2025 it absorbed more than $10B of liquidations without bad debt, though only by auto-deleveraging profitable positions for the first time in over two years.
The weak point is market structure. In March 2025 validators delisted JELLY and settled it at a price they chose within minutes; in November 2025 POPCAT manipulation left the HLP vault with about $4.9M of bad debt that depositors carried, with no reimbursement announced. That unrecovered loss carries our fund-loss penalty and is the main reason it ranks last in this table.
Frequently asked questions
Is Hyperliquid safe for leveraged positions?+
Your collateral is not held by a company, and margin and liquidation logic run on-chain. The risks are the validator set, which overrode the JELLY price in March 2025, and thin high-leverage markets, which have been manipulated more than once. If you deposit in HLP, you are underwriting those losses.
Hyperliquid or dYdX?+
Hyperliquid has the better execution; dYdX has the longer record but halted for 7h43m on 10 Oct 2025 and its developer moved its focus to Arcus on 30 Jun 2026. Both carry a penalty in our rating and they finish within a tenth of a point of each other.
What are the fees on Hyperliquid?+
At the entry tier, 0.045% taker and 0.015% maker on perps, with up to 40% off for staked HYPE. Funding passes between traders with no protocol cut, and withdrawing to Arbitrum costs a flat 1 USDC.
Assessed by
Blockchain Security Researcher · September 27, 2026
◆ Disclosure
CoinRadar Daily is a non-commercial project. We have no commercial relationship with Hyperliquid, earn nothing from any link on this page, and carry no advertising or sponsorship anywhere on the site. Findings rest on public sources; we did not open an account or transact.
Rubric v2.0How we score →
The rest of the perpetual dexs table
- 04Hyperliquid — you are hereOn-chain order-book trading that feels like a centralised venue5.8
Related tables
How we score →Independent, rubric-scored tables for the services behind this story.
Best Crypto Trading Tools
Top rated: TradingView 8.5
Terminals, bots, screeners and portfolio trackers.
4rated →
Best Crypto Exchanges
Top rated: Kraken 8.4
Centralised venues that hold your funds while you trade.
6rated →