Hyperliquid Market Depth Fell 84.6% in Year Through Nov. 1

Hyperliquid's median dollar depth within five basis points of market prices fell 84.6% in the year through Nov. 1, 2026, while the number of active quoting account families also declined, according to an order-book comparison covering 86 long-tail assets listed on Hyperliquid, Binance and OKX. The sample covered tokens with leverage below 10x, measured from Nov. 1, 2025, to Nov. 1, 2026. The contraction was not unique to Hyperliquid, but it was steeper than at either centralized peer.

The scale of the comparison matters. Across 38 markets comparable at 10 basis points, median depth declined 82% on Hyperliquid, 61% on Binance and 78% on OKX. In plain terms, Hyperliquid lost roughly four-fifths of its closest-to-price liquidity in twelve months, roughly a fifth more, in relative terms, than Binance.

The study also benchmarked Hyperliquid directly against Binance for matching tokens. The median ratio of Hyperliquid depth to Binance depth within five basis points fell 57.5% over the year. That ratio measures relative competitiveness for identical assets; it is a separate figure from the absolute declines across the 38 comparable markets.

What do token quantities show?

Dollar figures can mislead when token prices move, so the study indexed quantities with November 2025 set to 100. Token quantity within five basis points fell to 28 a year later. Across the first 20 order-book levels, however, token quantity rose to 127, while the dollar-depth index stood at 61. The takeaway is simple: liquidity moved away from prices closest to the market even as total token quantities deeper in the book increased.

Quoting participation thinned as well. Across 72 markets, the median count of account families posting at least $1,000 on each side within 25 basis points declined from 7.64 to 6.39. After adjusting for token prices, active maker accounts declined in 58 of those markets. Concentration, meanwhile, eased in one respect: in a separate sample of 80 markets comparing one full week a year apart, the largest account family's median share of executed volume from resting orders fell from 25.2% to 14.6%.

What pressures explain the decline?

The data describe fee differentials and congestion quotas as candidate pressures, without quantifying either contribution. Among 54 account families grouped by trading volume, the lowest-volume quartile paid 0.961 basis points in historical maker fees, while the highest-volume quartile received a 0.236-basis-point rebate. That is a gap of roughly 1.20 basis points before hedging and adverse-selection costs, a spread that can decide whether smaller market makers stay in the queue at all.

Hyperliquid's congestion rules compound the problem for smaller participants. Block space is allocated by each address's weighted share of resting orders from the previous UTC day, and during heavy congestion an address can use up to twice that share. Because the allowance depends on prior-day order share, a shrinking share can mean less capacity to place orders, and therefore less ability to rebuild share — a feedback loop that favors incumbents.

How concentrated is remaining liquidity?

A Nov. 10 snapshot of 256 HIP-4 contracts found four professional market-making wallets supplying 47% of depth within 25 basis points of the midpoint. Near-price liquidity now rests heavily on a handful of wallets. If any of them pulls back, the book thins further.

Taken together, the figures document lower near-market depth, fewer account families meeting quoting thresholds, and possible fee- and congestion-driven pressures. The study does not isolate how much each factor contributed to the full-year decline, and that gap is the open question for Hyperliquid's market structure heading into 2027.