Hyperliquid is innovating on a lot of fronts, but the ticker listing auction (aka HIP-2) is one of the most important. Today we’re going to run down the basics of the auction, look at some sales data and how the resulting tickers did, and share why the HL auction is an improvement on the way things have been done in the past.

First, for those catching up: Hyperliquid is a decentralized exchange built on its own optimized L1. A lot of crypto longtimers are extremely bullish on HL, thanks to its combination of performance and progressive decentralization-friendly tech and mission. While Hyperliquid is best known for offering perpetual swaps, spot trading is gaining interest, and HL now has an EVM layer that enables smart contracts and dapps of all sorts … for example, Hypurrfi, our fast-growing lending-and-stablecoin protocol. You should read about our road map and vision, and check out the very rewarding and intuitive app.

Getting a token listed on a centralized exchange has always been a hodge-podge of personal connections and big payments. Decentralized exchanges can have even more obscure listing processes, at least if you want your ticker cleanly searchable. Hyperliquid changes that by auctioning off one ticker slot every 31 hours, in a process that’s transparent, decentralized, prevents ticker collisions, and sends its proceeds to the Hyperliquid Assistance Fund. Each slot is “blank,” so to speak – once you win, you get to name your own ticker, as long as it hasn’t already been claimed.

Anyone who wins a ticker can then set the supply mechanics how they wish and launch on Hyperliquid spot markets at a date they wish. Many projects have purchased tickers and are waiting for a future launch date. Once ready to deploy, the ticker winner customizes parameters and self-funds the liquidity as instructed in the HIP-2 documentation, with USDC for each bid level they want to establish. 

Read more about the Hyperliquid Ecosystem: EVM Bridging and the Coming Liquidity Flood

Tickers are priced in USDC and use what’s known as a “Dutch Auction,” which starts at twice the price of the previous finalized auction and moves down until a buyer pulls the trigger. You can check current and recent action at Hypurrscan.io/dashboard; ticker auctions are along the left rail. 

The Dutch auction mechanism can reward patience - tickers got much more expensive with the wave of new Hyperliquid features late last year, but they’ve since come back down a bit.

Perps Ticker Auctions and HIP-3

Recently, the Hyperliquid Team announced HIP-3, a version of the ticker auction for perps listings. This auction system has a different structure, so it is not addressed in this post. However, there are exciting opportunities and developments in lending for permissionless perps markets, so will be explored in later entries.

Learning from Hyperliquid Ticker Auctions

The Hyperliquid ticker auction accomplishes a lot of great things, but near the top is its ability to generate information. Ultimately that’s the brilliance of markets: as @hyperlauncherai writes in this post, ticker prices are revealed preference: specifically, they reveal exactly how badly new projects want a listing on the network.

Unsurprisingly, ticker prices went up sharply as Hyperliquid’s airdrop and staking rollout caught the industry’s attention. In early December, tickers like SOLV went for under $130,000, before auctions spiked to nearly $1 million on December 17, when the auction winner took the ticker GOD (which is a pretty appropriate choice when you drop a milly). Tickers drifted back down towards $300,000 over the holiday season, with a few spikes like NEKO and HWTR paying more than $400k for slots.

A lot of these early, high-dollar ticker slot prices were generated by established teams. $MON was a record-breaking slot auction back in early December, won by the existing Mon protocol, a purchase financed from a single address. The still record-high price to create $GOD was paid from one address and has been publicly claimed by Infinigods, backed by Pantera Capital.

A couple of months later, ticker auctions have calmed down substantially, now ranging around $20,000. This dropoff doesn’t track any decline in the Hyperliquid ecosystem, so it tells us a lot about the huge value of being early in a promising new ecosystem. 

At the same time, it seems extremely healthy for Hyperliquid that entry points are so affordable now, compared to the tens of millions of dollars that have been rumored as listing fees for centralized exchanges. If you can list for twenty grand on Hyperliquid, it’s a huge incentive to simply skip the CEX route. That should mean more assets will be available first (or only) on HL, driving more users to the network.

At HypurrFi, we’re ready to help nurture even lower-cap tokens, while keeping our borrowers safe: we’ve recently rolled out isolated lending markets for long tail assets.

Case Studies: After the Auction

But what do ticker auctions tell us about what comes next? Does the price paid for a ticker give us any hint about what to expect once a token launches?

One signal comes from LiquidLaunch’s $LIQD, which deployed from an above-average $527,600 slot auction won on January 4, and initially distributed to over 3,000 backers. The top early holders of $LIQD were a mix of those holding only LIQD, suggesting interest in the specific project; while several hold an array of recently-launched tokens, suggesting they’re speculating widely. It quickly became the third most traded token on the Hyperliquid spot market, and is a top ten HL spot token by trading volume today.

At the other end of the spectrum is $HYENA, which won its ticker for a (relative) song at $383,700 on December 20. $HYENA raised small amounts from many addresses ahead of winning the auction, and had an unusually broad initial distribution to over 7,000 addresses. The token certainly seems to have found its audience, with many holders very active in the degenerate meme trenches. But in contrast to LIQD, $HYENA is a self-identified meme token, and it has dropped well out of the top ten coins by Mcap, so being early isn’t everything.

Finally, $DEPIN won its slot for $485,000 in late December. The token is linked to a hardware wallet project that claims partnerships with Berachain and Bybit. While some big early $DEPIN holders traded other tokens, the overwhelming majority held only $DEPIN and USDC. The token’s trading volume is modest, and limited early distribution might have something to do with the token’s relatively strong price performance (at least prior to the recent product delay). But again, months later, DEPIN still sits just outside of today’s top ten HL tokens by market cap.

This is just a holistic overview, since we’re dealing with a small data pool and many variables, including some declines in $HYPE that impacted ecosystem tokens in turn. But it makes intuitive sense that lower ticker price entries may attract meme coins or other less substantive projects, and that memecoins have underperformed since last December.

Why the Auction is Good

Finally, some quick thoughts on the benefits the slot auction might have for the Hyperliquid ecosystem. Most obviously the decision to send ticker auction proceeds to the HL Assistance Fund is a massive shot across the bow of every centralized exchange. The big advantage is transparency and trust: the lack of clarity of listing policies at CEX’s can put an asterisk of uncertainty next to a token listing, especially when you mix in the suspicion of back-room deals with VC-aligned tokens. Some FUD regarding Hyperliquid has actually reflected this: Venture capitalists and other longtime insiders seem distressed by their inability to do anything but participate in the auction with everyone else.

On the other hand, though, the ticker auction offers a healthy restriction compared to existing DEXs. Setting aside prices, only one new ticker can be created every 31 hours, limiting the number of outright shitcoins that can be spun up for a few days or weeks, then abandoned. Even current entry prices around $20,000 provide a kind of speed check on pure degeneracy on the Hyperliquid Core layer (though remember things are different on the HyperEVM). 

So the ticker auction isn’t just more transparent and fair - it creates incentives for projects to deliver value to the ecosystem. And with swirling discussion about the extractive nature of some token strategies, that might be Hyperliquid’s biggest advantage of all.

HypurrFi & the Ticker Auction

To date HypurrFi has successfully acquired two Hyperliquid tickers. $USDXL was acquired in 2025 and is live now, and the $HYFI ticker was acquired in 2024 and does not have a live market at time of publication.

Deposit and Borrow from HypurrFi lending markets on Hyperliquid here.

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