Hyperliquid (HYPE) Burn

Hyperliquid is an on-chain perp exchange that collects perp and spot trading fees in USDC. Since December 2024 nearly all of it — 98% over 615 days by this ledger's measurement — flows into the Assistance Fund, a system wallet at 0xfefefefefefefefefefefefefefefefefefefefe that does one thing: place HYPE buy orders on the HYPE/USDC spot book every few minutes, tens to hundreds of tokens per fill. From 23 Dec 2024 to date it has spent $1.211B of $1.232B revenue and bought 35.68M HYPE. Its biggest day was 10 Oct 2025 — the market-wide liquidation cascade — when it bought 232,010 HYPE worth $8.7M in 24 hours, because that day's record volume pushed fees up with it.

Three things to keep in mind when reading buyback figures. One: the money is real fees, not newly issued tokens. Two: the fund buys in USD terms, so as HYPE's price rises the token count falls — in August 2025 it bought 2.54M HYPE for $110.5M, in August 2026 only 729K HYPE for $50.5M; reading "the burn is shrinking" without looking at price is a misread. Three: every fund fill is public through the Hyperliquid API; this ledger reads each one (over 20,000 fills in the last 30 days alone) and reconciles against DefiLlama revenue, matching almost exactly.

"HYPE burn" on ranking sites is usually one number, but it is two fundamentally different things. The first layer is permanent burn: HyperEVM gas paid in HYPE is destroyed, and so is the HYPE paid by winners of HIP-1 listing auctions (a Dutch auction every 31 hours for spot ticker slots). Total supply has therefore fallen from 1B to 998,970,615 — 1.03M HYPE that is truly gone.

The second layer is 45 times larger: 46.94M HYPE sitting in the Assistance Fund. On 24 Dec 2025 validators voted with 85% consensus to treat the fund's HYPE as burned — excluded from circulating supply, never to be sold. Technically, though, it remains a balance in a system wallet, and the fund's name states its original purpose: assisting users in unforeseen incidents. The fund's cost basis is $1.27B, an average of $27.10 per HYPE — far below where HYPE has traded since the second half of 2025.

That is why this page shows "permanent burn" and "fund buying" separately before combining them. Combined, 47.97M HYPE has been withdrawn from circulation — 4.8% of the 1B max supply, or 16% measured against the 298.6M circulating. Other sites pick one denominator, so the same burn can read as 5% or 16%; both are correct, they answer different questions.

The 1B max supply splits into four blocks by today's on-chain numbers: 298.6M circulating (29.9%); 46.9M in the Assistance Fund (4.7%); 241.5M in the Hyper Labs wallet (24.2%) — mostly the locked 23.8% Core Contributors allocation; and 411.9M never issued (41.2%), the Future Emissions and community rewards pool. Put differently, 7 of every 10 HYPE have not reached the market.

29 Nov 2024 (TGE) was the largest unlock and so far the only meaningful one: 310M HYPE (31%) went straight to users through the genesis airdrop, alongside 60M for the Hyper Foundation budget, 3M community grants and 120K for HIP-2. No comparable cliff has happened since. The only new issuance running today is validator staking rewards, drawn from the unissued pool — DefiLlama estimates about 9.6M HYPE through early 2026, roughly a 2–2.5% annual yield on staked supply.

The Hyper Foundation has never published a dated unlock calendar. The published terms are only this: Core Contributors were locked for one year after TGE, then vest linearly, mostly completing in 2027–2028 with some continuing beyond. On-chain reality: the first round of 1.75M HYPE landed on 29 Nov 2025, exactly one year in; the next, 1.13M, on 6 Jan 2026; then a steady cadence around the 6th of each month, growing from 140K (Feb 2026) to 420–450K (May–Aug 2026). Core Contributors have received 5.36M HYPE in total. DefiLlama records each transfer from the Hyper Labs wallet after it happens, so the "next round" in the table above is projected from that cadence — not an official schedule, and this ledger labels it as such.

Set against the fund: over the last 30 days the Assistance Fund bought 727K HYPE, 1.9 times the projected unlock; since December 2025 it has bought over 11.5M against 5.36M unlocked. HYPE is one of very few vesting tokens where revenue-funded buying exceeds the potential selling from unlocks — the reverse of most 2024–2025 listings. The real variable is not the 6th-of-month cadence but the 411.9M Future Emissions: no schedule exists, and only the Hyper Foundation decides when it is tapped.

On 26 Aug 2026 Hyperliquid activated AQAv2 (Aligned Quote Asset v2): 90% of the yield generated by the exchange's USDC reserves — roughly $5B — is routed to the Assistance Fund to buy HYPE. Coinbase acts as treasury deployer and Circle as technical deployer; yield accrues in 30-day cycles and is transferred to the fund 8 days after each cycle ends, the first on 3 Oct 2026. Market estimates put it at $135–160M per year; Hyperliquid has not confirmed a figure.

What it means for the burn ledger: for the first time, HYPE buying no longer depends entirely on trading volume. At current fee revenue (~$50M/month), AQAv2 could add 20–25% more buying power — and it is a flow that tracks USD interest rates, not market volatility. From October 2026 the days the fund receives yield will show up as spikes in the revenue and buyback columns above; this ledger will break that part out once the data lands.