The Hyperliquid Altcoin That’s Getting Interesting Again

In my opinion, Hyperliquid DerivativesHyperliquid is a Decentralized Exchange and L1 for perpetual futures trading.View Profile” class=”stubHighlight”> Hyperliquid has one altcoin worth talking about: KNTQ.

The governance token for Kinetiq, Hyperliquid’s largest staking operation, sits on top of two core products: liquid-staked HYPE, primarily kHYPE, and Markets, Kinetiq’s own perpetuals exchange.

KNTQ is where the money lands. Revenue from staking, Markets, validator commissions, and the rest gets routed into KNTQ buybacks that flow to staked sKNTQ holders.

That said, today Kinetiq introduced a new revenue stream: Launch, a marketplace-as-a-service platform that gives deployers a path to crowdfund HIP-3 markets, kHYPE holders a new way to earn, and, with any luck, KNTQ more revenue.

Much of this is contingent on how Kinetiq’s faring thus far, so to make sure we accurately assess the impact Launch may have, we must look at how Kinetiq’s been holding up.

How It’s Faring

Kinetiq’s core strength is being the largest liquid staking protocol for HYPE, responsible for over 80% of the liquid-staked supply, with over $1B in TVL currently.

Share is not size, though, and kHYPE’s supply tells a less promising story. Total kHYPE supply has dropped from its high of 41.5M last August to 15.6M as of May 31st, a 62% decline. Alongside that, liquid-staked HYPE as a share of total staked HYPE has fallen from 10.42% to 4.42% over the same period, even as overall HYPE staking has grown slightly, to 43% of supply.

So, while Kinetiq’s share of the liquid-staking market has held steady or even increased, its core staking business is shrinking. HYPE holders appear to be favoring native staking over liquid staking, likely because the DeFi that gives liquid staking its purpose has stagnated while its risks have piled up, reducing the HYPE flowing through kHYPE and weighing directly on Kinetiq’s revenue.

Kinetiq’s HIP-3 exchange, Markets, tells a similar story of compression, running into the same wall every HIP-3 venue hits: Trade.xyz, the largest HIP-3 exchange, owns the liquidity, and traders go where the liquidity already is.