The decentralized trading platform “Based,” built on Hyperliquid and backed by Ethena Labs, surged into the top 10 blockchain protocols by 24-hour revenue, according to data from DeFiLlama. This milestone highlights the rapid growth of Hyperliquid’s ecosystem amid intensifying competition for its native stablecoin USDH issuance.
Based is a trading platform integrated with Hyperliquid, a high-performance Layer-1 blockchain and decentralized perpetuals exchange known for its speed and low latency. It leverages Ethena’s synthetic dollar infrastructure (USDe and USDtb) for enhanced liquidity and stability.
The platform focuses on derivatives trading, spot auctions, and tokenized assets, benefiting from Hyperliquid’s HyperEVM for seamless DeFi operations. Per DeFiLlama’s real-time metrics, “Based” generated significant fees in the last 24 hours, propelled by Hyperliquid’s overall trading volume exceeding $3-5 billion daily.
This placed it among elite protocols like Tether (USDT), Circle (USDC), and Ethena itself, which dominate fee generation through stablecoin yields and transaction volumes. Ethena Labs, the protocol behind the USDe synthetic stablecoin, has deepened its integration with Hyperliquid.
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On September 9, Ethena proposed issuing Hyperliquid’s USDH stablecoin, fully backed by its USDtb token collateralized by BlackRock’s BUIDL tokenized fund. The bid includes: Pledging 95% of USDH reserve revenue back to the Hyperliquid community via HYPE token buybacks and ecosystem funds.
Covering all migration costs from USDC to USDH. Committing $75-150 million in incentives to boost adoption. Partnerships with Anchorage Digital for issuance and Securitize for tokenized real-world assets like equities.
This proposal positions Ethena as a frontrunner in a competitive race against bidders like Paxos, Frax Finance, Sky formerly MakerDAO, Agora, and Native Markets. A community vote on the USDH issuer is scheduled for September 14, 2025 (results pending as of September 16).
Hyperliquid has been a revenue powerhouse in DeFi
In August 2025, it hit an all-time high monthly trading volume of $405.8 billion in perpetual contracts, generating an estimated $1.3 billion in annualized revenue. For the week ending September 1, it ranked in the top 5 protocols by fees, behind only Tether, Circle, and Ethena.
With just 11 employees, Hyperliquid achieved $330 billion in monthly volume by August, outpacing many established chains. Its “Assistance Fund” (AF) uses revenue for HYPE token buybacks, reducing supply and aligning incentives. No VC unlocks or heavy sell pressure further bolsters its tokenomics.
Hyperliquid’s revenue often surpasses Ethereum and Solana combined on peak days (e.g., 3.5x Ethereum in February 2025). At a $40-45 billion FDV for HYPE, it’s seen as undervalued relative to peers like Solana’s $200B+ market cap, with projections for top-10 status by year-end.
This development underscores the convergence of stablecoin innovation and high-throughput DeFi. If Ethena wins the USDH bid, it could unlock $220 million in additional annual revenue for Hyperliquid while reducing reliance on USDC/USDT currently $5.7B in liquidity.
For traders, “Based” offers institutional-grade tools with yields from BlackRock-backed assets, potentially attracting more volume amid crypto’s bull cycle. However, risks like oracle dependencies and market volatility remain.
The crypto community on X is buzzing, with maxis calling Hyperliquid “the future of DeFi” due to its fair launch and performance. Watch for USDH vote outcomes and “Based” revenue updates on DeFiLlama for the next moves.
Ethereum Foundation Rebrands Security Team to “Privacy Stewards of Ethereum”
The Ethereum Foundation announced a significant rebranding and strategic shift for its privacy-focused team, formerly known as the “Privacy & Scaling Explorations” (PSE) team.
The group has been renamed Privacy Stewards of Ethereum (PSE), emphasizing a “problem-first” approach to address Ethereum’s surveillance vulnerabilities rather than purely speculative cryptography research.
This rebranding coincides with the release of a comprehensive roadmap aimed at embedding end-to-end on-chain privacy across Ethereum’s technical stack, making privacy the default experience rather than an optional add-on. The initiative underscores growing concerns about blockchain transparency enabling global surveillance, especially with advancing AI tools for data analysis.
Without these enhancements, Ethereum risks becoming “the backbone of global surveillance rather than global freedom,” potentially driving users and institutions to alternative networks.
The roadmap draws inspiration from Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin’s April 2025 privacy advocacy, which highlighted needs for anonymous payments, application-level privacy, secure data access, and network obfuscation.
Key Components of the Roadmap
The PSE roadmap is structured around three core pillars to achieve seamless, cost-effective, and compliant privacy solutions for use cases like finance, identity, governance, and decentralized applications (dApps). These include protocol-level changes, infrastructure improvements, networking protections, and wallet integrations.
Private Writes: Enables private on-chain actions (e.g., transfers, governance votes) to be as cheap and seamless as public ones, reducing reliance on transparent ledgers.
Development of PlasmaFold, a new Layer 2 (L2) design using zero-knowledge (ZK) proofs for private transfers without “exit games” (fraud-proof delays).- Proof-of-concept (PoC) targeted for debut at Devconnect conference in Buenos Aires, Argentina). Integration with tools like Railgun and Privacy Pools for “shielded balances” in wallets.
Private Reads; Protects user identities and intents when querying blockchain data or interacting with apps, preventing metadata leaks via surveillance tools. Privacy-preserving Remote Procedure Call (RPC) service to shield queries. Experiments with Oblivious RAM (ORAM) and Private Information Retrieval (PIR) for network-level protections.
Upcoming “State of Private Voting 2025” report summarizing progress on anonymous, verifiable voting protocols (e.g., using homomorphic encryption or ZK-SNARKs). Private Proving; Makes ZK proof generation and verification faster, cheaper, and accessible on everyday devices, enabling “prove anywhere” without high computational demands.
Optimizations for ZK proofs on mobile/smart devices. Collaborations for confidential DeFi (e.g., shielded lending pools) and institutional privacy frameworks. Potential Layer 1 (L1) opcodes or privacy-focused virtual machines for censorship-resistant privacy.
The PSE team plans to collaborate with Ethereum’s core protocol developers to implement necessary L1 changes, such as new opcodes for ZK verification. They are also forming an Institutional Privacy Task Force to align with global regulations and explore wallet enhancements (e.g., sphinx protocol for mixing).
This holistic approach aims for widespread adoption, where privacy is performant, user-friendly, and integrated into ecosystems like DeFi (handling over $100 billion in TVL as of mid-2025).
This move positions Ethereum as a leader in privacy-preserving blockchain technology, countering criticisms of public ledgers’ limitations for real-world commerce (e.g., supply chains or financial operations).
By prioritizing intermediary-free, censorship-resistant privacy, PSE seeks to unlock institutional adoption while maintaining Ethereum’s permissionless ethos.
Early reactions on platforms like X highlight excitement around PlasmaFold and ZK advancements, with users noting its potential to make Ethereum “privacy-first” for everyday use.