Ark Invest CEO Cathie Wood Likens Hyperliquid To Early Solana

ARK Invest CEO Cathie Wood likened ”new kid on the block” Hyperliquid to early-stage Solana.

“It’s exciting,” Wood said on the Master Investor podcast. ”It reminds me of Solana in the earlier days, and Solana has proven its worth and is, you know, there with the big boys.”

ARK Invest Still Waiting To See How Hyperliquid Performs

Hyperliquid is a decentralized exchange (DEX) that was built on its own layer-1 blockchain network. While the platform is optimized for perpetual futures and derivatives trading, it does also offer support for spot and other trading operations.

The platform splits execution into two main components. Order book operations such as matching, margin, liquidations, etc. are managed on HyperCore, while HyperEVM is the platform’s smart contract and general execution layer that interacts with the exchange’s core. 

In February this year, the smart contract functionality launched on the mainnet. Following this launch, Hyperliquid gained rapid traction in the market, with the platform processing $319 billion in perpetual trading volume in July alone. 

By the middle of this year, Hyperliquid accounted for a large share of the DEX perpetual trading market as well. According to an Aug. 8 report by OAK Research, Hyperliquid’s share of the market climbed to more than 80%. 

That performance is likely why Wood says Hyperliquid reminds her of Solana’s early days. During the interview, however, she did not disclose whether her firm has a position in Hyperliquid. 

“Hyperliquid is the new kid on the block,” she said, adding that her firm is “waiting to see” how Hyperliquid’s performance in the market plays out. 

Following Wood’s remarks, Hyperliquid’s native token HYPE has seen its price rise more than 5% in the past 24 hours to trade at $46.87 as of 3:23 a.m. EST, according to data from CoinMarketCap.

HYPE price chart (Source: CoinMarketCap)

Hyperliquid Launches NFT Initiative Amid Ecosystem Volatility And Growing Competition

As Wood and ARK Invest wait to see whether Hyperliquid can establish itself as a major player in the Web3 space, the project is facing growing competition in the market. 

Recently, a new DEX platform called Aster, which is backed by Binance founder Changpeng Zhao (CZ), has started taking the market by storm. 

On Sept. 21, Aster was even able to outperform Hyperliquid in 24-hour volume. Data from DefiLlama showed that Aster facilitated approximately $793 million in transactions on the day. This was more than the $462 million in volumes that took place on Hyperliquid during the same period.

In the past 24 hours, trading volumes reached $14.13 billion across all of the DEX platforms in the market. Of this total, Hyperliquid accounted for $639.83 million of the activity. This ranks it as the fifth-most active platform in terms of 24-hour volumes. 

Meanwhile, Aster’s activity has slumped down to $206.69 million in the last trading day, placing it at number twelve in terms of 24-hour activity, DefiLlama data shows. 

Amid the new competition from Aster, Hyperliquid also saw its Kinetiq Staked HYPE (HYPE) token briefly lose its peg between Sept. 24 and 27, according to PeckShield. 

#PeckShieldAlert Between Sept. 24–27, $kHYPE (@kinetiq_xyz Staked HYPE) briefly deviated from its peg, bottoming at 0.8802 against $WHYPE.

The peg has since been restored. pic.twitter.com/XRa293gPvr

— PeckShieldAlert (@PeckShieldAlert) September 28, 2025

The peg has since been restored, the firm said. 

Over the weekend, a Hyperliquid-based lending protocol called Hyperdrive also lost around $782K worth of tokens following a smart contract exploit. 

The attacker was able to drain two Hyperdrive pools. These were the Primary USDT0 Market and the Treasury USDT Market. This incident is the third notable security incident that has affected Hyperliquid’s layer-1 network.

Following the setbacks in the last week, Hyperliquid’s team has launched a new community initiative to reward its backers. On Sunday, the project confirmed that it distributed 4,600 Hypurr NFTs (non-fungible tokens) on the HyperEVM.

The aim behind the initiative is to “share a memento with those who believed in and contributed early on to Hyperliquid’s growth,” the project said in an X post. 

4,313 of those NFTs went to investors who participated in the project’s Genesis Event, while 144 of the digital assets were distributed to the Hyper Foundation. Another 143 NFTs were then sent to core contributors, which include Hyperliquid Labs, NFT artists, and other contributors, the team said in the X post. 

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