HyENA, a perpetual-futures venue built on Hyperliquid, is shutting down after more than $4 billion in trading volume, saying the network's growing preference for USDC has weakened the case for its USDe-based model.
- HyENA was created by the team behind Based, a trading interface for Hyperliquid, and built around USDe, Ethena's yield-bearing synthetic dollar.
- Instead of posting ordinary stablecoins as idle trading collateral, users could trade perpetual futures with USDe while continuing to earn rewards on their margin.
- The model attracted more than 12,000 traders, processed over $4 billion in cumulative volume and distributed nearly 2.5 million USDe in margin rewards, according to HyENA.
But the team said in a Friday post on X that the environment it was built for has changed.
The HyENA team
Hyperliquid increasingly revolves around USDC
Hyperliquid, one of crypto's largest decentralized derivatives platforms, previously offered room for several stablecoins and synthetic dollars to compete for trading and collateral use.
HyENA entered that market through HIP-3, a Hyperliquid framework that allows outside teams to launch their own perpetual-futures markets while using Hyperliquid's underlying trading infrastructure.
- One of HIP-3's important features is that market operators can choose their collateral asset.
- HyENA chose USDe and made productive margin its main selling point.
- That gave it a different proposition from traditional perpetual exchanges, where traders commonly post stablecoins such as USDC as collateral without earning the yield those assets might otherwise generate.
But Hyperliquid has since made what many saw as a surprising U-turn, moving back toward USDC, Circle's dollar-backed stablecoin, after previously distancing itself from it.
Another alternative dollar heads for the exit
The change follows the earlier wind-down of USDH. Native Markets launched USDH as a Hyperliquid-native stablecoin after winning the right to issue the network's ticker in 2025.
The project was intended to keep more of the economics generated by stablecoin reserves inside the Hyperliquid ecosystem instead of sending them to an outside issuer.
But that strategy was eventually overtaken by the deeper USDC alignment. Native Markets began phasing USDH out, while Coinbase gained the right to acquire certain USDH brand assets and users were encouraged to move toward USDC.
Unlike USDH, USDe itself is not shutting down. Rather, HyENA is concluding that building a dedicated perpetual market around USDe collateral no longer makes enough sense on a platform becoming increasingly optimized around USDC.
$4 billion traded, but no token on the way out
HyENA said its markets will be delisted sequentially between Aug. 31 and Sept. 2, with one market removed each hour.
Open positions will settle automatically at a final mark price based on the preceding one-hour oracle average, while remaining margin will return to users' spot balances. The project said no user funds are at risk.
- Deposits in its HLPe product can also be redeemed one-for-one with accrued rewards, subject to a one-day redemption period.
- And users holding HyENA Points shouldn't expect a shutdown token.
- The project said its rewards program ended in June, the points have no monetary value and there will be no snapshot, conversion or distribution. It also said no HyENA token is planned.