Hyperliquid bulls canceled me for this tweet
So let’s talk facts:
1. OI
While BTC open interest on HL is $2.3B, Phoenix sits at just $2M (around 1000x smaller)
But context matters:
Phoenix is still in closed beta
HL needed around half a year to reach a TOTAL of $10M OI and almost a full year to hit $100M
2. Fees
- Phoenix Opening/Closing: 0.035% (Taker)
- HL Opening/Closing: 0.045% (Taker)
For commodities, HL fees go up to 0.09% (Taker)
That means Phoenix is at least 20% cheaper on roundtrip trades. For commodities, it can be up to 6x cheaper while funding rates stay relatively similar
3. Spread
Phoenix already has some of the tightest spreads on Solana at around 0.011%
HL is still roughly 10x tighter with spreads around 0.001%
That said, slippage on Phoenix is currently much higher too
4.
@toly bull posting Phoenix
Jeff and Xulian cold dmed hundreds of people, promoted HL in NFT Discord servers, and more
There’s nothing wrong with being a salesman for your own product or ecosystem
I respect both Jeff and someone like Toly, who could literally spend all day drunk somewhere in the Bahamas but still chooses to push Solana builders
So what’s better currently?
Obviously HL (and yes, I love HL)
Lower fees are nice, but these things matter more:
- liquidity depth
- spread quality
- latency
- order book resilience
- user retention
- trading tools, etc.
Phoenix is still in baby shoes. You can’t expect a protocol in closed beta to operate at the same level as HL already
And competition is healthy for the space
If you genuinely believe in crypto and mainstream adoption, do you really think there will only be one perps platform?
Every major industry has multiple winners
And I believe Phoenix has what it takes to compete with HL in the coming months or years
In the end, this was never really about fees themselves
It was about how effectively you can market and generate maximum engagement for the underlying protocol
And judging by the reactions… it worked