GammaSwap vs StakedHYPE

GammaSwap

GammaSwap is an innovative decentralized derivatives protocol that enables trading of volatility by allowing users to borrow LP positions from AMM liquidity pools, creating a market for going long or short on implied volatility without needing a traditional options exchange or order book. It is one of the most technically novel volatility products in DeFi, built for sophisticated traders who want directional exposure to price swings rather than just price direction. The core mechanism works by enabling traders to borrow Uniswap v3-compatible LP tokens from liquidity pools and pay a continuous borrow rate equal to the impermanent loss accrued by the LP position. This creates an elegant two-sided market: liquidity providers earn borrow fees that compensate them for IL risk, while volatility traders gain convex exposure to price movement. When assets move significantly in either direction, borrowed LP positions gain value relative to the borrow cost, effectively giving the trader a long-gamma position. For LPs seeking to hedge their impermanent loss exposure on HyperEVM AMMs, GammaSwap provides a natural counterparty. A liquidity provider who is short gamma can take an offsetting long-gamma position through GammaSwap, dramatically reducing the directional risk of market-making in volatile assets. This opens up AMM liquidity provision to a wider class of market participants who previously avoided it due to IL risk. GammaSwap operates without external price oracles as it derives all pricing purely from on-chain LP data and pool reserves, making it manipulation-resistant and fully permissionless. Any token pair with sufficient on-chain AMM liquidity can have a GammaSwap market created for it, enabling a long tail of volatility markets across HyperEVM assets. On HyperEVM, GammaSwap integrates with Uniswap v3-compatible concentrated liquidity DEXes to offer volatility products on Hyperliquid spot assets, complementing the perpetuals market with a new layer of derivatives exposure. The protocol is designed for quant traders, volatility arbitrageurs, and sophisticated DeFi participants who understand options greeks and want to express volatility views on-chain. GammaSwap has been audited and is backed by leading DeFi investors. Its novel approach to permissionless volatility trading positions it as a foundational primitive for the next generation of on-chain derivatives.

StakedHYPE

StakedHYPE is the first liquid staking protocol for HYPE, Hyperliquid's native token, deployed on HyperEVM on the day of the chain's public launch in February 2025. The protocol issues stHYPE — a liquid staking token (LST) that represents a user's staked HYPE position plus accruing validator rewards — allowing holders to maintain exposure to staking yields while retaining the ability to use stHYPE as DeFi collateral across the Hyperliquid ecosystem. Originally developed by Thunderhead Labs under founder Addison Spiegel, stHYPE was acquired by Valantis Labs in August 2025 and continues to operate under Valantis management. HOW IT WORKS Native HYPE staking occurs on HyperCore, where token holders delegate HYPE to validators who participate in Hyperliquid's Proof-of-Stake consensus. However, native staking locks tokens in the staking account during the delegation period, making them unavailable for DeFi use. StakedHYPE solves this illiquidity problem through a standard liquid staking wrapper. When a user deposits HYPE into the StakedHYPE protocol on HyperEVM, they receive stHYPE at a ratio that starts at 1:1 and increases over time as validator rewards accumulate. The protocol distributes staked HYPE across a curated set of high-performance validators, optimizing for reward yield and operational reliability. Validator rewards — paid in HYPE by the Hyperliquid protocol — flow back into the pool and are reflected in the rising exchange rate between stHYPE and HYPE. This means stHYPE is a rebasing-free accumulating token: holders do not see their token count increase, but each stHYPE becomes redeemable for more HYPE over time. stHYPE is an ERC-20 token on HyperEVM, making it composable with the full suite of HyperEVM DeFi protocols. Users can deposit stHYPE as collateral in lending protocols, provide it as liquidity in DEX pools, or hold it passively to earn staking yields without any active management. Unstaking involves a redemption process subject to the underlying HyperCore unbonding period. KEY FEATURES - First-Mover LST on HyperEVM: stHYPE launched on day one of HyperEVM, establishing first-mover network effects across integrations and DeFi protocols before competitors could deploy - Decentralized Validator Distribution: HYPE is distributed across a network of high-performance validators rather than concentrated in a single operator, reducing single-point-of-failure risk - DeFi Composability: stHYPE is accepted as collateral and liquidity across all major HyperEVM protocols including lending platforms, AMM pools, and yield aggregators - Accumulating Token Model: stHYPE appreciates in HYPE terms automatically without rebasing, simplifying accounting for integrated protocols - Valantis-Backed Infrastructure: Following acquisition, stHYPE benefits from Valantis's specialized LST DEX pools — the two largest DEX pools on HyperEVM by TVL, with over $500M in cumulative volume TEAM AND BACKING StakedHYPE was founded by Addison Spiegel through his company Thunderhead Labs. Spiegel launched the protocol on HyperEVM's first day and rapidly grew it to peak TVL of approximately $500M — a remarkable achievement for a day-one DeFi deployment on a nascent chain. In August 2025, Valantis Labs acquired the stHYPE protocol for an undisclosed sum. Valantis, a modular DEX protocol, integrated stHYPE into its core product strategy, leveraging specialized LST-focused liquidity pools. Spiegel joined Valantis as an advisor following the acquisition. Valantis is led by co-founder and CEO Deven Matthews, who has publicly articulated a vision to build stHYPE into a "liquidity network for all of Hyperliquid." The acquisition price and financial structure were not disclosed, and no investment bank or legal advisor names were released due to contractual restrictions. TRACTION AND METRICS StakedHYPE launched on February 18, 2025, concurrent with HyperEVM's public debut. It rapidly became the dominant liquid staking solution on the chain, accumulating approximately $500M in TVL at its peak — at that time representing a substantial share of all HyperEVM DeFi TVL. By the time of the Valantis acquisition in August 2025, TVL had settled to approximately $200M, reflecting broader market conditions and competition from secondary LST protocols such as Kinetiq (kHYPE). Valantis's LST-specific DEX pools for stHYPE and kHYPE represented the two largest DEX pools on HyperEVM, with approximately $60M in combined TVL and over $500M in cumulative trading volume as of August 2025. stHYPE has been integrated into virtually every major HyperEVM DeFi protocol, including lending markets, yield aggregators, and AMM pools, demonstrating its status as core infrastructure rather than an isolated product. HyperEVM as a whole had grown to over $2 billion in TVL across approximately 100 protocols by August 2025, making it one of the fastest-growing EVM chains since its February launch — context in which stHYPE's $200M TVL represents a meaningful portion of chain activity. COMPETITIVE POSITION StakedHYPE's principal competitor is Kinetiq (kHYPE), which has emerged as the second-largest HYPE LST on HyperEVM. Both protocols compete for staked HYPE deposits by offering similar base functionalities: liquid staking derivatives redeemable for validator rewards. stHYPE's competitive advantages include first-mover integrations — being embedded in every major protocol before competitors arrived — and Valantis's specialized DEX infrastructure optimized for LST pair pricing efficiency. In the broader liquid staking context, stHYPE's position mirrors Lido's dominance of Ethereum staking (stETH) — a liquid token representing the canonical staking derivative for the chain's native asset, with deep DeFi integrations that make it the default choice. However, unlike Ethereum's staking ecosystem where Lido has held over 30% of all staked ETH, HYPE staking is newer and more fragmented, leaving competitive dynamics unsettled. The Valantis acquisition provides stHYPE with product and distribution advantages that independent protocols cannot easily replicate — specifically, a purpose-built DEX optimized for staked asset pairs. HYPERLIQUID INTEGRATION StakedHYPE connects HyperCore's staking layer with HyperEVM's DeFi ecosystem. HYPE tokens are transferred from HyperCore accounts to HyperEVM via Hyperliquid's native bridge, deposited into the StakedHYPE contract, and delegated to HyperCore validators — creating a cross-layer architecture unique to Hyperliquid's dual-layer design. The stHYPE token then circulates on HyperEVM as a standard ERC-20 asset. Valantis has indicated plans to deepen stHYPE's integration with HyperCore and HIP-3, envisioning stHYPE as a component of a broader Hyperliquid liquidity network. This could involve stHYPE being used as margin collateral in future HIP-3 perp market deployments or as a reference asset for new DeFi primitives. The Hyperliquid team's emphasis on staking tiers as a mechanism for validator differentiation may also create opportunities for stHYPE to offer tiered yield products. RISKS AND CONSIDERATIONS Validator concentration risk is inherent: if any validator to which stHYPE's underlying HYPE is delegated behaves maliciously, it faces slashing — which would reduce the stHYPE exchange rate and impose losses on depositors. The protocol's validator selection and diversification methodology is critical to managing this risk, though specific slashing parameters on Hyperliquid are determined by the core protocol. The acquisition by Valantis changes stHYPE's governance and strategic trajectory in ways that are not fully transparent to users. While Valantis is a credible team, the undisclosed deal structure and the fact that ongoing development is now tied to Valantis's broader roadmap introduces dependency risk. If Valantis changes strategic priorities or faces financial difficulties, stHYPE's development could stall. Smart contract risk on HyperEVM is present across all deposited capital. HyperEVM is a relatively young chain, and the full security implications of its architecture have not been tested by years of adversarial activity at scale. Users depositing HYPE into stHYPE accept both the validator slashing risk at the HyperCore layer and the smart contract risk at the HyperEVM layer simultaneously.

Choose GammaSwap if you...

• ✓Want a decentralized exchanges solution on Multi-Layer
• ✓Need: Volatility trading protocol enabling long/short vol positions on HyperEVM LP pools

Choose StakedHYPE if you...

• ✓Want a liquid staking solution on HyperEVM
• ✓Prefer a verified and vetted protocol
• ✓Need features like liquid-staking and stHYPE
• ✓Need: stHYPE liquid staking — stake HYPE, stay liquid