The Hyperliquid airdrop: a look back at HYPE's genesis

Hyperliquid’s HYPE airdrop took place on November 29, 2024, when 310 million HYPE (31% of the 1 billion max supply) went to more than 94,000 addresses that had earned points trading on the exchange. HYPE opened around $3.20 and traded near $90 on October 4, 2026, which makes it the most valuable airdrop on record. There is no live points program today, and Hyperliquid hasn’t announced a second airdrop.

The HYPE genesis airdrop at a glance

Date	November 29, 2024, 07:30 UTC
Max supply	1,000,000,000 HYPE
Airdrop size	310,000,000 HYPE (31.0%)
Eligible addresses	94,000+
Basis	Points earned November 2023 to November 2024
Vesting on airdrop	None, fully unlocked at genesis
Private investor allocation	None

The genesis numbers come from the Hyper Foundation’s announcement, as covered by The Block and ForkLog.

How HYPE was allocated

Allocation	Share	HYPE
Future emissions and community rewards	38.888%	388.88M
Genesis distribution (the airdrop)	31.0%	310M
Current and future core contributors	23.8%	238M
Hyper Foundation budget	6.0%	60M
Community grants	0.3%	3M
HIP-2 (Hyperliquidity)	0.012%	0.12M

Add the airdrop, future emissions, grants and HIP-2 together and roughly 70% of supply was set aside for the community. The 23.8% for core contributors was locked for one year after genesis.

How people earned their allocation: the points seasons

The airdrop was split in proportion to points. According to Hyperliquid’s points docs, there were two phases:

1. Closed alpha to Season 1 (to May 1, 2024). Points were distributed for the closed alpha through October 31, 2023. The main program then ran from November 1, 2023 for six months, handing out 1,000,000 points a week.
2. L1 phase (May 29 to November 2024). 700,000 points a week. Activity from May 1 to 28, 2024, the gap between the two phases, got a multiplier.

Points went out every Thursday for activity in the week ending Wednesday 00:00 UTC. Referrers earned 1 point for every 4 points their referrals earned. Hyperliquid changed the criteria regularly and never published an exact formula, and it reserved the right to modify past distributions.

Trading volume mattered, but it wasn’t the whole story. As with most points programs, Hyperliquid looked at activity it considered genuinely useful, and the formula stayed private to make farming harder.

How the airdrop was delivered

There was no separate claim website. HYPE went straight to eligible Hyperliquid accounts at genesis, fully unlocked, so recipients could hold, stake or sell from day one. That mattered: the absence of a claim page left fewer openings for phishing sites posing as one.

How much was the HYPE airdrop worth

The answer depends entirely on when you look.

Date	HYPE price	Value of all 310M airdropped HYPE
Nov 29, 2024 (open)	about $3.20	about $1.0B
Nov 29, 2024 (first-day close)	about $4.60	about $1.4B
Late December 2024	about $35	about $10.8B
Oct 4, 2026	about $90	about $27.9B

Launch-day prices are from ForkLog’s launch-day report, citing CoinMarketCap. The December 2024 figure is from ForkLog’s airdrop analysis. The October 2026 price and the all-time high of $97.96 on September 23, 2026 are from CoinGecko.

What a typical recipient got

Averages hide how lopsided the distribution was. ForkLog’s analysis put the average allocation at about 2,880 HYPE and the median at around 64 HYPE. More than half of recipients got 100 HYPE or less.

• A median recipient (about 64 HYPE) got roughly $205 at the open, about $2,250 at the December 2024 high, and about $5,800 at October 2026 prices.
• An average recipient (about 2,880 HYPE) got roughly $9,200 at the open, about $100,000 in late December 2024, and about $259,000 at October 2026 prices.

Those are paper values. Most recipients sold some or all of their HYPE somewhere along the way, and anyone who sold on day one got the $3 to $5 price, not today’s.

Why the HYPE airdrop is considered one of the best ever

Several things set it apart from the usual token launch:

• No venture capital allocation. Hyperliquid didn’t raise from outside investors, so there was no investor tranche waiting to unlock and sell into the market.
• A large community share. 31% at genesis, plus nearly 39% reserved for future community rewards. Many airdrops hand out 5% to 15%.
• Nothing locked for users. The airdrop was 100% unlocked, while the team’s share was locked for a year.
• Rewards went to actual users. Points tracked a year of trading activity on a product people already used, rather than one-off tasks.
• Sheer size. At the late-2024 peak, ForkLog calculated the airdrop was worth more than Uniswap’s 2020 airdrop at its own peak, previously the benchmark.

The honest caveat: most of the value went to a relatively small group of large traders. The median recipient got a meaningful but not life-changing sum.

What happened to HYPE after the airdrop

A rough timeline:

• First month. HYPE climbed from the $3 to $5 range to about $35 by late December 2024.
• Fee-funded buybacks. Hyperliquid’s fee docs state that trading fees go to the community (HLP, the assistance fund and deployers). The assistance fund converts fees to HYPE automatically and burns it, removing it from both circulating and total supply.
• Staking. HYPE holders can stake to validators for rewards paid from the future emissions reserve, and staked HYPE lowers trading fees by 5% to 40%. Our Hyperliquid fees guide has the tiers.
• Team unlocks. Core contributor tokens started vesting after the one-year lock. The Block reported in December 2025 that distributions would happen monthly on the 6th and that the vesting schedule is not linear.
• 2026. HYPE set a new all-time high of $97.96 on September 23, 2026 and traded near $90 on October 4, 2026, per CoinGecko.

Will there be another Hyperliquid airdrop

Nobody outside the team knows. Here’s what is and isn’t public as of October 2026.

What’s known:

• 38.888% of supply is earmarked for future emissions and community rewards.
• Staking rewards are paid from that same reserve, so part of it is already being distributed gradually to stakers.
• The points page describes only the two completed phases, both ended by November 2024.

What isn’t known:

• Whether any of the reserve will go out as a second airdrop, and to whom.
• Whether a new points program will ever launch, or what activity it would reward.
• How the reserve will be split between staking rewards, incentives and anything else.

Treat any site or account promising a “HYPE season 2 airdrop” or asking you to connect a wallet to check eligibility with suspicion. Hyperliquid’s first airdrop needed no claim site, and fake claim pages are a common way to drain wallets.

How people take part in the Hyperliquid ecosystem today

With no points program running, the reasons to use Hyperliquid are the product itself and HYPE’s utility:

• Trading perps and spot. Fees start at 0.045% taker and 0.015% maker on perps. Our step-by-step guide to trading on Hyperliquid covers depositing USDC from Arbitrum, placing a first order and withdrawing.
• Cutting fees. A Hyperliquid referral code takes 4% off your first $25M of volume, and staking HYPE adds 5% to 40% more.
• Staking HYPE. Delegating to a validator earns staking rewards. It also means holding a volatile token through a 7-day unstaking queue.
• Vaults. Depositing USDC into HLP or a user vault earns a share of trading results. Our guide to Hyperliquid vaults explains the risks, including drawdowns.

If you want to start, open Hyperliquid with a small deposit and learn how margin and liquidation work before you size up. For other platforms with tokens or points, see our recaps of the Lighter LIT airdrop and Variational’s points program.