Valantis and Pendle Launch Marketplace to Trade Hyperliquid Fee Discounts

Valantis, a liquid staking platform on Hyperliquid, has partnered with yield protocol Pendle to launch a novel marketplace for trading fee discounts. The new market, which went live on August 27, allows traders to buy access to lower fees on the Hyperliquid exchange without needing to own and stake the platform's native HYPE token.

A New Market for Token Utility

The collaboration utilizes Pendle's protocol to separate the trading fee discount from Valantis's liquid staked HYPE token (stHYPE). The stHYPE asset is split into a principal token and a yield token (YT), with the stHYPE YT now representing the right to a Hyperliquid fee discount for a defined period.

This mechanism effectively creates a tradable asset for the discount itself. Traders can purchase these YTs to lower their trading costs, while HYPE holders can sell their discount rights to generate additional yield on their holdings. The first market is set to expire on January 28, 2027.

Unlocking Capital and Reducing Costs

Hyperliquid, the largest on-chain exchange for perpetual futures, offers fee reductions to users who stake HYPE, with the top tier requiring a stake of 500,000 HYPE (approximately $40 million) for a 40% discount. According to research from Valantis, this system currently represents about $40 million in annual savings for the top 20,000 traders.

Ad

However, Valantis notes that many active traders forgo these savings to keep their capital available as margin. The firm estimates that roughly half of the top 20,000 traders do not stake at all, and they account for about 70% of all fees paid. By making the discount more accessible, Valantis projects that traders could save an additional $100 million to $300 million annually.

"A trader who needs lower fees can now rent them. A holder who doesn’t can sell them and earn more for it," said Deven Matthews, co-founder and CEO of Valantis Labs, in a statement. "We think it is the first of many pieces of token utility that will end up priced this way."

From Private Deals to an Open Market

Previously, traders seeking fee discounts without holding HYPE had to arrange private, bilateral deals. The new marketplace on Pendle makes this process permissionless and transparent, establishing a clear market price for the utility derived from staking HYPE.

This development marks a significant innovation in decentralized finance (DeFi), creating a potential new category of markets focused on token-specific utilities beyond simple yield generation. It provides a blueprint for other protocols to tokenize and trade the various benefits associated with holding their native assets.