Is a FDV of 45 billion for Hyperliquid a reasonable valuation?

I want to ask, what is @HyperliquidX in everyone's mind? If it's purely a Perp Dex application, then a 45B FDV is already too high. If it's a new innovative species L1, then a 15B circulating market capitalization might still be underestimated? What's even more confusing is how should Hyperliquid's followers set their expectations?

1. If we consider HL as a Perp Dex, its valuation is already quite high compared to the pioneers of Perp Dex like dYdX and GMX. However, if we view it as an on-chain Binance, the valuation compared to other L1s such as Solana and BNBChain shows that there is still a lot of growth potential for HL.

Objectively speaking, although HL currently has a leading market share effect in Perp Dex that will definitely result in a premium valuation, the overall market size capacity of on-chain DEX is limited. It has already reached and even surpassed the peak periods of products like @GMX_IO and @dYdX, and their valuations are already very high.

But if it is expected to be an on-chain Binance, it seems that we can only provide a valuation comparable to BNBChain and others when we see a significant siphoning of data indicators from traditional CEX exchanges.

Clearly, the market is currently pricing based on both, but is leaning more towards the latter. However, this will lead to a significant misalignment in value benchmarks, especially creating illusions for those who are merely following the Perp Dex trend. They have not even figured out what HL's valuation is based on, and yet they start to benchmark it. It is absurd to completely disregard HL's technical architecture and its rich and diverse ecological value.

2. Hyperliquid's HyperBFT consensus, HyperCore and HyperEVM layered design, as well as the reconstructed on-chain high-frequency node matching engine, to be honest, although it has been criticized for centralization, there are indeed quite a few innovative elements.

In contrast, some followers still adopt the traditional “off-chain matching + on-chain settlement” technology service framework, and most have not moved beyond the original applications of Perp Dex on L1 and L2, even just putting new wine into old bottles. Is it too hasty to compare this with the previous dYdx, GMX, which were hammered down? And on what basis can they be valued against HL?

In fact, if you look at it calmly, the real moat of HL is not purely the trading data itself. The high-frequency trading matching engine of HyperCore is one aspect, while the application ecosystem of HyperEVM is the biggest highlight, for example:

Felix Protocol mints stablecoins based on HYPE collateral, using the interest earnings from $107M idle USDC to buy back HYPE; Liminal Money offers a delta-neutral yield product with a 16% APY; other projects such as staking protocols built by Kinetiq, and the lending ecosystem created by Hyperlend, among others, have combined at least forty to fifty ecological projects.

This ecological depth with atomic-level composability is fundamentally what supports its current valuation surge on Binance. Clearly, these are basic conditions that mere followers lack; relying solely on the trading volume generated through farming, and on an “application” alone, how can one support a “platform-level” valuation expectation?

Moreover, there is a very brain-teasing valuation logic that is puzzling: Hyperliquid is the number one Perp DEX, aiming to surpass CEX and become the on-chain Binance, while Aster is the number two Perp DEX, aiming to defend Binance and become the new on-chain Binance built by the Binance ecosystem. But Binance is still there, so how can there be another on-chain Binance appearing out of nowhere?