Aster is coming on strong, but why is Hyperliquid so hard to replace?

Despite aggressive competition and investment from rivals like Aster, Hyperliquid remains difficult to replace due to its unique, market maker-friendly architecture. Its core innovation is redesigning the order book's microstructure by integrating transaction identification directly into the consensus mechanism. This ensures specific order types are processed in a prioritized sequence, fundamentally protecting market makers and improving liquidity for all users.

Core Innovation: Order processing priority is enforced at the consensus layer. Cancel and post-only orders are processed before GTC (Good-Til-Canceled) and IOC (Immediate-Or-Cancel) orders.
Key Benefit for Market Makers: This guarantees they can cancel orders and exit the market first during sharp price swings, allowing them to hedge risks effectively. This protection encourages them to offer tighter spreads (e.g., 0.01-0.05%).
Problem Solved: It neutralizes "toxic order flow," where high-frequency traders (HFT) exploit the milliseconds before a cancellation takes effect to target outdated quotes. This forces wider spreads on other platforms.
Result for Retail Investors: They experience better liquidity during volatility and lower slippage, as they get the best prices without being undermined by arbitrage bots.
Broader Impact: Hyperliquid defines "what constitutes a good trade" at the consensus level, raising the competitive bar and making arbitrage via speed alone unprofitable. This is a problem other chains, like Solana, are still trying to solve.

Despite the aggressive moves and massive investments from Perps like Aster and Lightner, and even endorsements from CZ, Hyperliquid is truly difficult to replace.

Hyperliquid is a customized L1, and it is currently the most market maker-friendly Perp and L1 in the crypto world, bar none.

Hyperliquid's real innovation lies in its redesign of the order book's microstructure, directly incorporating transaction identification into the consensus mechanism.

This seemingly simple yet revolutionary design forces Hyperliquid to mandate that nodes must process Cancel and post-only orders before processing GTC and IOC orders at the consensus layer.

Cancel: Cancels the pending order;
Post-only orders - Only Maker orders are processed;
GTC (Good-Til-Canceled) - Valid until cancelled;
IOC (Immediate-Or-Cancel) - Complete the transaction immediately or cancel it.
For market makers, being able to exit the market is paramount. During periods of sharp price fluctuations, order cancellation requests are always executed before other people's buy/sell requests.

Market makers fear being targeted by attackers. Hyperliquid ensures that order cancellations always take priority. When prices fall, market makers cancel their orders, and the system forces these cancellations to be processed first, allowing market makers to successfully hedge their risks.

On October 11, the day of the crash, Hyperliquid market makers remained online, with price spreads of 0.01-0.05%, because the market makers knew they could exit the market.

For other on-chain order books or AMMs, there is usually a fatal problem. Market makers post quotes, market prices fluctuate, and they immediately issue order cancellation requests.

However, in the milliseconds before the cancellation takes effect, high-frequency order takers (HFT) have already placed their orders, precisely targeting these "outdated quotes".

The result is that market makers are forced to offer wider spreads to protect themselves, meaning you can't get much of a bargain from them. But with wider spreads, retail investors have to pay an extra 0.1% for each transaction. This is the "toxic order flow."

While the trading volume appears large, it is actually a game between HFTs that harms the overall liquidity quality of the market.

This is the problem that Solana is currently trying to solve by building ACE application control execution. It's also a problem that other blockchains struggle to solve, let alone MEV attacks.

In other words, Hyperliquid defines "what constitutes a good trade" at the consensus level. Market makers can confidently quote tighter spreads because they know that order cancellation requests will be prioritized.

Order takers can no longer rely on a few milliseconds of speed advantage to get ahead. This is why Hyperliquid actually has better liquidity during periods of volatility, and retail investors experience lower slippage.

Hyperliquid protects those willing to provide liquidity, ensures retail investors who want to trade get the best prices, and makes it unprofitable for bots that only want to profit from arbitrage.

Hyperliquid has already defined what kind of transactions are worth having their consensus confirmed, directly raising the level of competition to a whole new level.