Hyperliquid’s Secret Weapon? OKX Founder Points to Its Order-Matching Design

OKX founder Star Xu has praised Hyperliquid’s design as a digital asset exchange compared with centralized platforms across several features. The project’s growth has continued, with recent adoption spikes amid a slow crypto market.

Hyperliquid’s Design Is More Market-Friendly

In an interview on the New Era Finance Podcast, the OKX executive praised the setup as more market-maker-friendly and echoed current user sentiment as the platform builds traction. Its block-by-block order handling, rather than individual orders, makes it more seamless than centralized counterparts.

Notably, market makers can cancel orders before takers, creating more use cases for multiple traders. From a technology perspective, he said, they offer a new liquidity structure that makes their match engine superior. 

It trumps centralized exchanges because match-engine rules are regulated and subject to several requirements. He added that, viewed in terms of DApps, Hyperliquid looks better than most centralized exchanges.

“It’s better because they operate on the market maker friendly principle… The match engine works block by block. In a centralized exchange, our match engine works order by order, making us go through rules. In every block, they can add some priorities, like prioritizing cancel orders and then others. This makes Hyperliquid become more friendly.” 

Second, this setup creates a better path for low-liquidity assets because of its matching engine. In recent months, Hyperliquid has become more popular with crypto users, with adopters sharing similar experiences. This highlights a user shift to decentralized platforms for more options during recovery phases.

Hyperliquid’s token (HYPE) is fueled by the rapid growth and has surged over 100% since the start of the year with a decent month-to-month ratio. In the last 30 days, the asset gained 8.9% to trade at $86.75, with daily gains over the weekend.

OKX has also seen increased momentum in the last quarter after rolling out OKX Money, which lets users save, spend, and earn digital currency without foreign exchange fees. The feature offers 10% APY on certain dollar-backed stablecoins, including USDC and USDT. 

In Q2 2026,  the centralized exchange card attracted retail users with grocery shopping and dining topping initial use cases. Specifically, 26% of total usage was in supermarkets and shopping, while 9% in Poland went toward fuel purchases.