Introducing HYPER

The next phase of Expansion is upon us. HYPER will be the native token powering the Hyperlane network.

Rebellions are built on Hope.

Hope for change. Hope for freedom. Hope for something better.

The hope promised by crypto was special. We were promised open financial rails to rival centralized systems. Instead, we got something in between. Permissionless blockchain economies flourished, but became reliant on centralized bridges to connect them. Now hundreds of chains exist, many trapped behind these centralized gatekeepers.

Hyperlane is built on a New Hope.

We CAN fulfill the promise of crypto IF we have permissionless, open interoperability.

The mission is simple: Open Blockchains Require Open Interoperability.

For the past three years, the Hyperlane network has Expanded in the shadows.

With minimal resources, loyal community and scrappy contributors Expanded Hyperlane to over 140 blockchains, the most of any interoperability network. Applications built on Hyperlane transmitted ~9 million messages between chains. Warp Routes built on Hyperlane bridged over $6 billion in volume, many of which were the sole onboarding path to new chains.

Source: Dune

This success stems from Hyperlane’s radically open architecture and mission. As The Open Interoperability Framework, Hyperlane empowers anyone to expand, use, contribute to, and customize the network. The result? A powerfully permissionless platform where any developer can build cross-chain applications and token bridges with ease and security.

Token Overview

HYPER is designed to accelerate Hyperlane Expansion.

Use Hyperlane → Own Hyperlane

Build with Hyperlane → Own Hyperlane

Contribute to Hyperlane → Own Hyperlane

If you bring value to the Hyperlane network, you will own a piece of it.

Mechanics

Hyperlane is, by design, a fully open and permissionless system that any builder can deploy at any time to enable interoperability for their chain, asset, or application. The HYPER token serves as a crucial mechanism for coordinating secure and beneficial behavior among the open system’s many stakeholders.

HYPER functions as:

1. Usage-based Expansion Rewards for each message sent on the protocol.
2. Staking rewards for the validators securing messages across chains, and stakers who provide economic security to the default Interchain Security Module (ISM), subject to a staking/slashing mechanism. Stakers have the option to receive rewards in the liquid staking version of the token, Staked HYPER (stHYPER).

Additional details on the HYPER token and its mechanics are available in the Hyperlane Docs.

Distribution Principles

The HYPER token aligns incentives around protocol security, reliability, and adoption of Hyperlane as a community-owned open standard for interoperability. TGE allocations reward stakeholders proportionate to both past and future network utilization and impact.

Expansion Rewards: distribute ownership to Hyperlane’s message-sending users over the next four years, proportional to their message sending usage of the protocol.

Expansion Drop: retroactive rewards will be distributed at TGE to Hyperlane’s earliest users, who bootstrapped the network through its first approximately 8.6MM messages, as of snapshot on February 28, 2025 at 11:59:59PM UTC.

Staking Rewards: distribute ownership to Hyperlane’s validators that verify the messages passed between Hyperlane-connected chains, and to stakers that provide economic security to the default ISM.

Foundation Treasury and Strategic Launch Provision: to fund long-term stewardship of the protocol, initial token liquidity, and discretionary interventions to accelerate network and flywheel effects via e.g., boosts to Expansion Rewards.

A portion of the Strategic Launch Provision will benefit Hyperlane’s earliest users, contributing to the Expansion Drop, boosting rewards for certain actions and message types.

Core Team and Early Backers: distribute ownership to those bootstrapping Hyperlane’s core infrastructure and adoption, incentivizing a long-term focus on protocol utility and adoption of Hyperlane as the open standard for blockchain interoperability.

Expansion Rewards

Rather than a single retroactive airdrop and ad hoc incentive seasons, Hyperlane’s Expansion Rewards will be programmatically distributed, quarterly over four years, proportionate to messaging usage at the application level. By default, 85% of rewards distributed directly to applications will be passed through to end-users, with application teams retaining the remainder. Applications can modify the pass-through rate as they see fit.

Chains implementing Hyperlane as their canonical bridge, furthering Hyperlane’s adoption as the open standard for interoperability, will receive increased rewards weighting.

Continuous holding of stHYPER and usage of the protocol each quarter will result in a HyperStreak multiplier. The maximum 1.6x multiplier is achievable only by preclaiming stHYPER or staking HYPER on TGE day.

The Hyperlane Foundation may also boost Expansion Rewards via its treasury, discretionarily increasing rewards for collectively beneficial actions such as canonical bridge implementation, providing liquidity, unique feature integrations and ISM/hook development to ensure a performant and flexible interoperability framework for developers.

Staking Security and stHYPER

Users can stake HYPER to secure Hyperlane validators in the default ISM. A staking/slashing mechanism ensures trustworthy default ISM validators are incentivized to sign only valid Hyperlane messages. Proceeds from any slashing event are allocated to remunerate victims.

Users providing economic security stake HYPER via vaults, and receive Staked HYPER (stHYPER) as a liquid staking receipt token. Depending on which chain users stake from, staking rewards will vary in terms of manual claiming, autocompounding, and rebasing mechanics. More details on staking mechanics are available in the Hyperlane Docs.

Locked HYPER tokens will be able to stake to bootstrap economic security for the network. Importantly, the staking rewards will remain locked for the corresponding lock up schedule.

Sybil Filtering

A novel sybil weighting system was developed to avoid blanket blacklisting wallets. Eligible wallets were scored based on their degree of likelihood to be a sybil. If scored as a potential sybil, then a negative multiplier was applied to their Expansion Drop rewards. Only addresses matching records in the public Chaos Labs sybil detection dataset, as well as addresses that have generated <$5 in fees, are fully excluded from the Expansion Drop. All other addresses received a reward multiplier from 0.0 to 1.0, representing their likelihood of being a sybil, weighted and scored per the following factors.

Each address is assigned a Sybil Score based on the weighted sum of the above three factors.

The higher the Sybil Score, the more likely an address is to be a Sybil.

• A score of 1.0 indicates the address meets all Sybil criteria and is fully excluded from message sender rewards.
• A score below 1.0 reduces rewards proportionally using a negative multiplier (1 — Sybil Score).

Token Allocations and Eligibility

The initial total supply of HYPER will be one billion tokens, reached at 25 years. The TGE circulating supply will be 177,700,000 HYPER.

The Expansion Drop at TGE will be 7.5% of the total supply, allocated from Expansion Rewards and the Hyperlane Foundation’s Strategic Launch Provision. The allocations noted below are all based on the total supply of HYPER.

Community (57.02% of total supply)

Expansion Rewards (25.50% of total supply)

• Distributed quarterly to applications and users, based on message fees.
• As part of Expansion Drop, 6.25% of total supply will be distributed from this allocation at TGE, with 85% of rewards passed through to application end-users. Addresses spending at least ~$5.00 USD notional in fees as of snapshot are included. A list of chains, apps, and protocols using Hyperlane infrastructure, whose end-users may be eligible for Expansion Drop, is available here.

Strategic Launch Provision (11.52% of total supply)

• Used in part to bootstrap HYPER liquidity and early market access, and to boost all OpenUSDT minting activity through the next Expansion Rewards quarterly distribution, including retroactive activity.
• Expansion Drop retroactive boosts:
• 1.09% to augment Expansion Drop rewards for messages from chains where Hyperlane is the canonical interoperability solution (Eclipse, Injective EVM, Lumia, SOON, SonicSVM, Form)
• 0.02% to Hyperlane GMP addresses holding Celestine Sloth Society or Mammoths NFTs, as of snapshot
• 0.10% to addresses LPing TIA on Manta or Arbitrum prior to Jan 30, 2024, proportional to liquidity supplied
• 0.04% to offchain community members such as top Pilot Academy contributors

Staking Rewards (20.00% of total supply)

• 0% circulating at TGE
• 25 year linear emissions, minted quarterly

Bootstrappers (42.98% of total supply long-term)

Core Team (25.00% of total supply)

• 0% circulating at TGE; 25% cliff unlock at 12 months
• linear unlock over the next 24 months (3 years total)

Hyperlane Foundation Treasury (7.11% of total supply)

• In addition to the 11.52% the Foundation will distribute directly to the community at TGE via the Strategic Launch Provision, the Foundation will steward a treasury intended for long-term direct intervention to augment expansion and growth initiatives, including grants/R&D.
• 0% circulating at TGE, 0% unlocked at 6 months
• linear unlock over the next 30 months (3 years total)

Early Backers (10.87% of total supply)

• 0% circulating at TGE; 25% cliff unlock at 12 months
• linear unlock over the next 24 months (3 years total)

What’s Next?

1. April 3: Preclaim begins via the Hyperlane Foundation Claim Portal. Users add eligible addresses, choose HYPER/stHYPER rewards, and specify receiving network
2. April 14, 2025, 4:00 UTC: end of preclaim period
3. Week of April 20, 2025: TGE, claim period begins
4. May 22, 2025, 13:00 UTC: end of claim period

Expansion Drop rewards that are not pre-claimed or claimed during the respective periods will be reallocated to incentivizing future Hyperlane activity. Users must configure their preclaim before the specified deadline to be eligible for any Expansion Drop rewards. Additionally, users must claim after TGE before the specified deadline to be eligible for any Expansion Drop rewards.

Claim walkthrough video here and additional claim FAQs here.

Expansion.