Hyperliquid, a new player in the "coin stock" track

Author: BUBBLE, BlockBeats

On June 17, digital eye care technology company Eyenovia (stock code: EYEN) announced that it has signed a securities purchase agreement for a $50 million PIPE (Private Investment in Public Equity) to qualified institutional investors, which will be used to establish its first cryptocurrency reserve program, targeting the Hyperliquid native token HYPE. The $50 million investment amount far exceeds the company's market value of $20 million.

To drive this strategic transformation, the company simultaneously appointed Hyunsu Jung as the new Chief Investment Officer (CIO) and board member, and announced that the company name will be changed to Hyperion DeFi, with the stock code updated to HYPD. What exactly is Eyenovia, the first U.S. listed company to use an on-chain exchange token for a "microstrategy" plan? Who is its driving force, Hyunsu Jung? And with more and more companies utilizing Crypto's tokens for "rebirth," will $Hype be a better choice?

On the brink of delisting, Eyenovia's lifeline

With Hyperliquid's recent activity, its mainnet's TVL has surged into the top 10 of public chains, and the market value of $HYPE has risen to the 11th position among all cryptocurrencies. The number of participants is gradually increasing, with the platform's daily transaction fees maintaining between $2-3 million, and the platform's annual revenue nearing $100 million.

However, the other main player in the partnership, Eyenovia, has not fared as well. Since its listing at $800 in February 2018, it has plummeted to a low of $1 by April 2025. Eyenovia's core business is an ophthalmic company centered around a device-driven micro-dose delivery platform, with product directions covering pupil dilation, postoperative inflammation reduction, and treatment of childhood myopia.

Eyenovia's main product Optejet

The company's total revenue for 2024 was only $56,000, with a net loss of $50 million and liabilities exceeding $10 million. With cash flow exhausted and failures in new product trials, Eyenovia is facing imminent delisting. The HYPE reserve strategy has given Eyenovia a "lifeline," and after the news broke, Eyenovia's stock price soared 134% in a single day.

The parachuted executive from the crypto world, Hyunsu Jung

Previously, Eyenovia had no connection to blockchain or related industries, which is why the appointment of Hyunsu Jung as Chief Investment Officer (CIO), who was incentivized with 500,000 shares of common stock, attracted attention. According to public information, Hyunsu Jung previously served as a senior advisor at Ernst & Young Parthenon, and has also worked as an investment analyst at GoldenTree Asset Management and as an asset management analyst in New York City.

His formal entry into the blockchain workforce was at DARMA Capital, an investment advisory firm founded by Andrew Keys (one of the co-founders of Consensys) in 2018. DARMA's philosophy is to help clients hold ETH long-term while enhancing returns and controlling risks through DeFi tools. It provides Ethereum staking custody and validation node services, combining restaking and LST strategies to generate additional returns.

In December 2023, he joined Aligned as a partner. Aligned is an infrastructure solution for mining and high-performance computing, staking, and liquidity provision. Its founder, Neal Kaufman, previously worked at McKinsey and graduated from Harvard University, just like the core team of Hyperliquid, graduating as a Baker Scholar (top 5% of the class).

His work in the product department at DARMA and at Aligned has accumulated a wealth of relevant experience and connections for executing Hyperliquid DeFi's "microstrategy."

There isn't much information about Hyunsu available on public websites, but Max, a core member of the Hyperliquid ecosystem, shared his 10-year connection with Hyunsu Jung: "It has been nearly ten years since Hyunsu and I were broke exchange students in Edinburgh; it has also been five years since we roomed together in San Juan and ventured into cryptocurrency."

Suspected Hyperion account, shared by community member Max

On-chain Hyper microstrategy, staking HYPE for passive income

Eyenovia stated that this transaction is only open to institutional investors. The company will issue 15.4 million shares of convertible preferred stock and 30.8 million common stock warrants, with both the conversion price and exercise price set at $3.25 per share. If all warrants are fully exercised, Eyenovia is expected to raise up to $150 million in additional funds.

While it cannot guarantee that all warrants will be exercised, if the transaction goes smoothly, Eyenovia could acquire and stake over 1 million $HYPE.

The official announcement states that the purchase of over 1 million HYPE will be entrusted to Anchorage Digital for custody. Just a few days earlier, on June 12, Canadian listed company Tony G Co-Investment saw its stock price soar over 800% within an hour after purchasing 10,000 $Hype, leveraging just $430,000 to unlock a market value of $57 million.

Eyenovia CEO Michael Rowe stated, "We are excited to join the growing number of companies adopting similar strategies to realize the diversification, liquidity, and long-term capital appreciation potential represented by cryptocurrency. After a thorough review of all available options, the board and I unanimously believe this transaction is in the best interest of our shareholders."

Jung added, "I am honored to join the Eyenovia team to help lead this groundbreaking cryptocurrency funding strategy, which is built around what we believe to be the most robust digital asset, HYPE. We believe Hyperliquid is one of the fastest-growing and highest-revenue blockchains globally."

These two statements suggest that Eyenovia's strategy may not only be to purchase Hype but also to build a complete strategic system around it. According to the HIP-3 protocol on Hyperliquid, allowing nodes to "list tokens" requires staking at least 1 million $Hype, enabling token deployers to earn 50% of the total market fees and configure custom fees based on that.

Regarding how to build a Hyperliquid version of a microstrategy, community member Telaga Telaga provided his vision, suggesting that the on-chain structure of HyperStrategy is gradually emerging as a decentralized extension of the holding logic of MicroStrategy. Rather than being a simple asset allocation model, it is a set of "strategy protocol systems" that embed liquidity, yield, leverage, and capital structure into on-chain financial infrastructure.

Telaga's HyperStrategy concept views the native token $HYPE on Hyperliquid as a high-volatility digital asset similar to BTC. However, unlike BTC, $HYPE does not exist as digital gold but participates in the entire protocol ecosystem as an on-chain economic engine with endogenous cash flow. Therefore, HyperStrategy has designed a structured exposure and yield compounding treasury mechanism that allows users and institutions to obtain long-term stable on-chain returns through staking, lending, trading, and market-making.

Specifically, the treasury is funded by external users, primarily deposited in the form of USD stablecoins. After the funds are deposited, users receive two types of on-chain certificates: one is a Convertible Debt Token (CDT), representing principal rights; the other is an Options NFT, symbolizing future yield options or repurchase rights. This design allows user assets to have liquidity while binding long-term value growth expectations through contract structures.

Once the funds enter the treasury, the protocol will deploy this portion of stablecoins across multiple yield modules. The main strategy is to lend $HYPE to other users through the on-chain lending system, earning interest in the process. Additionally, the treasury can participate in trading and liquidity provision on the Hyperliquid platform, collecting trading fees and platform incentives. Alternatively, it can stake $HYPE as a validator node to earn rewards generated by network operations. In more advanced configurations, funds can also be invested in Nest's trading protocol, obtaining additional profit-sharing through LP market-making and locking veNEST. At the same time, HyperStrategy integrates on-chain derivatives protocols, such as HIP-3 perpetual contracts, further enhancing capital efficiency.

In the income return mechanism, the treasury periodically collects and consolidates income from staking rewards, trading fees, lending interest, and other sources. The protocol uses the income according to rules for repurchases, reinvestments, or executing CDT repayments and Options NFT fulfillments. Some designs may also introduce NAV (Net Asset Value) growth logic, making the entire strategy system closer to the transparency and stability of traditional asset management institutions.

Following Eyenovia, on June 20, U.S. listed company Everything Blockchain Inc. (EBZT) also incorporated HYPE into its portfolio, announcing plans to invest $10 million in five major blockchains, including Hyperliquid (as well as Solana, XRP, Sui, and Bittensor), to create a multi-token staking treasury aimed at institutional adoption trends. EBZT's official statement claims that this strategy will make it the first U.S. company to directly return staking rewards to shareholders, with an expected annual yield of about $1 million after deployment, and plans to reward investors through dividends in the future. From this perspective, it seems that using a compound yield on-chain treasury to reward investors may be more sustainable than simply buying tokens for speculation.

Why HYPE?

The gameplay of HyperStrategy differs from BTC; it is not just about accumulating $HYPE at a single point but constructing an on-chain treasury capable of generating compound returns over the long term. This structure transforms holding behavior from being merely "static holding" into a configurable, manageable, and dividend-paying on-chain asset operation model. For traditional listed companies like Eyenovia entering Hyperliquid, such strategy protocols not only provide a starting point for on-chain exposure but also create a complete financial model with liquidity, cash flow, governance rights, and potential capital appreciation.

The protocol economy formed around $HYPE seems to be providing a foundational experimental ground for on-chain financial operations, capital management, and balance sheet construction. Of course, some community members believe that with Coinbase and Robinhood announcing the issuance of perpetual contract derivatives in the U.S., the pressure faced by Hyperliquid, which primarily serves large holders from the U.S., is unprecedented.