Native Markets team wins Hyperliquid USDH stablecoin bid, eyes test phase 'within days'

Hyperliquid’s validator community has selected Native Markets to receive the long-reserved USDH ticker, concluding a weeklong contest that drew bids from some of the biggest names in stablecoins and crypto infrastructure.

In a post announcing the outcome, Native Markets said it will move immediately into a staged rollout, beginning with a small-scale testing phase for mints and redemptions before opening a USDH/USDC spot pair and then removing caps. The team framed the capped limits as a safety check ahead of general availability, and said that activity should start "within days."

The campaign to win USDH became Hyperliquid’s first major on-chain governance vote outside of routine listings. Native Markets issued the first proposal for USDH just 90 minutes after Hyperliquid issued the call, and later updated the proposal following community feedback. The Hyperliquid Foundation abstained from the vote.

Native Markets' USDH will be issued natively on Hyperliquid's HyperEVM network, with reserves managed across a mix of off-chain and on-chain assets and an explicit plan to split reserve yield between HYPE buybacks and programs to expand USDH distribution. The stablecoin will be "fully backed by cash and US treasury equivalents with offchain reserves initially managed by BlackRock and onchain reserves by Superstate through [Stripe-owned] Bridge," according to the proposal. 

Despite bids from established players such as Paxos, BitGo, Ethena, and others, Native Markets was heavily favored to win the vote throughout most of the proposal period by prediction markets. Most bidders pledged to share most or all of the stablecoin's yield with the Hyperliquid ecosystem, through contributions to the Hyperliquid Assistance Fund (which buys back the HYPE token), ecosystem growth initiatives, or direct buybacks. 

The forthcoming issuance of USDH poses a potential threat to Circle's USDC, currently the dominant dollar-backed stablecoin on the network. Nearly $6 billion worth of USDC reserves are held on the platform, according to DefiLlama data. Though Native Markets received the USDH ticker, USDC and other stablecoins will continue to be supported on Hyperliquid as quote assets, as long as they meet certain thresholds such as a 200,000 HYPE stake (worth about $10 million), a robust $1 peg mechanism, and minimum depth against USDC and HYPE. 

Native Markets was co-founded by Max Fiege, an early Hyperliquid ecosystem investor and advisor, Anish Agnihotri, an experienced blockchain researcher and developer, and MC Lader, the former president and COO of Uniswap Labs. "This is the only proposal built by a team with the combination of deep Hyperliquid experience, trading knowledge, institutional credibility and DeFi regulatory battle wounds," Native Markets' proposal states.