Nearly 400,000 retail wallets trading Hyperliquid perpetual futures through six consumer-facing apps lost a combined $280 million, according to research by Hyperdash co-founder Hanson Birringer. More than $126 million of that total was recorded after Nov. 10, 2025, when user numbers across the apps began climbing rapidly.
Birringer’s analysis focuses on wallets that accessed Hyperliquid through Phantom, MetaMask, Rabby, Trust Wallet, Invo and fomo. These apps use builder codes, which route a customer’s orders to Hyperliquid while adding a separate builder fee on top of the protocol’s standard trading charge.
The data offers a detailed look at the economics facing small traders using simplified wallet and mobile interfaces to trade perpetuals. Losses were tied both to market performance and transaction costs, with fees accounting for more than half of the roughly $126 million in losses attributed to the period after Nov. 10, 2025.
Fees grew quickly for high-turnover accounts
A $100 order placed through the six apps carried total trading costs of between 6.5 cents and 14.5 cents, depending on the app, Birringer found. That amount includes Hyperliquid’s base fee plus the application’s builder fee.
The individual charge may appear small, but its effect increases sharply for accounts that repeatedly open and close positions. Perpetual futures traders can generate volumes far above the capital they deposit, exposing them to recurring fees even where their positions have only modest gains or losses.
Invo illustrated that gap particularly clearly. Users of the app deposited $12.4 million while generating $5.8 billion in cumulative trading volume, according to Birringer’s figures. Such turnover means that a retail account can pay trading costs many times over relative to its original deposit.
BTC was the most heavily traded market across the six apps, accounting for nearly half of total volume. It was also the largest source of losses. Birringer found that fees paid on BTC trades exceeded the realized gains users made from closing their positions, showing how costs can outweigh profitable exits when activity is frequent enough.
The analysis does not suggest that every trader lost money or that fees were the only cause of losses. Price movements and unsuccessful positions accounted for part of the total. Yet the fee share of post-November losses places the routing model at the center of the retail trading outcome rather than treating it as a minor convenience charge.
Small deposits dominated five app cohorts
Most of the wallets studied were small retail accounts. Five of the six applications had a typical per-wallet deposit ranging from $30 to $60, leaving little room for traders to absorb repeated costs, funding payments and unfavorable market moves.
Rabby was the outlier. Its cohort had fewer accounts, higher capital per user and the strongest likelihood of net profitability among the six apps. Birringer’s data does not establish why Rabby users performed better, but the difference is consistent with the advantage of larger balances: traders with more capital can generally spread fixed and percentage-based trading costs across a bigger account base.
The results also varied by market category. BTC and ETH produced lower losses per dollar traded than the HIP-3 category and small-cap tokens when losses and fees were combined. HIP-3 includes markets linked to assets such as crude oil, silver and gold.
Trading in HIP-3 markets was limited through these consumer apps before January, then expanded quickly enough to become the second-largest trading category. That change brought retail users into products whose price behavior can differ from the major cryptocurrency markets they were more familiar with trading.
Small-cap token markets also showed a higher loss rate per dollar traded than BTC and ETH. Those markets can involve thinner liquidity and sharper price swings, although Birringer’s research attributes the measured outcomes to the combined effect of trading profit and loss and fees rather than to any single market feature.
User growth outpaced retention
The six apps expanded rapidly during the period covered by the research. Monthly active traders more than doubled from November through the following September, meaning the total active base exceeded three times its starting level by the end of that stretch.
Invo and fomo led the increase, rising from almost no active traders to tens of thousands of users within months. Their growth added substantial volume to Hyperliquid’s retail-facing order flow, but Birringer’s retention data suggests a large share of those users did not remain active for long.
About half of monthly active traders across the apps were first-time users. Only about one-seventh of new traders were still trading three months later, based on the study’s retention measure.
That pattern points to a high-churn customer base in which new accounts continually replace users who stop trading. In a fee-based routing model, rapid acquisition can raise aggregate volume even if individual traders leave after relatively short periods.
Direct access changes the fee calculation
The builder fee is separate from Hyperliquid’s base trading fee. Users who place orders directly through Hyperliquid rather than through a third-party app would avoid the additional builder charge, though they would still face the platform’s underlying trading fees and the market risks associated with perpetual futures.
For traders using consumer apps, the practical question is less about any single fee than about total turnover. A small account making many short-term trades may accumulate meaningful costs before market performance is considered. Reviewing the app’s fee schedule, the route used to place orders and the number of transactions planned can therefore be as relevant as choosing the market itself.
Birringer’s figures show that the convenience of app-based perpetual trading came with a measurable cost for a large retail cohort. As user growth accelerated, the combination of small starting balances, high trading frequency and added routing fees placed a significant share of trading activity on a path where costs could consume gains or deepen losses.
Worried about fee-driven futures losses? Learn safer perpetuals trading strategies before risking capital on high-cost retail apps.
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