If you want to use Hyperliquid, you have to bridge your assets in via Arbitrum. The assets stay on Arbitrum. And Hyperliquid mints you a credit (backed by your asset on Arbitrum) so that you can use Hyperliquid. Therefore, withdrawals on Hyperliquid only work if they honor your balance and instruct the bridge to release funds back to you. Unlike Arbitrum's relationship with Ethereum, there is no Ethereum-enforced guarantee. You have to trust Hyperliquid here. ---- Furthermore, Hyperliquid only has 21 validators today, which are "permissioned in" based on stake (barrier to entry via capital) ---- Is Hyperliquid pure DeFi? It's non-custodial and fully transparent. But you still have some trust assumptions and barriers to running a node. So, no. It's not pure DeFi. And I think that's to be expected at this stage. The team launched less than a year ago with 4 validators. They have 21 now. Let's see how committed they are to decentralizing as they scale. ---- P.S. We covered Hyperliquid for readers of @the_defi_report yesterday If you'd like to check out the latest research, see below 👇