07/09/2025 - Upheaving the norm
After months of building, we are proud to unveil the Upheaval protocol built on Hyperliquid, designed uniquely to marry the narratives of today with the mechanics of the morrow. Upheaval is built as a protocol to ensure the fairest and most decentralized token launch across Hyperliquid, across all narratives. We uniquely solve exchange listing problems, where we have the age-old problem of Binance/Bybit/Meteora insiders cornering tons of supply before listing and ultimately using retail as exit liquidity. The solving of these problems is only possible on Hyperliquid with Upheaval.fi.
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The Upheaval-Improvement-Proposals (UIPs)
Upheaval is built as a protocol to be upgraded over time. As of project launch, we have 2 confirmed UIPs which will serve as the core tenets of the project. The goal of the first 2 UIPs are to solve:
1. Token demand, supply, graduation and price discovery issues.
2. Liquidity flywheel to guarantee thick token liquidity on Hyperliquid.
UIP-1: This consists of a Bonding curve token launchpad with an in-built 3 step graduation program for tokens launched on Hyperliquid. The aim is to solve token listing issues on Hypercore to ensure that tokens go through a transparent graduation programme for Hypercore listings. This uniquely solves for insider trading problem, and allows for only quality listings on Hyperliquid hypercore.
UIP-2: This is a liquidity improvement proposal aimed at ensuring tokens that hit graduation requirements receive liquidity support through Upheaval’s spot market-making algorithms on Hypercore. All protocol fees earned on Upheaval goes towards ensuring tokens that hit graduation requirements will receive UIP-2 support.
Learn more about the UIPs below.
UIP-1: Bonding curve launch
In today’s token economy, token holders crave volatility at every touchpoint of a token’s launch. Token launch platforms such as Pump.fun have uniquely catered to this via a bonding curve style launch — to huge success. Part of our design is inspired and improved based on that. We employ the use of a unique bonding curve math to ensure users get the early stage project volatility that they are used to today. As Upheaval grows, our implementation allows us to perform tweaks to the bonding curve at each juncture to optimise for the best trading experience. The aim of the bonding curve implementation is mainly to keep up with the existing times of matching product to user expectations of today.
UIP-1: The 3 step graduation programme
In the next bits, the 3-step graduation programme is arguably the most important piece for which we can uniquely solve insider issues, while ensuring proper token flywheels for each of the projects launched via Upheaval.
Firstly, tokens that hit a minimum 70k USD market cap get to graduate from the bonding curve and onto the Upheaval DEX that employs XYK curve pricing mechanisms. This allows for a constant product price discovery mechanism after a token has gained the initial traction on the Upheaval bonding curve product. The users who participated in the original bonding curve are the liquidity providers to ensure the first proper listing on Upheaval.
Secondly, once tokens hit a 75mil market cap target, the Upheaval protocol will automatically acquire a spot-listing on Hyperliquid’s Central-Limit-Order-Book (CLOB). This creates a situation where CLOB traders on Hyperliquid gain access to the token and are able to provide liquidity/or spot buy the token in a familiar CEX-like environment.
In this manner, we rapidly increase the distribution of the project’s tokens to future willing holders of the project in a trustless manner. There is no need to have opaque requirements from listing managers on current CEX exchanges where listings happen only after supply has been cornered — which essentially is a result of capitulation from early token holders. Also, this runs in converse to how most tokens are currently immediately listed on Perpetual markets on Binance/Bybit (before the spot market). We have all observed how this has been catasrophic for project tokens as Perpetual markets tend to create infinite supply upon willing token holders. The net result is a spiral of capitulation as everyone exits during a perpetual listing event. Many great projects have been destroyed as a result of this. By bringing back the trusted and true method of creating a healthy spot environment for newly launched tokens, we aim to build the wealth effect for each and every single project that is launched via our protocol. This will be a true net win against current shady practices.
Thirdly, once tokens hit a healthier market cap range of 250m market cap, the Upheaval protocol will activate HIP-3 to acquire a perpetual listing on Hyperliquid’s perpetual markets. Only when a token has proper spot distribution and strong market cap, does it make sense for there to be a perpetual listing to enhance the available liquidity for the token. Tokens that are able to get to this stage tend to stay strong. This allows Upheaval to build a strong flywheel for token projects where each token that hit requirements get a much needed boost at each juncture. Most importantly, everything is built to be trustless and is fully meritocratic. No longer do we need to have project founders chummy-ing up with listing managers, or having to pay huge token allocations to CEX-es for listing.
UIP-2: Protocol-owned-liquidity for Spot tokens
When tokens graduate from Upheaval AMM, they will be launched on Hypercore spot CLOB books where there tends to be marginal liquidity. UIP-2 is a market-making proposal where protocol fees accrued under Upheaval’s DEX is used to market-make for the graduated spot tokens. This ensures tokens have ample liquidity to price discover on Hyperliquid’s spot books. More importantly, Upheaval has a third step graduation for tokens to be listed on HIP-3. UIP-2 also covers market-making on Hyperliquid’s HIP-3 perpetual DEX.
Problems that Upheaval solve
Price Discovery Issues
Hyperliquid spot tokens often struggle with weak price action. The main reason is the CLOB mechanism, which limits proper price discovery for illiquid markets. In immature markets, this leads to sharp over-extensions both up and down — leaving many traders exposed to unnecessary losses.
CLOBs work perfectly for mature assets like BTC, ETH, HYPE, and SOL, where liquidity is deep. But for newly launched tokens, once liquidity dries up, prices tend to collapse.
This is where AMMs matter. Constant-product pricing creates a more consistent trading experience and allows tokens to discover their value naturally over time. Passive liquidity is especially important in the early stages of building a community. Only once liquidity becomes abundant should tokens graduate to CLOBs for broader adoption.
Mismatch with Market Demand
In today’s attention-driven, volatility-seeking market, traders want excitement without chaos. Our product is built to meet those needs — delivering consistency while tapping into the volatility that keeps traders engaged.
High Spot Listing Costs
Spot listings on Hyperliquid currently cost around $40k through the Dutch auction process. As $HYPE velocity accelerates, these costs could easily rise 2x–5x. Serious projects need an efficient way to access listings without being priced out. Upheaval serves as that communal proxy, using trading fees to secure listings on behalf of the ecosystem.
Perpetual Listing Barriers
Perpetual listings are equally critical, as they bring deeper liquidity and long-term sustainability for tokens. But activating HIP-3 is a complex process, not available to everyone. Upheaval provides the vessel to make perpetual listings accessible for strong projects.
Opaque & Unfair Listing Practices
Today’s listing practices are often opaque, costly, and questionable in fairness. Upheaval solves this by introducing clear targets, removing middlemen, preventing supply cornering — and ultimately strengthening Hyperliquid for the entire community.
Mission
Upheaval is a statement. Upheaval is a movement. We are looking to disrupt current token listing practices and to stay true to the Hyperliquid mission to house all of finance in an equitable manner. Token launches should never be done at the expense of the holders who truly believe in the projects. It is time to create the age of believing, and no longer do we capitulate to the ones who profit at our expense.
Hyperliquid
Firelord Upheaval Founder
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