Does Hyperliquid's popularity mean Arbitrum is "winning by default"?

Recently, the Hyperliquid HIP3 protocol has become incredibly popular, with stocks, gold, and even Pokémon cards and CS skins now available for trading. This has made Hyperliquid incredibly successful, but many people have overlooked the fact that Arbitrum's liquidity has also seen a significant surge in the past.

Is it true that the more popular Hyperliquid becomes, the more Arbitrum can "quietly make a fortune"? Why is that?

1) A fundamental fact is that most of the USDC held by Hyperliquid is bridged from Arbitrum. Whenever Hyperliquid launches a TSLA stock contract or a gold perp, a massive amount of USDC flows in from Arbitrum. This connection is not incidental, but a structural dependency.

These bridging activities directly contributed to Arbitrum's daily transaction volume and ecosystem activity, propelling Arbitrum to maintain its leading position in layer 2.

2) Of course, some might say that Arbitrum is merely a stepping stone for Hyperliquid's funding, a one-way street where funds simply pass through. Then why doesn't Hyperliquid choose Solana or Base, but instead deeply integrates with Arbitrum? The reasons are as follows:

1. Lowest technical adaptation cost: Hyperliquid requires a liquidity entry point with good EVM compatibility to securely accept stablecoins, while Arbitrum's Nitro architecture can keep bridging latency within 1 minute and the gas fee is less than $0.01, so users can hardly feel the friction cost.

2. Unparalleled Liquidity Depth: Arbitrum's native USDC circulating supply reaches $8.06 billion, the highest among all Layer 2 platforms. Furthermore, Arbitrum has mature protocols like GMX and Gains that have formed a complete closed loop encompassing lending, trading, derivatives, and yield aggregation. Essentially, Hyperliquid's choice of Arbitrum is not merely about a bridging channel, but about accessing a mature liquidity network.

3. The synergistic effect of the ecosystem is irreplaceable: Some of the new stock PERP, gold PERP, and even government bond tokens launched in HIP3 already existed on Arbitrum as RWA assets, and were used for lending and farming through DeFi protocols such as Morpho, Pendle, and Euler. This allows users to stake RWA assets as collateral on Arbitrum to borrow USDC, and then bridge to Hyperliquid to trade stock PERP with 5x or even 10x leverage. This isn't just a one-way transfer of funds; it's a cross-ecosystem liquidity aggregation.

3) In my view, the relationship between Hyperliquid and Arbitrum is not a simple liquidity "parasitic relationship," but rather a strategic complementarity.

Hyperliquid, as the application chain of Perp Dex, continues to stimulate transaction activity, while Arbitrum provides a continuous influx of liquidity. For Arbitrum, it also needs phenomenal applications like Hyperliquid to overcome the lack of product dynamism in the Ethereum ecosystem.

This reminds me of when Arbitrum was promoting the Orbit layer3 framework, its main selling point was the "general layer2 + specialized application chain" approach. Orbit allowed any team to quickly deploy their own Layer3 application chain, enjoying Arbitrum's security and liquidity while customizing performance parameters according to business needs.

While Hyperliquid chose a path of building its own layer 1 and deeply binding with Arbitrum, which seems different from directly deploying layer 3, a closer analysis of the relationship between the HIP-3 ecosystem and Arbitrum reveals an interesting conclusion: the HIP-3 ecosystem has, to some extent, become the de facto layer 3 application chain of Arbitrum.

Ultimately, the core logic of Layer 3 is to maintain its own performance advantages while outsourcing security and liquidity to Layer 2. Clearly, Hyperliquid cannot currently offer the liquidity advantages of the HIP3 ecosystem, but Arbitrum can.

Isn't this just a variant of the layer 3 operating mode?