Behind Eyenovia's big pump of 300%, Hyperliquid's "ecosystem listing" plan.

Interview with Eyenovia executives, how to open a new narrative for encryption US stocks with HYPE?

Written by: BUBBLE, Rhythm

On June 17, the ophthalmic digital technology company Eyenovia ( stock code: EYEN) announced that it has signed a securities purchase agreement to raise $50 million through a PIPE "public equity private placement" for qualified institutional investors, which will be used to establish its first encryption reserve program, targeting the Hyperliquid native token HYPE. The $50 million investment amount far exceeds the company's market value of $20 million. Since the announcement, EYEN has continued to strengthen in the US stock market, and as of yesterday's close, EYEN's market value has quadrupled since the announcement, soaring to $80 million.

To promote the implementation of this strategic transformation, the company has simultaneously appointed Hyunsu Jung as the new Chief Investment Officer (CIO) and board member, and on July 3, the company name will officially be changed to Hyperion DeFi, with the stock code also updated to HYPD.

What exactly is Eyenovia, the first publicly listed company in the U.S. to use HYPE tokens for its "micro-strategy" plan? Who is the driving force behind it, Hyunsu Jung? More and more companies today are using Crypto tokens to "reborn," will HYPE be a better choice?

In response to these issues, BlockBeats interviewed MAX, a core member of the Hyperliquid community, and Hyunsu Jung, the newly appointed Chief Investment Officer of Eyenovia.

From a near-delisting ophthalmic company to a publicly traded company with the "most" HYPE in its holdings

Hyperliquid's mainnet has shown strong performance recently, with the total value locked (TVL) soaring into the top ten of public chain projects. The market capitalization of its native token HYPE has jumped to the 11th position in the cryptocurrency rankings, and user participation is steadily increasing, with the platform's daily transaction fees stabilizing between 2 to 3 million dollars, and annual revenue approaching 1 billion dollars. In stark contrast, Eyenovia, which had no connection to blockchain, faced worsening conditions before its transformation. This company went public on Nasdaq in February 2018 at a price of 800 dollars per share, but the stock price subsequently plummeted, falling below 1 dollar in April 2025, nearing a delisting crisis.

Eyenovia originally focused on micro-dose ophthalmic devices, with its flagship product Optejet targeting post-operative ophthalmology and pediatric myopia. However, in the past few years, Eyenovia's revenue has been dismal, with a total income of only $56,000 in 2024 and a net loss of up to $50 million, facing a delisting risk at one point. Amid the bleak outlook for its traditional business, the company chose to fully bet on encryption assets, intending to find a "new lifeline" through the high-growth ecosystem of HYPE.

According to the official announcement on June 17, Eyenovia will issue 15.4 million shares of convertible preferred stock and 30.8 million common stock warrants, with an exercise price of $3.25. If all warrants are exercised, the company could raise up to $150 million. On Monday, June 23, Eyenovia announced the purchase of 1,040,584.5 HYPE at an average price of about $34 each, and the company is currently custodizing them at Anchorage.

In such a desperate situation, Eyenovia turned its attention to the rapidly growing on-chain exchange Hyperliquid, viewing the HYPE reserves as the last "lifeline". This move indeed gave the market strong confidence; after the news broke, Eyenovia's stock price soared by 134% in a single day, instantly reversing the ongoing downturn. Through this encryption asset "lifeline", a small ophthalmology company on the brink of extinction has welcomed the hope of a rebirth.

In addition to the initial allocation of 50 million USD, Eyenovia has also designed warrants to secure more funding, and Hyunsu told BlockBeats, "Eyenovia plans to become the publicly listed company with the largest holdings of HYPE in the world."

Airdropping Executives into the Crypto Circle, Behind Them Are Veteran DeFi Operators

Before announcing its entry into the encryption field, Eyenovia had no prior intersection with the blockchain industry. Therefore, when the company offered 500,000 shares of common stock as an incentive and appointed Hyunsu Jung as Chief Investment Officer, it caused quite a stir in the industry. Through dialogue, we learned that Hyunsu Jung began his career at EY-Parthenon as a consultant, participating in significant corporate merger and acquisition deals, such as the split of United Technologies. However, in 2021, faced with the bureaucratic and slow work atmosphere of traditional institutions, Hyunsu felt disillusioned and frustrated with his career development, and decided to switch to the emerging encryption industry in search of breakthroughs. According to him, this choice stemmed from dissatisfaction with the stagnation of traditional companies and a belief in the future potential of blockchain.

Hyunsu's first step into the blockchain job market was at DARMA Capital, a digital asset investment consulting firm founded in 2018 by ConsenSys co-founder Andrew Keys. During his time at DARMA, he led the development of the Filecoin asset utilization product, aimed at lowering the financial barriers for distributed storage providers to acquire FIL tokens. This derivative product (FAUS) received approval from the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), initially providing lending scenarios for FIL and gradually expanding to over 50 data center operating teams worldwide, with total deployed assets exceeding $300 million. Hyunsu pointed out, "If on-chain assets have practical utility, then the income opportunities they generate will far exceed the levels that traditional finance can provide."

Hyunsu did not suddenly intersect with the Hyperliquid project; this is due to his personal friendship with Max, a core member of the ecosystem. The two have known each other since their study abroad days, as Max recalled on X: "It has been nearly ten years since Hyunsu and I were broke exchange students in Edinburgh; it has been five years since we became roommates in San Juan and ventured into the cryptocurrency world together." Hyunsu told BlockBeats that Max introduced him to the community during the public testing phase of Hyperliquid in 2023, and Hyunsu has been continuously working in Hyperliquid since then.

Besides staking HYPE, what else does Eyenovia need to do?

Shortly after Eyenovia announced the acquisition of HYPE, the Canadian listed company Tony G Co-Investment attempted a similar operation. On June 12, the company purchased 10,000 HYPE, and within an hour, the stock price surged over 800%, leveraging a mere investment of 430,000 USD to create an astonishing market value increase of 57 million USD.

According to official disclosures, Eyenovia will use the vast majority of the funds raised this time to purchase over a million HYPE tokens. In the Hyperliquid HIP-3 protocol mechanism, deploying a token market requires staking at least 1 million HYPE tokens. Node owners can receive a share of the market transaction fees, and Eyenovia's purchase just meets this requirement, significantly enhancing the "holding tokens + nodes + earnings" compound possibility. It is not uncommon for publicly listed companies to incorporate encryption assets into their balance sheets, and Eyenovia is undoubtedly one of the latest and most aggressive practitioners.

This transaction is regarded by the community as the beginning of the Hyperliquid version of the "MicroStrategy model". Community member Telaga further proposed how to operate the long-term concept of Strategy using HYPE, envisioning a framework centered around HYPE that constructs a closed-loop asset management system encompassing CDT bond tokens, NFT options, LP market making, liquidity vaults, perpetual contracts, and DeFi modules, achieving structural exposure allocation and compound growth of on-chain funds.

Specifically, the vault is funded by external users, primarily deposited in the form of US dollar stablecoins (USD). After the funds are deposited, users receive two types of on-chain certificates: one type is the Convertible Debt Token (CDT), representing principal rights; the other type is the Options NFT, symbolizing the future rights to profit or repurchase. This design allows user assets to have both liquidity and to bind long-term value growth expectations through contractual structures.

Hyunsu told BlockBeats that the company not only incorporates HYPE into its balance sheet but also plans to establish a long-term compound interest model through staking, on-chain yield protocols, referral commissions, and node operations.

On June 25, Eyenovia has started to implement its on-chain participation commitment by announcing a partnership with Hyperliquid's native staking protocol Kinetiq to launch the joint validator node Kinetiq x Hyperion. This node utilizes Eyenovia's recently acquired 1 million HYPE to provide validation services for the Hyperliquid network, enhancing the network's security and allowing the company to directly participate in on-chain revenue generation. According to reports, this node is supported by the institutional-grade node service provider Pier Two, earning native rewards through HYPE staking.

At the same time, Hyunsu provided BlockBeats with two potential cases that Eyenovia may implement in the future:

1. Sign a bilateral agreement with the trading institution, pledge HYPE, and bind the wallet to the institution's master wallet. The trading party can enjoy a discount on transaction fees without having to bear HYPE exposure or hedge on their own.

2. The Hyperliquid interface allows the transfer of fee discounts to new users via referral codes. If an interface lacks top-tier fee levels, its competitiveness can be improved through the "staking rental agreement."

Hyunsu told BlockBeats that although Eyenovia currently does not plan to build or operate any on-chain products, it plans to become an active investor and responsible participant in the Hyperliquid ecosystem. It will participate in DeFi applications on HyperEVM, depending on internal approval, with a focus on LST liquidity and lending market supply.

Why HYPE?

In the US stock market, "buying coins" is becoming a new means for certain companies to tell their valuation stories. From the pioneer MicroStrategy to the latecomers SharpLink and GameStop, many companies have attempted to achieve stock price surges and market value management by purchasing mainstream encryption assets (such as BTC and ETH).

Among them, MicroStrategy has boldly bet on Bitcoin since 2020, with its stock price soaring from the initial tens of dollars to 370 dollars in 2025, and its market value surpassing 100 billion dollars, making it a textbook case of "coin-stock integration". Meanwhile, a little-known small gambling company, SharpLink Gaming (SBET), announced in May 2025 that it had raised 425 million dollars in private financing to acquire 163,000 Ethereum (ETH), causing its stock price to surge by 500% on the same day. Against the backdrop of these examples, Eyenovia's choice to abandon traditional BTC and ETH in favor of the emerging HYPE naturally raises curiosity: why HYPE?

Hyunsu told BlockBeats that "HYPE has a unique deflationary attribute among the current mainstream encryption assets. The lack of structural net selling pressure makes it more suitable as collateral, providing a more solid foundation for DeFi. In addition, the scarcity of HYPE spot also brings us advantages." Hyperliquid blockchain has a built-in trading fee buyback and burn mechanism, where the network's accumulated transaction fees are automatically used to buy back and "recycle" the circulating HYPE in the market.

By June 2025, more than 25 million HYPE will have been redeemed and destroyed by the protocol, making HYPE the 11th largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization globally. The supply is on a contraction trend, making it more suitable as a collateral asset compared to Bitcoin and Ethereum, thus building a more solid value foundation for DeFi applications. In contrast, while Bitcoin is highly recognized by institutions, its role is more like a digital commodity; Ethereum has a certain deflationary tendency (such as the fee burning under the EIP-1559 mechanism), but still experiences ongoing ecological inflation and selling pressure. HYPE, on the other hand, continually supports its own value through the rapid growth of on-chain transactions, forming an endogenous value support.

More importantly, Hyunsu emphasized that "there is a strong growth story behind HYPE." Hyperliquid, as a high-performance on-chain trading platform, has seen its daily trading volume and user metrics continuously rise, which brings growth potential for HYPE linked to business fundamentals. In comparison, Bitcoin has matured over years of development, with limited "narrative space," and its exposure has almost become commoditized.

Relatively speaking, HYPE has not yet been widely held by large institutions or retail investors, making it a brand new, high-growth potential exposure opportunity for traditional investors. "HYPE has two major advantages as a treasury asset: first, HYPE is a 'productive asset' that can provide practical benefits such as transaction fee discounts after being staked; second, HYPE has not been widely held, allowing us to offer the market a valuable unique exposure," Hyunsu explained. These two points have allowed Eyenovia to stand out among many companies trying to explore 'encryption asset treasury' and have provided it with a sustainable on-chain income path (such as staking rewards, node profit sharing, etc.), rather than just passively waiting for the token to appreciate.

From a broader market demand perspective, Hyunsu believes that "HYPE, as a new type of collateral asset, can also be understood and accepted by traditional financial practitioners." In the current macro environment, asset selection is increasingly critical, and the highlights of HYPE in user growth and token economic design give it a natural advantage, making it likely to meet the allocation needs of some institutional investors for high-growth on-chain assets.

At the same time, the rise of the decentralized perpetual contract market is also attracting the attention of traditional finance. "Liquidity attracts liquidity," Hyunsu pointed out, "the recent moves of traditional institutions such as BlackRock, JPMorgan, PayPal, and Robinhood in the blockchain space indicate that the on-chain market is becoming a new arena, and the on-chain perpetual trading market for non-encryption assets will unleash a larger demand pool." This means that platforms like Hyperliquid, which provide on-chain high-frequency trading, still have enormous growth potential in the future, and holding HYPE is equivalent to participating in the equity of this emerging "financial engine."

Lifeline or exit liquidity?

It is undeniable that HYPE has injected a lifeline into Eyenovia. However, can betting on HYPE truly establish a sustainable, dividend-paying, and governable on-chain financial model? Can the compound interest logic envisioned by Eyenovia support the financial paradigm shift of future publicly listed companies in the U.S.? Or will it ultimately just become a "liquidity exit" channel for early whales cashing out in Hyperliquid? These questions have sparked heated discussions in the community.

In this regard, Hyunsu told BlockBeats that "any conscious on-chain participation is an important part of enhancing the awareness and usage of the Hyperliquid ecosystem." In other words, even though Eyenovia's current strategy mainly focuses on holding and staking HYPE, rather than developing killer applications by itself, as long as the company is deeply involved in the ecosystem with real capital, its actions will inherently expand the influence and user base of Hyperliquid. For this reason, Eyenovia is not worried about external criticisms of being "just hoarding coins without building."

In response to the concern that "if HYPE is mainly obtained through OTC and not invested in ecological construction, it may become an exit channel for early whales," Hyunsu stated that Eyenovia has a fiduciary duty to its shareholders and must execute its HYPE treasury strategy with maximum efficiency. If future opportunities arise for discounted acquisitions of large amounts of HYPE through OTC, the company will make a prudent decision on whether to participate based on the circumstances.

But for now, he does not believe that Eyenovia's buy-in provides a channel for early whale exits, because except for the unlocking of Hyperliquid core contributors starting in November 2025, all early airdrop tokens of HYPE have already been unlocked for circulation. However, according to MAX, there are currently no team members ready to sell their locked tokens, and there is no large-scale token supply pressure from locked tokens waiting to be released in the market.

Eyenovia's acquisition of over 1 million HYPE this time was all from absorbing circulating chips from the secondary market, which in turn reduced market selling pressure to a certain extent. In addition, by collaborating with compliant custody and trading platforms such as Anchorage, the company ensures the transparency and legality of the coin purchase process, striving to protect the interests of small and medium shareholders.

Of course, any strategy involving highly volatile assets cannot avoid the issue of risk management. If the HYPE price experiences a significant drop in the future, will it deal a fatal blow to Eyenovia's operations and finances? In response, Hyunsu provided a series of contingency plans. He stated that the company has formulated a plan to hedge its exposure if necessary. When deploying the HYPE treasury, Eyenovia is more focused on fixed income generated from staking or income paths that are less correlated with market trends, thereby reducing dependence on token price fluctuations.

Hyunsu did not disclose more specific details, but based on the way it was revealed, the team may use tools such as synthetic yield realization (e.g., using derivatives to lock in some book profits) and protective options to hedge against downside risk. Once the HYPE market conditions deteriorate sharply, these hedging strategies will act as shock absorbers, protecting the stability of the company's balance sheet and shareholder value.

CEX Dragon Slaying Technique?

Looking to the future, whether Eyenovia's "on-chain micro-strategy" experiment can succeed remains to be seen.

On one hand, whether the Hyperliquid ecosystem can continue to maintain rapid growth and whether the HYPE token model can prove its long-term value in the new cycle are key factors determining the success or failure of Eyenovia's financial transformation; on the other hand, the dynamics of mainstream institutions such as Coinbase and Robinhood entering the compliant perpetual market in the United States also adds external competitive pressure to Hyperliquid.

It can be said that Eyenovia is at the forefront of the intersection between traditional finance and the encryption world, with every step of its exploration filled with uncertainty.