Hyperliquid, 또한 주식 배당금 지원 예정
Original: Odaily Planet Daily (@OdailyChina)
Author: Azuma (@azuma_eth)
On August 12, Beijing time, Hyperliquid founder Jeff Yan announced an update in the official Discord channel. Because the original description was overly technical, many people overlooked or underestimated the significance of this announcement.
Literal Translation
The following is a direct translation of Jeff Yan's original statement.
- Based on Builder feedback, HIP-1 will add the following function controlled by the token deployer: scaleWei { token, totalWei, referenceToken, systemAddress }.
- This operation automatically transfers totalWei of the token from systemAddress to users in proportion to their referenceToken balance. The calculation rounds down and excludes systemAddress itself. For example, when token == referenceToken, this function can be used for redenomination.
- systemAddress has two possibilities: Core → EVM system address; or a Treasury address specified by the deployer that can provide a signature. Note that the EVM itself does not have this atomic functionality. Therefore, if the relevant token also exists in the EVM environment, the corresponding smart contract may need custom logic to apply this operation to EVM token balances synchronously.
- When token and referenceToken are the same token: All open orders are cancelled and recreated according to the actual redenomination ratio, rounding down to the precision required by szDecimals; totalWei can be negative. This allows for reverse redenomination.
- Feedback is welcome to ensure this feature can meet real-world needs as broadly as possible.
Clearly, without a basic understanding of smart contract concepts, it is difficult to grasp what this Hyperliquid update truly means.
Simplified Explanation
In simple terms, Hyperliquid is adding a capability to HIP-1 that has not been common before — directly performing batch, programmatic adjustments to user assets at the "balance layer" of HyperCore.
The most important thing here is not the function name scaleWei or its parameters, but what they can actually do.
Suppose there is a token A on Hyperliquid, and Alice holds 100, Bob holds 50, and Charlie holds 10. If an address holds 1,600 tokens of B and uses A as the referenceToken, the system can automatically distribute the 1,600 B tokens to users based on their proportion of A holdings.
The distribution would be:
- Alice holds 62.5% of A, receiving 1,000 B tokens;
- Bob holds 31.25%, receiving 500 B tokens;
- Charlie holds 6.25%, receiving 100 B tokens.
Users do not need to click "Claim" or interact with smart contracts one by one; HyperCore can directly modify account balances according to the predefined rules.
If token == referenceToken, a "redenomination" is executed, and the change is even more straightforward.
For example, if a stock token's current holdings are Alice with 100 shares, Bob with 50 shares, and Charlie with 10 shares, and a 1:10 stock split occurs, the system can directly adjust balances.
After the adjustment, the holdings would be:
- Alice holds 1,000 shares;
- Bob holds 500 shares;
- Charlie holds 100 shares.
Each person's proportional holding remains unchanged; only the unit of denomination has changed. The reverse works the same way.
Hyperliquid also specifically considered order-related issues in the update. If an asset undergoes a 1:10 split, a user's existing sell order for 100 shares obviously cannot remain unchanged, as the order quantity would no longer match the new holding structure. Therefore, the system cancels the original orders and recreates them according to the new ratio, processing quantities based on szDecimals precision. In other words, this essentially re-denominates all trading states, including balances and orders, together.
Now that the update logic is clear, what is the actual use of this "programmability at the balance layer"?
Application Scenarios
Jeff Yan's announcement primarily describes the underlying capability of scaleWei, but around this capability, we can already identify several clear application directions for stock tokens.
Scenario 1: Dividends
Dividends are one of the most basic rights of traditional stocks. In traditional brokerage systems, this is a standard corporate action; in a typical EVM model, similar operations usually require smart contracts to record eligible addresses and then have users claim manually or have the project distribute to each one individually.
scaleWei offers another possibility — directly distributing dividend assets to users in proportion to their stock token balances on HyperCore. Suppose a listed company's stock token appears on Hyperliquid and the company declares a $1 per share dividend — with Alice holding 100 shares, Bob holding 50, and Charlie holding 10, the system can directly distribute the dividend assets to each account based on holding ratios, without requiring manual claims or individual contract calls by the project. HyperCore itself can complete this batch transfer.
Scenario 2: Stock Splits and Reverse Splits
This is actually a scenario already explicitly addressed by the update. When token and referenceToken are the same asset, scaleWei can uniformly adjust all holders' balances by a set ratio.
Therefore, if a HIP-1 asset needs a 1:10 split, a 10:1 reverse split, or even an adjustment to the minimum tradable unit, it can be executed directly, with the system concurrently cancelling and recreating open orders. For a trading system truly intended to support stocks and ETFs, such "corporate actions" are a standard requirement.
Scenario 3: Rebasing
A similar mechanism can also be used for rebasing. In simple terms, when the total supply or unit of an asset is adjusted (especially during pre-market stock token conversions, where share counts are adjusted accordingly), the relative holding ratios among users remain unchanged.
Previously, such operations often relied on the token contract's own logic; going forward, they can become a native capability of HyperCore.
Scenario 4: Airdrops
Another straightforward scenario is airdrops. The referenceToken does not have to equal the token being distributed, so in theory, asset B can be distributed based on the holding ratio of asset A.
For example, if a project decides to distribute another token to holders of a specific HIP-1 asset, the system can directly read the user's A balance on HyperCore and distribute B from a designated Treasury address proportionally.
This means that, at least within HyperCore, some traditional "claim airdrop" actions could potentially be simplified to direct balance allocation by the system in the future.
Filling the Gap in "Corporate Actions" for On-Chain Stocks
It is important to emphasize that Jeff Yan's announcement focuses solely on underlying functionality for now, and does not mean Hyperliquid has announced dividends for stock tokens on the platform. However, from an infrastructure perspective, a technical path now exists for the "distribute assets to accounts based on holding ratios" capability required by the above scenarios.
Looking at the potential application scenarios together, the real significance of this Hyperliquid update is its potential to fill the "corporate action" capability gap for on-chain assets.
Over the past few years, when the industry discussed tokenized stocks, the focus was often on — "Can stocks be put on-chain?" But if the goal is to truly bring stocks on-chain, the questions go far beyond that. After a stock is issued, a series of corporate actions continuously occur: dividends, splits, reverse splits, rights issues, asset distributions, and more.
Therefore, a truly complete on-chain stock infrastructure needs not only to "trade stocks," but also to handle changes in asset states beyond trading — and this is exactly the area this Hyperliquid update begins to address.
From this perspective, scaleWei is more like adding another piece to the infrastructure puzzle for the next phase of Hyperliquid — enabling on-chain financial assets not only to be "tradable," but also to undergo various corporate actions just like real-world financial assets.
