A $500,000 Ticker Bought Out and "Rebranded by Force"? Hyperliquid's Trust Test

Hyperliquid is undoubtedly the shining star of the crypto world this year.

However, a recent dispute over "naming rights" has sparked considerable debate and controversy within the community.

If you spent $500,000 on Hyperliquid to acquire a token ticker, would you consider it yours by default? The recent action taken by the Hyperliquid team provides an answer: it belongs to you on-chain, but I control it on the web.

$500,000 for $MON, and it can be taken away?

The controversy stems from January of this year when the GameFi project Pixelmon, backed by the Mon Protocol, participated in Hyperliquid's HIP-1 spot listing auction to attract the Hyperliquid community.

Here, let's briefly explain Hyperliquid's spot listing mechanism. Unlike centralized exchanges' "listing fees" or "bribes," HL utilizes a Dutch auction listing. This is a permissionless process where projects bid and pay Gas fees in a bidding war to qualify for listing (initially using USDC, later switched to HYPE).

Source:   https://data.asxn.xyz/dashboard/hl-auctions

At that time, Mon Protocol spent around $500,000, winning the auction at a high price, and successfully registered the $MON ticker on-chain.

At that time, in the early stages of the Hyperliquid spot market and before the launch of the spot bridging project Unit, besides high-market-cap assets like HYPE and PURR, other spot trading pairs generally lacked liquidity. The performance of Mon Protocol's token after listing was nearly equivalent to a rug pull.

Monad, as a much-anticipated "king-level project," also had a token called $MON. So when Monad landed on Hyperliquid, an awkward scene unfolded: the Hyperliquid team directly modified the frontend display, renaming Mon Protocol to "MONPRO" on the frontend, while Monad directly used the "MON" name.

Although on-chain, Pixelmon's token code is still MON, Monad is actually UMON. But in the most direct frontend perceptible to users, Pixelmon's $500,000 "naming rights" were instantly stripped away.

User Security or Traffic First?

This action quickly ignited public opinion on Twitter. Trader Akku bluntly stated that this decision was "extremely disappointing."

"Pixelmon spent $500,000 to buy something on the frontend that can be arbitrarily overridden, while Monad (or Unit closely related to it) can obtain this visible name for free... Does this mean: you can buy the on-chain code, but we will decide what the frontend displays based on our relationships?"

Facing criticism, xulian, a core member of Hyperliquid, gave a very "Web2" explanation:

"The most important factor on the frontend is to protect the user. It is bad for everyone if the user buys the wrong token. As far as I know, all major exchanges changed MON to display as MONPRO a few weeks ago. The auction was the on-chain gas fee, and the Mon Protocol team still owns the MON ticker. Any other frontend can name it whatever they want."

This statement translates to: To prevent user confusion, we sacrificed the original Ticker owner's display rights.

Another party involved in this event, the Unit team closely related to Hyperliquid (responsible for the on-chain bridging of the Monad token on HL), was also embroiled in the controversy due to acquiring this name. Unit member Shadow (0xmev) was forced to come out and clarify:

"Protocol and App are two different things. Hyperliquid Labs has decision-making power over the App. This matter is clear: one project (Mon Protocol) designed to attract buying interest from the Hyperliquid community failed, resulting in the token price going to zero; while another project (Monad) with high visibility and trading volume entered. Labs felt that giving the name to the latter was a better display choice."

Community Outrage

While the official explanation may hold up logically (the frontend does indeed belong to Hyperliquid Labs), the community does not consider it acceptable on emotional or business ethics grounds.

Akku argued that the initial spot auction's marketing made everyone assume "spot listing = frontend display," and now playing a word game to claim it is "on-chain only" is nothing short of a marketing scam. He believes that if Monad does not want conflict, they should rename themselves instead of depriving the early comers of their rights.

Ramen's view represents the sentiment of the majority of onlookers:

"Displaying $MON for Monad to avoid confusion may be right, but forcibly renaming after someone has paid $500,000 is wrong. A refund seems to be the best course of action."

Of course, there are also voices supporting HL. Users aaalex.hl and altoshi insist that "the protocol is not the same as the frontend," "Hyperliquid is a business, not a charity," and believe that as long as the on-chain contract has not changed, it does not violate the decentralization principle.

“Arrogance” is a Byproduct of Success

Hyperliquid has done nothing wrong. They do have absolute control over the hyperliquid.xyz domain and have the right to adjust the display logic for the sake of user experience. Given Monad's scale and attention far exceeding Pixelmon, giving Monad the code MON not only aligns with the platform's interests but also protects unaware users from purchasing a low-liquidity token of the same name.

This seemingly reasonable "unilateral" action actually makes some ecosystem builders uneasy.

Absolute Interpretation Authority

In another story revealed by Unit team member Shadow in a reply, perhaps more thought-provoking than the renaming event itself:

"We built the entire brand (tradexyz) from scratch, precisely because we had no influence over Labs' frontend decisions. They ultimately decided to roll out HIP-3 on their official frontend immediately after we completed and announced the entire project—effectively destroying the competitive advantage we had spent a lot of time building. But we will not complain about it; we will continue to move forward."

If even a "core force" like Unit could be "blood-sucked" by the official front end at any time, how can those small-scale projects without background find a sense of security in such an ecosystem?

Rigid Handling

Hyperliquid's "arrogance" towards capital is a major factor in winning enthusiastic community support. They have rejected investment from top VCs, refused to pay listing fees to CEXs, and insisted on fair distribution.

However, as Akku pointed out, even if they were to refund the auction fee from that year or reach some kind of compensation agreement with the Pixelmon team in advance, it would make this matter much more decent. The current approach not only harms early supporters (even of a failed project), but also sends a signal to the outside world that "might makes right."

Hyperliquid is still one of the best Perp DEXs in the market, and its technical strength is beyond doubt. However, after reaching the top, how to avoid becoming the same kind of "arbitrary giant" they originally wanted to disrupt may be a question that the Hyperliquid team needs to consider.

Water can carry a boat, but it can also capsize it. The "arrogance" that the community likes is the resilience in the face of authority, not the capriciousness when facing rules.