Hibachi Review 2026: The Next Hyperliquid? Points & $HEAT
Hibachi is a pre-token perp DEX betting on speed and privacy, with weekly points ahead of a confirmed $HEAT launch. What it is, how points work, and the risks worth naming.
There’s a pattern in crypto that keeps repeating. A new trading platform launches with no token, just a points program. Early users trade on it and collect points. Then the token launches, points convert, and those early users wake up to a very good day. Hyperliquid did exactly this — its 2024 airdrop is still the one people talk about with regret in their voice. Aster did it again last year, when its token jumped 2,000% in a single week.
The obvious question: who’s next? Lately one name keeps coming up in my group chats — in three different languages — and that name is Hibachi. I spent a week trading on it and digging through everything public. Here’s what it is, in plain language, and exactly what to do if you want in.
Disclosure: this article contains referral links. If you sign up for Hibachi through them, DeFiSecret may receive a commission and referral rewards at no additional cost to you. This does not affect our assessment — the risks and limitations below are reported as we found them.
Risk warning: Hibachi is a perpetual futures exchange. Perps are leveraged derivatives that can lose more than your initial margin, and they are restricted or prohibited for retail investors in several jurisdictions, including the UK and parts of the EU and Asia. Check what applies where you live before depositing. Points are an expectation, not a promise — no token terms have been published.
⚡ Already convinced? Hibachi has no token yet and points count weekly — the earlier you start, the better.
What is Hibachi, in plain words
Hibachi is a perp DEX — a decentralized exchange where you trade perpetual futures, meaning you bet on prices going up or down with leverage, without owning the actual coins. Same category as Hyperliquid and Aster.
What makes it different comes down to two words: fast and private.
Fast: your orders match in about 5 milliseconds — the speed of a big centralized exchange like Binance, and roughly 40x faster than fully on-chain order books, according to the engineering team behind its proof system.
Private: on most DEXs, everyone can see everyone’s positions. Big players literally hunt visible stop-losses. On Hibachi, your balances and positions are encrypted — nobody sees them. And instead of asking you to just trust the exchange (we all remember FTX), every trade and liquidation gets a zero-knowledge proof — think of it as a math receipt, published on-chain, that proves the exchange processed everything honestly without revealing anyone’s data.
The project raised $5 million in March 2025, led by Dragonfly — one of the most respected crypto VC firms — with Electric Capital and Echo joining. Fees are very low: 0% for maker orders (limit orders that wait in the book) and 0.045% for taker orders (orders that execute instantly). You deposit USDT via Arbitrum or USDC via Base, and your funds stay non-custodial — the exchange never holds your money the way FTX did.
Is anyone actually using it?
Yes. The public leaderboard shows over 28,600 traders, with the top accounts having each pushed $100–190 million in lifetime volume. Small next to Hyperliquid — which has cleared $2.7 trillion since 2024 — but very alive for a platform still in beta. And that gap is exactly the opportunity: you’re not early to Hyperliquid anymore. You might be early here.
How to earn Hibachi points — step by step
Points are the whole game. The team has confirmed the future token’s ticker, $HEAT, and hands out 1 million points every week — distributed each Monday at 00:00 UTC — during the current “Playoffs” season, which the team says will be short. Points come from three activities. Here’s each one, with what you’ll actually see on screen.
1. Trade
This is the main engine. Sign up with the link or QR in this post (you’ll see “Referred by defisecret” in the corner, like the screenshot below — that’s how you know the referral registered), deposit, and trade the pairs you’d trade anyway — crypto majors, or the FX pairs which currently earn boosted points (1.05x–1.5x multipliers). Weekly trading quests stack another multiplier of up to 60% on top. Consistency beats heroics: trading a bit every week earns more than one giant week and then silence. Maker orders are free, so patient limit orders are the cheap way to farm.
2. Vaults
Don’t want to trade actively? The Vaults tab lets you deposit into strategies that trade for you — at the time of writing, the three live vaults showed returns between +19.9% and +27.8% APR. You put money in, professionals (or bots) run the strategy, you share the profit. Fair warning: these are trading strategies, not savings accounts — past month’s +21.7% can be next month’s minus. But it keeps your capital working on the platform while the points season runs.
3. Refer friends
The Referrals tab gives you your own link once you’re signed up. Referrals pay twice: you earn a cut of your friends’ trading fees — currently boosted to 50%, normally 25% — plus extra points on top. The dashboard tracks your earnings, points and referred fees in one place. If you’re in any trading group chat, this is free money for a message you’d send anyway.
Trade, deposit in a vault, refer a friend — all three count toward the weekly points drop.
The “next Hyperliquid” question, honestly
Let me be careful here, because this comparison gets thrown around too easily. Nobody is dethroning Hyperliquid this quarter. The perp DEX sector did $1.8 trillion in volume in a single quarter last year, and Hyperliquid still has the deepest markets and the strongest brand.
But that’s not really the question. The question that pays is: which platform that hasn’t launched a token yet has a real shot at the top tier?
| Hyperliquid | Aster | GRVT | Hibachi | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Their edge | Own chain, deepest liquidity | Reach + Binance-orbit backing | Regulated & licensed | Speed + privacy, zk-proven |
| Token | HYPE — launched | ASTER — launched | Launched | $HEAT — not yet |
| Airdrop chance | Gone | Gone | Gone | Still open |
Hyperliquid won on performance. Aster won on distribution. GRVT picked the regulated lane. Hibachi’s bet is privacy — big traders don’t want their positions visible, and after every exchange scandal, “prove it with math” becomes an easier sell. Whether that turns into Hyperliquid-sized volume, nobody knows. But it’s the only name in that table where the airdrop question is still open.
What worries me
Three things, said plainly. First, the order books are thinner than the big platforms, and Hibachi’s funding rate (the periodic fee longs and shorts pay each other) updates hourly using a predicted rate — on quiet markets it can jump between updates, so don’t oversize. Second, this is a young platform in beta; even with the math-proof design, smart-contract and operational risk is real. Third, points are an expectation, not a promise — airdrop programs have disappointed people before. Treat Hibachi as a defined slice of your trading, not your savings. For the boring-and-steady end of my coverage, see the ether.fi and Kast pieces.
Verdict
Hibachi is the most interesting pre-token perp DEX I’ve looked at this year. The tech is a real differentiator, not a copy-paste with better marketing. The backers are serious. The fees are sharp. And the timing — confirmed ticker, short final season — is about as good as this game offers. It either becomes a real name in this war or it doesn’t; the cost of finding out early is a few disciplined weeks of trading you’d probably do anyway.
🔥 Get on Hibachi before $HEAT launches
Sign up through the link or QR below, deposit USDT (Arbitrum) or USDC (Base), and your activity starts counting toward Monday’s points drop immediately. Referral signups earn bonus points on top.
Referral link: hibachi.xyz/r/defisecret
Hibachi sells itself as the next Hyperliquid airdrop, so it’s worth knowing the original: our Hyperliquid review covers what that airdrop actually paid out and what the venue runs like today.
For a pre-token venue that has not even reached mainnet yet, see our Bulk Trade review — earlier than Hibachi, with a correspondingly different risk profile.
GTE.xyz is the newest and best-funded entrant in this same points-farming category — our GTE review covers its waitlist system and why it is the cheapest bet in the cluster.
FAQ
What is Hibachi exchange?
A decentralized exchange for perpetual futures where trades match in ~5 ms, your positions stay private, and every trade is proven honest with zero-knowledge math. It’s non-custodial (the exchange never holds your funds) and backed by a $5M seed round led by Dragonfly.
Does Hibachi have a token?
Not yet — that’s the point. The ticker $HEAT is confirmed, and 1 million points are distributed weekly (Mondays 00:00 UTC) ahead of the expected token launch. No conversion terms have been published.
How do I earn Hibachi points?
Three ways: trade (FX pairs currently earn 1.05x–1.5x boosts, quests add up to 60% more), park capital in Vaults, and refer friends (a cut of their fees — currently 50% — plus bonus points). Consistent weekly activity beats one big burst.
What are Hibachi’s fees?
0% maker, 0.045% taker, with hourly funding. Deposit USDT via Arbitrum or USDC via Base.
Is Hibachi safe?
Safer in some ways (non-custodial, mathematically auditable, private positions), riskier in others (young platform, thinner order books, smart-contract risk, and leveraged products that can wipe out margin). Use it for a defined slice of your trading, not your savings.
This article is research commentary, not financial advice. Perpetual futures are high-risk leveraged products and are restricted for retail investors in some jurisdictions. Vault returns shown are past performance and are not indicative of future results. Details verified against the live Hibachi app and public sources in August 2026 and may change.