Based
Based is a self-custodial trading and spending app built around Hyperliquid trading infrastructure. Its origins trace to Suberra, co-founded by Edison Lim and Zac Ler in 2021, and BasedApp was publicly released in September 2023. Based describes its service as an on-chain financial “Super App” intended to combine trading, forecasting, and spending in one interface. It operates across web, iOS, Android, and desktop, with one account for accessing its products. The company says users hold their own private keys.[16][17][18][3][4][5]
Based’s products include trading, a Visa debit card, artificial-intelligence tools, and the BASED utility token.[1][2]
개요
BasedApp, an earlier product from the company, was publicly released in September 2023. By November 2024, Based reported that thousands of people had used its cards for purchases. On November 28, 2024, it announced BasedApp V2, which added accounts able to hold U.S. dollars and Singapore dollars, allowing users to exchange currencies in advance and spend from those balances. The update also enabled deposits of Solana (SOL) or USD Coin (USDC) on Solana, with deposited USDC exchangeable into dollars or Singapore dollars for card spending. Based said the V2 product used Fireblocks for digital-asset security and its multiparty computation (MPC) key-management technology. The original announcement scheduled Gold cardholder access for December 2024 and upgrades for standard cardholders in the first quarter of 2025. On February 5, 2025, Based said all Standard Card holders could upgrade to V2.[6][19]
The same announcement introduced BasedGold, a limited-edition card for early supporters. The collection was capped at 444 cards, made from 20-gram mirror-finish stainless steel, and offered with Gold+ Rewards, including airport lounge access, accelerated points earning, subscription rebates, and priority customer support. Based said it had received an exemption from Singapore’s Major Payment Institution licence requirements while it pursued a licence and worked with regulators.[6]
In July 2025, BasedApp described its HyperApp as a mobile trading product built on Hyperliquid. At the time, the app was available on Android and through Apple’s TestFlight service for iOS, while the company said a general iOS release was forthcoming. Based also announced an affiliate program and distinguished trading XP from points earned through card spending, in part because the Visa card was unavailable in some locations. On July 11, 2025, Based said its web app was available to everyone. The company’s roadmap at the time called for futures and spot feature parity and spot trading across the HyperEVM ecosystem. Current product documentation lists a web terminal and spot trading, alongside perpetual trading, prediction markets, and the Visa card.[7][4]
On September 8, 2025, Ethena Labs made a strategic investment in Based, reported as $4 million. The investment was intended to expand USDe adoption on Hyperliquid.[20][21]
Pantera Capital announced on February 23, 2026, that it was leading an $11.5 million Series A investment in Based. The company said the funding would support expansion into new markets and development of its on-chain financial infrastructure. Pantera reported that, in the six-month period following Based’s July 2025 launch, the platform generated more than $13 million in fees and exceeded 1% of global daily Hyperliquid trading volume.[1][2]
The Series A was led by Pantera, with participation reported from Coinbase Ventures, Wintermute Ventures, and Karatage. Based’s product documentation also named Ethena, Hashed, and Spartan Group among the round’s backers.[2][4]
In its announcement, Based reported that eight months after launch it had more than 100,000 registered users, 30,000 monthly active users across five regions, and approximately $40 billion in cumulative trading volume. Its product documentation and litepaper also report more than 100,000 users and trading volume above $41 billion; the litepaper additionally reports approximately $20 million in annual recurring revenue.[2][4][8]
Trading and Market Access
Based provides spot and perpetual futures trading through Hyperliquid, which it describes as the platform’s core trading engine. Rather than operate a separate trading chain, Based uses Hyperliquid’s execution environment and adds its own interface, tools, and product integrations. Pantera identified private time-weighted average price (TWAP) orders, trailing stop-loss orders, and multi-asset collateral among Based’s trading features.[9][5][1]
The service also offers spot token swaps and liquidity-routing tools. Its mobile and browser-based interfaces are intended to make trading available across devices, while the company has described plans to broaden access to equities, commodities, and additional market types. Based says its trading interface supports Hyperliquid’s functions alongside additional tools and features.[5][9][8]
Based’s trading-related revenue streams include trading fees and foreign-exchange fees. The litepaper says the company earns a 0.025% fee on trades routed through its Hyperliquid builder code. It also describes card-payment interchange as a source of revenue.[8]
Prediction Markets
Based integrates prediction markets using Polymarket. The markets cover subjects including politics, sports, cryptocurrency, and other events, allowing users to trade positions on outcomes through the Based interface.[4][5]
A position can be redeemed after Polymarket resolves its market, a process that may take a day or longer. Before resolution, users can exit by selling a position; the FAQ describes a pre-resolution exit price of 99 cents.[9]
Based Cash and Visa Card
Card operation and availability
Based Cash is a crypto-funded Visa card. It converts eligible balances for card purchases at merchants that accept Visa. Identity verification and jurisdiction restrictions apply. Based’s homepage stated that the card was accepted at over 90 million merchants worldwide as of October 18, 2026.[10][3]
Rewards and tiers
As listed on Based Cash’s product page on October 18, 2026, Premium advertised 2% cashback and a 1.5% non-USD foreign-exchange markup, while Gold advertised 4% cashback and no foreign-exchange markup. The page also listed subscription rebates for both tiers and four annual lounge visits for Gold. Cashback was paid in BASED.[10]
Security incident
Based reported that unauthorized access to an internal card-program dashboard occurred on October 5, 2026. Some cardholders’ names, ID or passport numbers, birth dates, and addresses may have been accessed. Based said card numbers, CVV and PIN, ID photographs, liveness images, wallet funds, and the trading wallet were unaffected. Affected cardholders were notified, authorities were informed, and card service continued.[22]
In an October 12, 2026 follow-up, Based said it was responding to affected users, had reported the incident to relevant data-protection and regulatory authorities and police, and was tightening security controls and monitoring.[23]
Artificial Intelligence
Based AI and model privacy
Based AI combines chat, image and video generation, and agent-building tools through models from multiple providers. Users can select an available model for tasks such as answering questions or generating media. Zero-retention is offered only for selected models, and data handling and privacy settings vary by model.[12]
The litepaper outlines a broader role for AI in the platform, including order routing, risk monitoring, strategy automation, portfolio optimization, and private inference. It also describes a model of agentic commerce in which software agents control wallets, trade, and pay for services programmatically, including through x402 payments. Based’s “Web 4.0” plans include services such as ai.based.one and based.page, with the aim of providing agents with domains, hosting, payments, identity, and financial services.[8]
Infinity
Infinity, available in research preview, combines a specialized AI model with market data across equities, commodities, and cryptocurrency. Based presents it as a tool for market research, forming views, and developing trading strategies, and cautions that its outputs can contain errors that should be checked against the underlying sources.[12]
Autonomous trading agents
As of October 18, 2026, Based’s product page described autonomous trading agents as “coming soon.” The planned interface would let users specify a trading strategy in plain language for an agent to monitor and execute. A published example describes a Bitcoin momentum strategy that would trade when Bitcoin breaks its 20-day high alongside rising open interest, then reduce exposure when volatility increases; the examples illustrate the planned feature, not a live capability.[12]
Based Research
Initial dashboard
Based announced Based Research on June 5, 2026, as a product for trading data. Its initial release focuses on Hyperliquid perpetual markets and includes a funding dashboard showing seven-day average funding rates, long carry profit and loss, funding-rate arbitrage setups, and changes in open interest.[13]
The dashboard is intended to distinguish persistent funding pressure from short-lived rate spikes, show funding earned or paid on a long perpetual position over time, and identify potential funding opportunities involving offsetting positions. Open-interest changes are presented as context for assessing whether price movements accompany new positioning, squeezes, momentum, or position unwinding.[13]
Metrics and expansion
Based said the Hyperliquid release was the beginning of a broader effort to add markets, metrics, and contextual data.[13]
HyENA and Based Cloud
HyENA
Based developed HyENA in collaboration with Ethena. HyENA is a perpetuals venue on Hyperliquid that uses USDe as collateral; its project description says traders can earn rewards while opening and maintaining perpetual positions. Based’s litepaper reports more than $2.3 billion in HyENA volume and more than 10,000 users, and characterizes it as the second-largest HIP-3 market on Hyperliquid. A February 2026 announcement separately reported that HyENA had processed more than $1.5 billion in volume within a few months of launch.[8][2]
HyENA uses Hyperliquid’s HIP-3 framework, which allows independent teams to launch and operate perpetual decentralized exchanges on the network. Builders stake HYPE tokens for deployment rights and are accountable through validator governance. Builder-deployed venues can set their oracle sources, leverage parameters, fee rates, and open-interest caps.[8]
Based Cloud
Based describes its underlying technology as modular infrastructure that can be adapted for third-party venues and products. Its Based Cloud concept is intended to support white-label exchanges using prebuilt order books, margin systems, risk engines, and front-end templates on Hyperliquid. Based presents HyENA as an example of this infrastructure being reused outside its main trading interface.[8][2]
BASED Token
The Based Foundation introduced BASED on February 8, 2026, as the ecosystem’s native utility token. It has a fixed total supply of one billion tokens. The Foundation says the token is intended to provide access to platform features, align incentives, and support long-term community ownership; it is not described as derivatives collateral or a synthetic stable asset.[14][5]
The stated supply allocation is 36% for community distribution, 23.64% for ecosystem and community rewards, 20.36% for investors, and 20% for core contributors. The community allocation includes a 23.5% share for Based community members and early participants, a 7.5% allocation for the Ethena community, and 5% for Season 3 participants. The Foundation’s February token announcement says the Ethena allocation recognizes its strategic investment and collaboration on HyENA.[14][8]
The Based community allocation covers participants in Seasons 1 and 2, PUP holders, BasedPal NFT holders, and launch partners. The Foundation said those tokens would have no vesting period. For the Ethena allocation, its announced schedule provided for 20% of the allocation in each of the first three months, 40% at the one-year anniversary, and the remaining 40% vesting linearly over months 13 to 18. Season 3 participants were allocated 50 million tokens with no vesting period; the Foundation said those tokens were distributed on May 11, 2026, and later extended the claim opportunity for users who had not signed the terms until June 7, 2026.[14][9][8]
Investor and core-contributor allocations each have a one-year lock followed by monthly unlocks over two years. The Foundation manages the ecosystem and community rewards allocation for ongoing development, partnerships, platform operations, and long-term incentives.[14][8]
The Foundation lists reduced trading fees, card rewards, higher card limits at higher holding tiers, lower on
- and off-ramp fees, discounts with Based Mall merchants, future launchpool access, and credits for future agentic features among intended token benefits. It also describes BASED as a possible medium of exchange on Based Mall and says tokenholders may participate in applicable platform governance mechanisms.[14]
In a May 15, 2026 announcement, the Foundation said roughly 30% of the token supply had been distributed to Based holders through the Genesis event, the Season 3 airdrop, and staking. It said the project was shifting from broad distribution toward token utility, token sinks across products, and value accrual for long-term holders. The Foundation planned to lower staking emissions progressively toward 20 million BASED per year and said it intended to support that emissions budget with revenue-driven token buybacks.[15]
Points, Referrals, and Ecosystem
Points campaigns
Based’s points campaigns have used different names across seasons: XP in Season 1, Gold in Season 2, and Diamonds in Season 3. The company says XP generally rises with trading activity, while trades that incur builder fees earn Diamonds; the precise XP formula is undisclosed. Season 3, also called Based Diamonds, ran from January 5 through May 4, 2026, with token distributions for eligible participants. The Foundation said its eligibility process would use anti-sybil measures, including filtering wash trading and self-referrals.[9][14]
Affiliate program
Based announced an affiliate program in July 2025, with commissions from referrals to the platform.[7][9]
Ecosystem development
Based has described plans for launchpools that would give users early access to projects in its ecosystem. Its broader strategy is to open the platform’s distribution and infrastructure to builders, protocols, and agents, with the aim of developing an ecosystem in which projects launch and use the platform’s financial and AI services.[4][8]
Governance and Development
Foundation and governance
The Based Foundation administers token issuance and the ecosystem and community rewards allocation. The Foundation describes the token as a coordination layer for staking, launchpool access, product and AI utility, ecosystem benefits, and future governance. Tokenholder governance is described as an intended future function; the Foundation’s materials do not specify a current voting process.[14][15]
Product development
Based’s product documentation also describes MiniApps, Based Cloud, NFTs, and cards as parts of a broader ecosystem under development. The litepaper presents a longer-term shift from a trading app toward a platform where projects, builders, and autonomous agents can use shared distribution, payments, and financial services.[9][8]
