🔐 Security Knowledge | From the Hyperliquid Incident to the Evolution of Risk Control in Derivative Protocols
📌 Blind Spots in Traditional Risk Control
Traditional security audits mainly focus on code vulnerabilities in smart contracts, but “economic model attacks” like Hyperliquid in May 2025 indicate that the greatest threats may arise from malicious abuse of the protocol rules themselves. Attackers “legally” created a financial crisis within the rules.
✅ Three Pillars of Next-Generation Risk Control
Behavioral Analysis and Aggregate Monitoring
Identify large positions controlled by multiple related addresses with consistent intentions through on-chain analysis.
Monitor order books to detect clear patterns of orders used for short-term manipulation rather than genuine trading.
Dynamic Risk Management Parameters
Implement higher margin requirements for large-scale or highly concentrated positions to increase the cost of attacks.
Employ “progressive liquidation” or “delayed liquidation” mechanisms to avoid catastrophic bad debts during sudden liquidity exhaustion.
Protocol Governance and Security Infrastructure
Establish and fund a “Risk Guarantee Fund” to absorb unexpected losses in such extreme situations, protecting ordinary LPs.
Clarify the governance process and authority for “emergency pauses” to respond quickly when market manipulation is detected.
💎 Summary
The future of DeFi security, especially in the derivatives sector, will combine code security, financial engineering security, and behavioral game security. Protocol teams must proactively consider all potential attack paths on their economic mechanisms, just like designing products.