Based

Based, a Web3 trading and payment platform built on Hyperliquid, has reached several milestones with long-term significance.

In February 2026, Based announced the token economics of its native token BASED, with a total supply of 1 billion. The allocation includes 36% for the community, 23.64% for ecosystem and community rewards, 20.36% for investors, and 20% for core contributors. Notably, 23.5% of the community portion is claimable in March 2026 with no lock-up, while 7.5% goes to the Ethena community and 5% is reserved for Season 3 participants. This marks a key step in aligning incentives and decentralizing the ecosystem.

Prior to this, Based secured $11.5 million in Series A funding led by Pantera Capital in February 2026, following a $4 million strategic round from Ethena in September 2025 and an earlier $2.7 million round. This financial backing underscores investor confidence in its vision of integrating trading, prediction markets, and crypto card payments into a super app.

Since its launch, Based has achieved over $39 billion in cumulative trading volume, 100,000 registered users, and $20 million in card spending within eight months, demonstrating strong product-market fit and laying a foundation for sustainable growth.

Product progress: Based shipped Mobile V3 on September 14, rebuilding the app with better cross-chain swaps across Robinhood, Solana and BSC plus Explore, an AI-driven trading signal feed; the same day Based Card was folded into Based Cash, with Visa tiers paying up to 4% cashback in BASED.

Token structure: 235 million BASED circulate against a 1 billion maximum, giving a market cap near $14.5 million; the platform is run by Singapore-based SHA2 Labs and offers a self-custody wallet with Hyperliquid spot and perpetual trading.

Based closed an $11.5 million Series A on February 23, 2026, led by Pantera Capital with participation from Coinbase Ventures, Wintermute Ventures and Karatage, structured as equity plus token warrants. At the time of the raise, cumulative trading volume had passed $41 billion, with more than 100,000 registered users, over 30,000 monthly actives and roughly $15 million in annualized revenue.

The in-house HIP-3 protocol HyENA recorded $1.5 billion in volume and $50 million in open interest within months of launch. The Visa debit card has processed more than $20 million of real-world spending across over 90 million merchants, and Based Cloud lets partners deploy customized trading front ends.

Future strategy and roadmap: After Season 3 Diamonds, Based will launch Launchpool and a Based AI trading agent, extending from perps and prediction markets to equities and more asset classes. On its self-built HIP-3 protocol HyENA it plans Stable and other partnerships for stablecoin and payment scenarios, and keeps running its Visa debit card and Based Cloud custom front-ends. With USD 11.5 million Series A it aims to grow cumulative volume, registered and monthly-active users and integrate tokenized assets and perps into one self-custody entry, lifting annualized revenue.

Co-founder and CEO Edison Lim holds a master's in distributed systems security from Carnegie Mellon, led engineering at Zilliqa from 2018 to 2021, and was technical lead at Alta Exchange, building OTC trading and custody software.

Co-founder Zac L is CTO, owning the Hyperliquid integration and self-custodial key architecture.

Based charges Hyperliquid's trading fee plus its own builder fee: standard perpetuals total 0.07% taker and 0.04% maker, while Growth Mode markets total 0.011% taker and 0.005% maker.

Based adds a 0.025% builder fee on perpetuals and 0.1% on spot sells, with no builder fee on spot buys; staking 600,000+ BASED removes the builder fee entirely, cutting the all-in spot sell rate from 0.170% to 0.070%.

BasedApp (SHA2 Labs Pte Ltd) holds a Monetary Authority of Singapore exemption under the Payment Services Act 2019 to provide digital payment token services, covering crypto trading and card spending.