Hyper Foundation's $10M Grant Program: Full Details on the USDH-to-USDC Migration

On June 28, 2026, the Hyper Foundation announced an approximately $10 million grant program to support developers and protocols affected by the wind-down of USDH, Hyperliquid's native stablecoin, as the ecosystem transitions to USDC as its canonical stablecoin . Here are the full details.

Grant Structure: Two Categories

The program splits funding into two distinct tracks :

Migration Grants — for teams that have integrated USDH and are migrating their markets, deployments, or protocol components to USDC . These cover the costs of moving HIP-1 spot markets, HIP-3 perpetual contract deployments, HyperEVM protocols, USDH:USDC bridges, and Native Markets operations to USDC .

Gradual Shutdown Grants — for teams that are winding down USDH-denominated operations in an orderly fashion rather than migrating . These cover wind-down costs for the same categories of recipients but are generally lower than equivalent Migration Grants .

Eligible Recipients

Grants are distributed across five groups :

• HIP-1 deployers — teams running spot order books denominated in USDH.
• HIP-3 deployers — perpetual contract market makers and integrators.
• HyperEVM protocols — smart-contract protocols on Hyperliquid's EVM layer that used USDH.
• USDH:USDC bridge operators — cross-chain bridge infrastructure providers.
• Native Markets — the original USDH issuer and stablecoin operator.

Grant sizes are calculated differently per category: for HIP-1 and HIP-3 recipients, amounts are based on auction deployment costs; for HyperEVM protocols, amounts are determined by the value of USDH locked in the protocol .

Deadline

All migration and shutdown activities must be completed by the end of July 2026 to qualify . The grant application window closes at the same time .

User Conversion Options (Fee-Free)

End users — not just developers — have three fee-free paths to convert USDH to USDC :

1. HyperCore Spot Order Book — trade USDH for USDC directly on the native spot order book at app.hyperliquid.xyz/trade/USDH/USDC .
2. Across Protocol (HyperEVM) — the cross-chain intents-based bridge offers a 1:1, fee-free USDH-to-USDC conversion on HyperEVM .
3. USDH Redemption Dashboard — available at dashboard.usdh.com, where onboarded customers can convert USDH to USDC or fiat, also fee-free .

All USDH-priced markets on HyperCore completed settlement around June 20, 2026 . Users are strongly advised to convert before the end-of-July deadline.

Background: From Native Markets to USDC Canonical

In September 2025, Hyperliquid held a validator auction to select a partner to issue USDH, the chain's first native stablecoin. After a competitive week-long bidding process involving Paxos, Ethena, BitGo, and others, Native Markets won with ~69% validator support on September 14, 2025 . USDH launched shortly after as the ecosystem's native quote asset.

By May 2026, Hyperliquid pivoted to a new framework called AQAv2, making USDC the canonical quote asset to consolidate liquidity and bring reserve yield revenue on-chain . Coinbase won the USDC treasury deployer seat under this framework, and Hyperliquid granted Coinbase rights to purchase USDH brand assets . This set the stage for the coordinated USDH sunset completed in June–July 2026.