Purr

On March 29, 2024, Hyperliquid announced two pieces of infrastructure that would move its chain beyond perpetual futures. HIP-1 would create capped native tokens and their onchain order books; HIP-2 would seed those books with a strategy executed by the chain itself. The first asset was PURR, already running on testnet.

The announcement stripped the cat token of the usual sales pitch. There was no sale and no planned utility. One billion PURR would exist, with 500 million proposed for earlier points holders and 500 million proposed for permanent HIP-2 liquidity. PURR was therefore a distribution and market-design experiment before it was a meme with a price.

The points distribution had a gate. Hyperliquid told points holders to accept updated Terms of Use by the end of April 13 to qualify for mainnet PURR. That condition makes “100% community airdrop” an inaccurate summary: eligibility followed the points program and a deadline, while a separate block of supply was reserved for market liquidity.

Feedback on testnet changed that second block. Users judged 500 million tokens to be more Hyperliquidity than the order book needed. On April 16 the team announced that 400 million would be burned, 100 million would remain permanently committed to PURR/USDC through HIP-2, and 500 million would go to eligible points holders. Spot trading was scheduled to open that morning between 04:00 and 06:00 UTC.

On HyperCore, PURR is token index 1 with ID 0xc1fb593aeffbeb02f85e0308e9956a90, and its canonical market is PURR/USDC. The ticker alone cannot identify it because unrelated contracts can reuse the same four letters.

The linked HyperEVM contract minted 600 million PURR to 0x2000000000000000000000000000000000000001, the system address derived from token index 1. Its published source contains transfer and permit logic but no owner, administrator, later mint, burn or upgrade path. Tokens leave that address when a Core balance moves to EVM and return when an EVM balance moves to Core. The 600 million contract counter is therefore custody bookkeeping for the link, not a second pile to add to HyperCore supply.

HIP-2 places and updates orders inside Hyperliquid’s block-transition logic, without an outside operator. “Permanent” describes the committed inventory and strategy. It does not promise a price floor, a fixed spread or a right to redeem PURR for USDC.

The September 5, 2026 API snapshot reported a one-billion maximum, 594,943,916.4699800014 total supply, 594,943,909.9471999407 circulating supply and zero future emissions. That total is 5,056,083.5300199986 below the 600 million left after launch. HIP-1 permits reductions through spot fees and burns, but the aggregate cannot assign that difference to individual burn events. The HyperEVM ERC-20 still reports 600 million because movement uses custody transfers rather than minting and burning that representation.

The original “no planned utility” statement remains the clearest holder-rights boundary. PURR can be possessed, transferred and traded. The reviewed PURR materials do not attach HYPE staking, Hyperliquid governance, HLP ownership, protocol revenue, corporate equity or contractual redemption to that possession. A fixed EVM contract narrows contract-level discretion; it does not give holders control over HyperCore consensus or the Core–EVM link.