Hyperliquid HIP-4 deployment begins, outcome becomes the first builder

Original | Odaily Planet Daily (@OdailyChina)

Author | Azuma (@azuma_eth)

On August 29, Outcome, the prediction market project within the Hyperliquid ecosystem, officially announced that it has deployed on the Hyperliquid mainnet as the first permissionless HIP-4 Builder project—securing this opportunity by staking 500,000 HYPE as collateral, worth approximately $42 million at the time.

The implementation of Outcome signifies that Hyperliquid has officially launched the first permissionless deployment under HIP-4, marking the official entry of Hyperliquid into the Builder era for its expansion in the prediction markets space.

Given that leading platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket have already captured a large share of users and market mindshare, it is clearly difficult for Hyperliquid to catch up simply by creating a few markets on its own. Instead, it has chosen to open up its core strengths—on-chain trading, order book, margin, and settlement infrastructure—allowing third-party teams within its ecosystem to handle user acquisition, product operations, and market creation.

This is also the path that HIP-3 once took. Today, custom markets created by third-party Builders have become an essential part of the Hyperliquid ecosystem, with trade.xyz emerging as one of the most representative success stories.

The same question now faces HIP-4—when Hyperliquid opens the stage for prediction markets to third-party players, who will be the first to attract users, build liquidity, and ultimately become the trade.xyz of prediction markets?

In addition to Outcome, which has already launched first, teams such as Unit, Skew, and trade.xyz have expressed support or begun positioning themselves for HIP-4, sparking a competition for entry points, liquidity, and users in Hyperliquid’s prediction market.

In simple terms, HIP-4 is Hyperliquid’s Outcome Markets mechanism, allowing users to trade on the outcomes of future events.

Using the simplest binary market as an example, users can trade on whether “something will happen.” If the final outcome is “yes,” the contract settles at 1; if the outcome is “no,” it settles at 0—Hyperliquid’s first markets on mainnet were intraday binary contracts tied to BTC price, allowing users to trade whether BTC will be above a specified price at a given time.

From a product perspective, this enables HIP-4 to naturally support a wide range of trading scenarios such as prediction markets and binary options. However, one of the key differences from platforms like Polymarket is that HIP-4 does not attempt to build a standalone prediction market; instead, it is directly built on Hyperliquid’s HyperCore trading infrastructure, sharing the same underlying trading and settlement system with existing spot and perpetual contracts.

Permissionless deployment is the most critical change in the next phase of HIP-4. In the future, validators will no longer need to individually review each specific event market; instead, they will first approve standardized templates, and third-party Builders can then create specific markets within these template frameworks, sharing fee revenue with Hyperliquid. As a cost for this permission, deployers must stake 500,000 HYPE (same as HIP-3), lock them for six months, and assume responsibility for the proper operation and settlement of the markets.

In other words, Hyperliquid isn’t just aiming to become the next Polymarket—it’s more like building a foundational trading infrastructure for prediction markets, allowing different teams to compete on top of the same platform.

HIP-3 has demonstrated that this model has the potential to nurture Trade.xyz; now it’s HIP-4’s turn, with new Builders陆续 entering the scene.

• Odaily Note: Refer to "HIP-4 Open Permissionless Deployment: Can Hyperliquid Kill Polymarket?".

As the first market to complete deployment, Outcome is clearly the fastest-moving player in the HIP-4 ecosystem.

As early as May this year, Outcome publicly stated that it had independently raised 500,000 HYPE; following the open permissionless deployment of HIP-4, it quickly announced itself as the first team to deploy markets on mainnet. According to the Outcome team, these 500,000 HYPE were pledged as collateral, providing over $42 million in economic security for the integrity of their markets.

From a product perspective, Outcome’s current roadmap covers cryptocurrencies, stocks, indices, commodities, and sports events. To date, 28 prediction markets have been launched, with cumulative trading volume reaching $1.16 million within two days. To capture early liquidity, Outcome has also launched a trading incentive program totaling over $1 million.

The biggest advantage of Outcome is its first-mover status—it no longer needs to explain to the market what it’s planning to do, as it has already entered the operational phase.

However, being "first" doesn't necessarily mean becoming the largest. The real challenge in prediction markets isn't just deploying contracts, but continuously creating markets with trading value and solving issues around liquidity, user acquisition, and market distribution. Outcome’s next task is to prove whether the "early mover" label can be transformed into a genuine scale advantage.

Following Outcome, another HIP-4 Builder project, Skew, also deployed its first event contract on the Hyperliquid mainnet this morning.

Skew’s greatest advantage is its partnership with Hyperion DeFi, a Nasdaq-listed company, which will provide 500,000 HYPE tokens to meet staking requirements. Notably, Hyperion DeFi’s initial collaboration with Skew in July focused on HIP-3 to build a perpetual futures market for institutional clients, but it quickly shifted to HIP-4 in August.

According to Skew's disclosure on its official social media, the project previously opened registration for test access, and as of August 6, over 40,000 unique users had registered to apply for Skew's private beta.

Although these 40,000 test sign-ups do not fully represent the final active user base and the actual conversion rate remains to be seen, they at least indicate that Skew has already accumulated some potential demand before the product's official launch.

trade.xyz is the most unique player in this competition. While this article asks, “Who will become the new trade.xyz?”, it’s interesting that trade.xyz’s development team, Unit Labs, is also already regarded by the market as a potential participant in HIP-4.

Community monitoring has detected that Unit Labs recently made a significant purchase of HYPE, followed by adjustments to its HYPE staking structure at the sensitive round number of 500,000 tokens:

• First, the trade.xyz HIP-3 address extracted 500,000 HYPE from the Infinitefield validation node and staked them on the Hyperliquid Strategies × Unit validation node.
• Subsequently, the address unbonded another 500,000 HYPE (for a total of exactly 1,000,000 HYPE), and these tokens are scheduled to be received by September 5.

Since initiating HIP-4 requires staking 500,000 HYPE, and an additional 500,000 HYPE is required if the deployer has previously deployed HIP-3. Considering the above on-chain activity, Unit Labs is most likely targeting HIP-4, but it is not yet certain whether the new HIP-4 will retain the name trade.xyz (it is more likely to use unit.xyz).

trade.xyz is one of the most successful examples of the HIP-3 model; Unit Labs has already demonstrated its ability to transform Hyperliquid’s underlying infrastructure into a truly used trading product.

If HIP-4 replicates the successful model of HIP-3, then trade.xyz and Unit Labs clearly possess the most mature experience and user base. trade.xyz’s existing business in stocks, indices, and commodities naturally complements related event markets—traders who trade an asset may also wish to trade outcome markets tied to earnings reports, price breakouts, or macroeconomic events.

However, as of now, further attention is needed on Unit Labs’ specific product roadmap and deployment progress for HIP-4. Compared to Outcome and Skew, which are already live, their greatest advantage lies in having “won once before”—but whether they will fully commit to this new competition remains the key determinant of their ability to become winners.

From Outcome to Skew, and now the suspected upcoming entrant trade.xyz (Unit Labs), the first batch of HIP-4 builders have begun to emerge. However, at this stage, the competition is still in its very early phases.

Two projects that have already been deployed are just beginning, with market size, trading volume, and user base still quite limited; the specific product form of trade.xyz (Unit Labs) has not even been revealed yet. It is too early to determine who will ultimately prevail, and there is no answer yet as to whether HIP-4 can replicate the success of HIP-3.

But because it is still in its early stages, there is still significant room for Builders under HIP-4. The prediction market space itself is large enough to encompass virtually any event with a clear outcome—from financial assets and macroeconomic data to sports events and breaking news. Hyperliquid provides a unified trading and settlement infrastructure, while what Builders truly need to compete on is how to design markets, acquire users, and solve liquidity.

This is the next major challenge for HIP-4. Open deployment alone does not equate to success; whether a prediction market ultimately thrives depends on whether enough traders are willing to participate and whether buyers and sellers can consistently provide liquidity. More markets may also mean liquidity is further diluted; finding the balance between “rapidly creating new markets” and “concentrating limited liquidity” will be an issue all Builders must address.

HIP-3 has demonstrated that Hyperliquid’s permissionless model can indeed produce successful cases like trade.xyz. Now that the赛道 for HIP-4 has just opened, who will become the prediction market equivalent of trade.xyz? The answer isn’t clear yet—but one thing is certain: as more builders enter the space, Hyperliquid is no longer just competing for the perpetuals market, but for the broader “trade anything” market.