Original | Odaily Planet Daily (@OdailyChina)
Author | Asher (@Asher_0210)
Over the past six months, the two most popular trading sectors—prediction markets and Perp DEXs—are increasingly encroaching on each other’s territories.
In April, Polymarket announced the launch of Perp, covering cryptocurrencies, U.S. stocks, and commodities; by the end of May, Kalshi officially launched CFTC-regulated cryptocurrency perpetual contracts. Meanwhile, Hyperliquid, the leading Perp DEX, has taken a reverse approach to prediction markets through HIP-4, aiming to extend its mature order book, account system, and liquidity advantages to real-world event trading.
Prediction markets attract users passionate about trading in sports, esports, politics, and trending events, while Hyperliquid has cultivated a community of crypto-native traders focused on high-frequency and leveraged trading. The crossover between both sides essentially aims to bring each platform’s strengths in core users and trading scenarios into the other’s original domain.
But months later, the results were not ideal. The user habits and liquidity accumulated in the original赛道 did not naturally migrate as the product boundaries expanded.
Hyperliquid: Active prediction markets decreased from 125 to fewer than 20
On May 2, Hyperliquid launched HIP-4 Outcome Markets on mainnet, officially introducing outcome markets to its on-chain trading system. The first listings were intraday binary outcome contracts for BTC, generating $6.15 million in trading volume on day one—far exceeding similar prediction events on Kalshi and Polymarket. Additionally, over 54,000 trades were executed and more than 3,000 participants took part on the first day.
The World Cup further amplified this growth. In early June, the number of active markets under HIP-4 was only in the dozens, then rapidly increased to over 100, peaking at more than 120; trading volume rose in tandem, reaching nearly $30 million in a single day on June 27 and remaining in the millions the following day. As sports events, macroeconomic data, and cryptocurrency price events continued to be added, HIP-4 gradually moved beyond its early focus on short-term BTC contracts and began expanding into a more comprehensive event trading platform.
However, the rapid increase in the number of markets did not translate into sustained trading demand. After the World Cup entered its second half, the number of active HIP-4 markets began a sustained decline, falling from a peak of 125 to around 50, dropping further to just over 20 by mid-July, and recently falling below 20—more than an 85% reduction from the peak. Trading volume also weakened accordingly, with most days returning to the millions of dollars range, and recently dipping below $1 million at one point.
Behind this is a fundamentally different liquidity structure between perpetuals and event contracts. Perpetual trading has long revolved around core assets like BTC and ETH, allowing market makers, capital, and traders to continuously accumulate in the same markets; event contracts, however, settle continuously as events conclude—such as matches ending, data being released, or political outcomes being finalized—requiring new markets to rebuild liquidity and trading interest from scratch. Hyperliquid can reuse its matching engine, account system, and funding infrastructure, but it cannot directly replicate the existing liquidity and trading frequency from perpetuals onto HIP-4.
Polymarket: Daily trading volume for perpetual contracts under $20 million
Polymarket announced its entry into the perpetual contracts market in April and began opening its Perps product to more users in July, offering up to 20x leverage. Access still requires an invite code or joining a waitlist. The product supports crypto assets such as BTC, ETH, and SOL, and has also expanded to include select stocks and commodities.
At its launch, Polymarket Perps saw a 24-hour trading volume of approximately $48 million, but this level was not sustained. By late July, daily trading volume had declined to around $18.2 million, with open interest (OI) at approximately $26.4 million; OI for core pairs such as BTC and ETH remained in the millions of dollars. Compared to its launch period, trading activity on Polymarket Perps has clearly cooled.
However, Polymarket Perps is still in its early stage and requires an invitation code to trade, so it’s not entirely fair to directly compare it with mature perp platforms. Even so, the current disparity in scale is still very clear: during the same period, Hyperliquid’s open interest was approximately $7.7 billion with a 24-hour trading volume of about $1.58 billion, while Polymarket Perps had an OI of only around $26.4 million—roughly 0.3% of Hyperliquid’s—and a daily trading volume of just about 1% of Hyperliquid’s.
Currently, Polymarket’s trading volume on Perps resembles early adopters experimenting with a new product, rather than reflecting established trading habits or sustained discussion momentum. At least based on current data, the user base and brand advantages Polymarket has built in the prediction market space have not been successfully replicated in the Perps sector—this cross-over effort cannot yet be considered successful.
Kalshi Perps: $16.1 billion in trading volume over six weeks, but recent activity has begun to cool
Kalshi launched its Perps faster than Polymarket. At the end of May, Kalshi officially launched CFTC-regulated cryptocurrency perpetual contracts, initially covering assets such as BTC, ETH, SOL, and XRP. By July 9—approximately six weeks after launch—Kalshi Perps had accumulated a trading volume of $16.1 billion.
Compared to the rapid volume growth at launch, trading activity for Kalshi Perps has significantly cooled down. Loris Tools data shows that the daily trading volume for Kalshi’s Perps section reached $448 million on July 20, but has since dropped to approximately $80 million over the past two days, a decline of over 80% in just a few days.
Meanwhile, Hyperliquid’s daily perpetual trading volume remains in the billions of dollars. Even at Kalshi’s recent high of $448 million on July 20, its trading volume still falls significantly short of Hyperliquid’s; and as Kalshi’s daily volume has recently dropped to around $80 million over the past two days, the gap has widened further.
The open interest gap is even more pronounced. Kalshi’s Perps section currently has open interest in the tens of millions of dollars, while Hyperliquid has reached approximately $7.5 billion. Although Kalshi has accumulated $16.1 billion in open interest over its six weeks of operation, indicating a relatively strong launch, the recent sharp decline in trading volume and persistently low open interest suggest it still has a significant distance to go before competing with mainstream Perp platforms.
Kalshi's "U.S. compliance gateway" remains its most obvious differentiator, but this advantage currently addresses primarily the question of whether U.S. users can trade perps, not why professional perp traders would choose to stay with Kalshi long-term.
It's hard to cross boundaries; defending your home turf may be more important than the slogan "the platform for everything."
The cross-industry attempts by Hyperliquid, Polymarket, and Kalshi face the greatest challenge in replicating the long-established user habits and liquidity within their original markets. Hyperliquid’s core users are more accustomed to high-frequency, leveraged, and on-chain derivatives trading, while Polymarket and Kalshi’s users primarily make predictions around sports, politics, and trending events. Platforms can quickly add new categories, but it’s much harder to get users to simultaneously shift their existing trading behaviors.
For Hyperliquid, deepening its offerings in perpetuals and on-chain asset trading may be more important than proving it can trade everything; for Polymarket and Kalshi, what remains truly scarce is event supply, user mindshare, and liquidity in prediction markets. Cross-border expansion can unlock new growth potential, but if new categories never generate independent demand, they may divert resources away from the platform’s core strengths.
What matters most in an Everything Exchange isn't necessarily who offers the most asset categories, but who can continuously build user base, liquidity, and market depth in core markets. For platforms that already have clear advantages, deepening their home ground may be more important than constantly expanding their boundaries.