Decentralized exchange Hyperliquid’s permissionless platform, which lets anyone create perpetual futures tied to any asset, is more popular than ever.
Since its debut on Oct. 13, the so-called HIP-3 market has steadily gained traction, with open interest — the total value of all active contracts — hitting a record $1.2 billion on Sunday, according to data source ASXN. It has since remained at all time highs in a sign of growing adoption and activity on the platform.
The growth has been driven by booming activity in futures tied to equities and commodities, including oil, gold, and silver. It highlights how decentralized markets are increasingly being used to trade traditional assets, especially as a tool for price discovery over weekends when traditional exchanges are closed.
This story is worth discussing, Arca said in a weekly update, nothing the massive surge in activity on Hyperliquid.
"Interestingly, on Hyperliquid, just 7 of the top 30 markets are crypto pairs, while the vast majority are commodity and equity pairs on Trade.XYZ. This makes sense given the moves in silver, gold, and oil over the past few months, and it is a testament to Hyperliquid that we finally have a real platform where tokenized trading of RWAs is happening in meaningful size," the firm said.
As of writing, the tokenized equity futures contract XYZ100-USDC led the pack, with open interest of $213 million, followed by the oil-focused CL-USDC at $169.8 million. Other top contracts included futures tied to Brent crude, the S&P 500, silver, and gold.
CL-USDC led in trading volume, seeing $1.62 billion in activity over 24 hours.
This follows the weekend surge in prices for select few crude oil grades, like the Murban crude, which traded at $103 per barrel, as conflict in the Middle East intensified, disrupting tanker flows through the Strait of Hormuz. Major oil benchmarks, such as Brent and WTI, surged above $110 per barrel on Monday, before crashing into two figures.
HIP-3, Hyperliquid’s builder-deployed perpetual futures, have shaken up how markets are made. Instead of limiting new contracts to a small set of validators, anyone can launch a market by staking 500,000 HYPE tokens — which serve as both a security deposit and a guard against spam.
This essentially puts the power to create markets in the hands of the community, opening the door to a far wider range of trading opportunities than traditional platforms allow.