On March 18, S&P Dow Jones Indices announced it has licensed the S&P 500 index to Trade.xyz for the issuance of perpetual contracts on the Hyperliquid blockchain. This marks the first time in S&P’s history that its flagship index brand has been licensed to an on-chain protocol.
The difference is that this time, S&P proactively reached out, licensing its brand to a decentralized protocol. The contract uses USDC as collateral, is open to non-U.S. investors, trades 24/7, and has no expiration date. According to S&P Global’s press release, over $1 trillion in S&P 500-related exposure is traded daily through traditional markets. Now, a small portion of that access has moved on-chain.
But the point here isn't compliance. Traditional finance is proactively seeking on-chain infrastructure to reach users and time periods it previously couldn't access. S&P's choice of Hyperliquid is revealed in the data from the past six months.
HIP-3 is a permissionless perpetual futures deployment protocol launched by Hyperliquid in 2025, enabling anyone to create new trading markets. Trade.xyz operates on Hyperliquid’s HIP-3 protocol and is the largest market creator on HIP-3, accounting for 90% of HIP-3’s total open interest, according to The Block.
On October 13, 2025, at the mainnet launch of HIP-3, the locked amount was nearly zero. Two weeks later, it rose to $70 million. By January 27, 2026, this figure reached $793 million, representing a month-over-month growth of over 200%. According to The Block on March 15, HIP-3’s locked amount hit a new all-time high of $1.43 billion. Since the mainnet launch, the amount has increased more than 100-fold in six months.
What’s interesting is that traditional asset traders are driving this curve.
Of the top 30 markets in HIP-3, only 7 are crypto pairs; the remaining 23 are all traditional assets. Leading the list is XYZ100, a contract tracking the Nasdaq-100, with open interest of $213 million. Second is CL, tracking WTI crude oil, with open interest of $170 million. Following are Brent crude oil, the S&P 500, gold, and silver. BTC and ETH rank seventh and eighth, respectively.
None of the top six markets on a chain-based exchange are crypto.
The formation of this structure had a specific catalyst: on March 9, tensions escalated in Iran, and traditional futures markets were closed for the weekend. According to AMBCrypto, the daily trading volume of the crude oil contract CL-USDC surged from approximately $21 million to over $1.2 billion. As reported by DL News, Hyperliquid’s crude oil contract trading volume briefly surpassed BTC, becoming the second-largest market after perpetual BTC. The same CoinDesk report noted that the HIP-3 market accounted for nearly 80% of Hyperliquid’s total platform trading volume that day.
The logic here is straightforward: geopolitical events don’t wait for Monday’s market open. When traditional futures exchanges close, Hyperliquid is the only place where you can trade oil and stock indices. Traders have voted with their feet—capital has flowed to the platform that never closes.
Since its launch in October 2025, Trade.xyz has accumulated a total trading volume exceeding $100 billion, with a current annualized run rate surpassing $600 billion. On January 31, 2026, Trade.xyz reached a daily trading peak of $2.05 billion. According to Live Bitcoin News, trading volume hit $720 million over the weekend of March 8, setting a new weekend record for HIP-3. In five months, it grew from zero to over $100 billion in cumulative trading volume.
The end of this growth curve connects with S&P’s official authorization. The wording used by Cameron Drinkwater, Chief Product and Operations Officer at S&P DJI, in the press release is worth examining closely. He bypassed tentative statements like “we are exploring blockchain” and instead directly stated, “Digital-native investors deserve institutional-grade standards equal to those of traditional investors.” The implication is that on-chain traders are already regarded by S&P as a mature investor segment.
Hyperliquid’s own structure is also an integral part of this story. Substack blogger Lex points out that Hyperliquid generates approximately $550 million in annual revenue, has a fully diluted valuation of around $40 billion, and holds about 60% of the decentralized derivatives market. Unlike the vast majority of crypto projects, Hyperliquid has received no VC funding.
No institutional investors, no private sale. The HYPE token, launched in November 2024, distributed 31% via airdrop to approximately 94,000 early users, valued at around $1.2 billion at the time. According to Tokenomics.com, HYPE holders earn approximately $65 million per month from trading fee revenue and profit distributions from the HLP liquidity pool. All growth stems from the product itself and the alignment of incentives with community holders.
When comparing CME and Trade.xyz together, the differences become clearer. CME’s S&P 500 E-mini futures require an initial margin of approximately $5,060, a futures broker account, and a full KYC process, with trading hours from Sunday to Friday, 23 hours per day. Trade.xyz’s S&P perpetual contract uses USDC as margin, connects directly via on-chain wallets, and operates 24/7. Both products track the same index using the same official S&P licensed data. But CME’s access point is in New York, while Trade.xyz’s access point is anywhere with an internet connection.
According to CoinGecko data, on the same day the S&P 500 perpetual contract launched, the HYPE token rose 14.7%, reaching a market capitalization of approximately $10 billion, ranking 14th in the crypto market. A blockchain-based exchange that has never received a single dollar in VC funding secured the official license for the world’s most widely tracked stock index. Collins Belton, COO and Chief Legal Advisor at Trade.xyz, said in a press release that the S&P 500 is a “natural starting point”—he didn’t say where the journey ends.