Trade.xyz captures over half of Hyperliquid's trading volume with AI chip stocks and crude futures.

Author: Coin Metrics State of the Network

Compiled by Deep潮 TechFlow

DeepChain Overview: Hyperliquid’s HIP-3 shifted the listing of perpetual contracts from validator voting to staking plus auction, with Trade.xyz emerging as the dominant player, having captured over half of Hyperliquid’s trading volume in August. It attracts on-chain traders with perpetual contracts on AI chip stocks, crude oil, S&P indices, and other traditional assets, while its fee-sharing model continues to repurchase HYPE. Understanding this mechanism is crucial for assessing Hyperliquid’s ecosystem concentration and HYPE’s value capture.

In August, Trade.xyz's perpetual market trading volume accounted for 55% of Hyperliquid's total market trading volume.

In July, AI and computing stock and index trading volume on Trade.xyz accounted for approximately 53% of its total trading volume.

Trading volume fluctuations drove Trade.xyz to generate $5 million in fees over the past month. After a 50/50 revenue share with Hyperliquid, the majority of proceeds were used to repurchase HYPE on the open market, reducing circulating supply.

Over the past 30 days, Hyperliquid’s average daily futures trading volume was approximately $8.5 billion, accounting for about 4.6% of global futures trading volume. Perpetual futures contracts have no expiration date and do not require managing the underlying asset, simplifying access to futures exposure. Compared to trading options with expiration dates, perpetual contracts require only a small funding rate to maintain positions and keep futures prices anchored to spot prices. Hyperliquid brings traditional financial operations—such as order book matching and low-latency trading—on-chain, combining them with perpetual futures.

The HIP-3 improvement proposal, launched on Hyperliquid in October 2025, enables permissionless creation of perpetual futures markets. Builders can now deploy their own futures markets to generate revenue, expand the ecosystem, and reduce dependence on Hyperliquid validators.

In this State of the Network, we explore Hyperliquid’s HIP-3 upgrade, Trade.xyz’s market share, and how revenue sharing from popular non-crypto markets creates value for the HYPE token.

HIP-3 enables independent builders to create perpetual markets. Previously, validators had to vote and approve the creation of new perpetual markets, causing delays and centralizing reliance on Hyperliquid validators.

With HIP-3, builders who stake 500,000 HYPE (approximately $27 million) are eligible to directly deploy three perpetual markets. After deployment, they can bid to create additional perpetual markets. HIP-3 employs a 31-hour Dutch auction with a reserve price of 500 HYPE (approximately $27,000), where builders bid to deploy the next market. After a builder wins the auction, the starting price for the next auction doubles from the winning bid and then linearly decreases back to 500 HYPE until the next builder wins. Auction proceeds are used to repurchase HYPE tokens and reduce circulating supply.

In addition to the 500,000 HYPE collateral requirement that can be forfeited, auction costs have raised concerns about centralization in the HIP-3 builder market—only a few builders can profit. Trade.xyz has become the largest HIP-3 perpetual exchange, with open interest exceeding $4 billion and contributing increasingly higher trading volume and fees to the Hyperliquid ecosystem.

Trade.xyz has captured a significant share of Hyperliquid's perpetual trading volume. Since January 2026, Trade.xyz has facilitated over $460 billion in trading volume, accounting for approximately 30% of Hyperliquid's total trading volume.

Hyperliquid currently has a total of 484 markets: 232 natively issued by Hyperliquid, 108 deployed by Trade.xyz, and 144 deployed by other HIP-3 builders. Over the past month, Trade.xyz won and added eight stock perpetual markets across 23 auctions. Trade.xyz has also added stock perpetuals for chip manufacturers such as GIGADEV and CXMT, as well as compute ETFs like LYTE and NCLD. In August, Trade.xyz’s monthly trading volume surpassed that of Hyperliquid’s native markets, accounting for approximately 55% of Hyperliquid’s total trading volume.

Builders can create duplicate markets with customized leverage limits and oracles to offer alternative markets for traders. However, Trade.xyz captures nearly 100% of trading volume in existing duplicate markets, forcing smaller builders to differentiate themselves through niche perpetual markets not yet listed on Trade.xyz.

Trade.xyz focuses on expanding perpetual markets for stocks and commodities. Hyperliquid and Trade.xyz have tapped into one of the hottest narratives today—AI and compute trading. As traders explore the commoditization of compute costs and build yield curves, Trade.xyz supports perpetual contracts tied to a variety of assets related to AI companies and industries.

A basket of perpetual contracts for AI hyperscale vendors and chip manufacturers has launched on Trade.xyz, accounting for over 53% of daily trading volume in July. SK Hynix and Micron each contributed more than 20% of the basket’s trading volume. SanDisk, DRAM Index, and NVDA are the next highest-volume markets in the AI/computing narrative.

Although AI and computing power trading have recently garnered significant attention, examining Trade.xyz’s daily hottest markets helps illustrate the popularity of perpetual contracts, especially among traditional financial investors.

Since January, crude oil, silver, Brent crude, Nasdaq 100 alternatives, and S&P 500 contracts have been the five most actively traded perpetuals on Trade.xyz by cumulative volume. Despite previously concentrated trading volumes, traders can still respond to events through 24/7 markets. Markets such as crude oil may experience volume spikes after hours or over weekends due to geopolitical tensions. In August, these markets accounted for approximately 30% of Trade.xyz’s total volume, down from a peak of 88%, indicating that traders are diversifying their attention to newly listed markets on Trade.xyz.

The development of pre-IPO stock perpetual contracts also presents significant upside potential. The SPCX IPO generated over $1.3 billion in trading volume on Trade.xyz, as traders speculated on the company’s valuation. Trade.xyz’s ability to quickly list markets enables it to capture short-term opportunities and generate substantial fees for both itself and Hyperliquid.

Hyperliquid charges twice the standard fee for both maker and taker orders on perpetual contracts markets operated by non-validators. Currently, Trade.xyz is in growth mode, encouraging platform adoption by reducing fees by more than 90%.

Trade.xyz generated $5 million over the past month. These fees are split 50/50 with Hyperliquid, which primarily uses the funds to repurchase and burn HYPE tokens.

Since January 2026, we have observed a weak positive correlation between the HYPE token price and Hyperliquid’s total trading volume. The value capture of the HYPE token has become increasingly diversified, with growth in prediction markets, pre-IPO perpetual contracts, and USDC reserve income contributing to the valuation of both HYPE and the Hyperliquid ecosystem.

Hyperliquid’s Aligned Quote Asset (AQAv2) generates additional revenue for the platform. For all outstanding USDC on Hyperliquid, Circle allocates 90% of the income generated from underlying investments to Hyperliquid. As more perpetual markets are launched with USDC as the quote asset, Hyperliquid will earn increased revenue, which will be used for HYPE buybacks.

Trade.xyz is the leading HIP-3 builder by open interest and trading volume. Over the past month, the majority of perpetual contract trading volume has shifted from Hyperliquid’s native markets to markets launched on Trade.xyz, driven by the available markets and trending narratives offered by Trade.xyz—AI/computing, geopolitical tensions, and pre-IPO valuation exposure.

If Trade.xyz exits its growth phase, higher effective fees could increase fee revenue and potential HYPE buybacks. A resurgence in crypto perpetual trading activity could provide an additional source of trading volume. Hyperliquid and Trade.xyz’s continued provision of valuable services and integrations for the ecosystem can bring further value to the HYPE token. Trade.xyz is attracting an increasing number of users by enabling 24/7 market participation in traditional finance investments.