Hassan Maishera
TL;DR
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Hyperliquid's HIP-3 perpetual markets now account for nearly 50% of the platform's daily perpetual trading volume, up from just 2% earlier this year.
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Rising demand is being fueled by retail traders seeking 24/7 onchain access to equity markets.
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TradeXYZ dominates the segment with perpetual contracts tracking the Nasdaq-100, Nvidia, Tesla, and other major stocks.
Hyperliquid's HIP-3, the platform's permissionless framework that allows builders to launch perpetual futures markets, has experienced explosive growth in 2026.
Once representing only a small fraction of activity on the decentralized exchange, HIP-3 markets now contribute nearly 50% of Hyperliquid's daily perpetual trading volume, highlighting growing interest in onchain equity trading.
At the beginning of the year, HIP-3 markets accounted for roughly 2% of total perpetual volume. The sharp increase reflects a surge in retail participation as traders seek new ways to gain exposure to traditional financial assets via decentralized infrastructure.
TradeXYZ Leads the Onchain Equity Perpetual Market
A significant portion of HIP-3's growth has been driven by TradeXYZ, which has emerged as the dominant provider of onchain equity perpetual markets.
The platform offers products such as XYZ100, a perpetual contract designed to track the Nasdaq-100 Index, alongside single-stock perpetuals tied to major companies including Nvidia and Tesla. Rather than settling with the underlying shares, these contracts are settled entirely in stablecoins, allowing traders to speculate on price movements without owning the actual stocks.
One of the primary reasons behind the popularity of equity perpetuals is their simplified trading structure.
Unlike traditional options, perpetual futures do not have expiration dates, eliminating the impact of time decay that gradually reduces an option's value. Instead, traders only need to account for periodic funding payments that help keep perpetual prices aligned with the underlying market.
For many retail investors, this makes perpetual contracts easier to understand than options, which involve additional complexities such as strike prices and expiration dates while still allowing traders to take long or short positions.
Another major attraction is continuous market access. Unlike conventional stock exchanges that operate during fixed trading hours, HIP-3 perpetual markets remain open around the clock.
This enables traders to respond instantly to breaking news, earnings reports, or macroeconomic events without waiting for markets to reopen.
However, nonstop trading also means there are no traditional circuit breakers to slow extreme price swings during periods of heightened volatility, particularly over weekends.
Although demand for onchain equity perpetuals continues to grow, the market still faces technical challenges.
Since the underlying stocks only trade during standard market hours, prices for perpetual contracts outside those periods depend heavily on oracle data and funding-rate mechanisms to remain aligned with real-world markets.
While these systems have become common in cryptocurrency trading, their effectiveness for traditional equity assets operating in a 24/7 environment has yet to be fully tested.
