Hyperliquid’s HIP-4 prediction-market module has reached $317 million in cumulative trading volume since its May 2 launch, but its early growth has been driven by a handful of major events and remains tiny beside established prediction-market platforms. Publicly visible September trading records put HIP-4 volume at $51 million, compared with $59.3 billion on Kalshi and $13 billion across Polymarket and its U.S. operation.
The contrast places Hyperliquid’s experiment in a difficult position: it has connected event contracts to the same trading account, margin system, and matching engine used for leveraged crypto positions, yet it has not established the deep, continuous order flow needed to compete with specialist platforms. Based on the September figures, Kalshi and Polymarket processed roughly $1,000 in trading for every $0.70 traded on HIP-4.
Hyperliquid opened HIP-4 initially with 691 markets operated directly by the protocol. It then allowed external venues to create markets on Aug. 29, a move intended to expand the range of contracts without placing all market creation under protocol control. Three outside venues have since posted the required HYPE stake to list markets: Outcome, Skew, and Trade.xyz’s Events. No fourth venue had joined in the data snapshot.
World Cup activity drove early volume
Sports activity, particularly the soccer World Cup, provided the largest burst of trading. World Cup markets generated $89.5 million in volume, equal to 28% of HIP-4’s cumulative total, according to on-chain market records. Volume fell by more than 80% over the following two months after the tournament ended.
A continuously listed daily Bitcoin market showed a similar decline. Its volume dropped 93% from its May peak, while total weekly HIP-4 volume slid from $16.6 million in the week beginning May 11 to $1.2 million in the week beginning Sept. 28. The prior two weeks were near the same level.
Third-party venues temporarily lifted activity after their arrival. September volume recovered to $51 million, matching July’s level, before slowing again in early October. The first five days of October produced about $5 million in HIP-4 trading, or roughly $1.25 million per day.
The market mix shows why sports remains central to the module’s current usage. Soccer, American football, and esports accounted for 45% of volume over the prior 30 days, while crypto price questions made up 42%. Stocks and commodities contributed 7%, and Federal Reserve markets accounted for 6%.
Open interest was even more concentrated in sports. About two-thirds of capital at risk was tied to sports contracts, led by longer-running markets on Premier League, UEFA Champions League, and NFL champions. Crypto-price markets represented 17% of open interest.
Outcome has captured most external order flow
Outcome, the first external venue to launch on Aug. 29, has become the dominant third-party operator. It accounted for 68% of volume on the latest day in the dataset, compared with 21% for Trade.xyz, 10% for protocol-run markets, and a small remainder for Skew.
Measured from the opening of external access through the data snapshot, Outcome represented 92% of all volume handled by third-party venues. Trade.xyz, which registered markets on Sept. 5 and opened publicly on Sept. 10, had grown from no activity to nearly one-quarter of trading on the most recent day.
Outcome’s growth coincided with a $1 million rewards program for makers and traders. The rewards were available only for orders routed through Outcome’s own application code, making the program both a liquidity incentive and a tool for retaining order flow. By Oct. 5, Outcome had distributed $273,409 across 2,487 wallets, averaging roughly $7,400 a day.
The payout rate was equivalent to about 0.6% of Outcome’s total trading volume, based on the figures provided. About one-quarter of the program’s budget had been spent by Oct. 5, while daily distributions had not materially slowed. External venues traded roughly $1 million to $2 million a day through September, with higher activity on weekends, before easing toward $1 million a day in October.
Wallet-level routing data reinforced Outcome’s lead. In a sample of 121 wallets across 60 active order books, weighted by 48-hour volume, wallets registered through Outcome accounted for about 70% of trading. Unlabeled wallets represented about one-fifth, while scripts and third-party tools with self-named signing keys made up around one-tenth.
Among the 20 largest wallets in that sample, Outcome-linked accounts generated roughly three-quarters of volume. The concentration suggests that the protocol’s permissionless venue model has so far produced one principal distribution channel rather than a diversified network of competing applications.
Separate books split liquidity
HIP-4’s structure allows venues to deploy their own markets, but identical or closely related contracts do not automatically share liquidity. Duplicate markets appeared after external deployment opened, including separate contracts on the U.S. Federal Reserve’s October meeting.
Over a seven-day period, one version of that market traded $354,000, while a comparable listing elsewhere handled only $90. Their order books remained separate. The arrangement gives venues control over their own market pages and order routing, but it can split trading activity among contracts with the same underlying question.
Visible liquidity remains limited even in the busiest books. Across the 25 most active markets, the median bid-ask spread was 0.29 cents. About $4,700 was posted within one cent of the best ask, according to the market snapshot. A $10,000 market buy could add an estimated 2% to 3% in price impact, and four or five of those 25 markets did not have enough visible liquidity to absorb an order of that size.
That depth profile makes execution quality a more immediate challenge than nominal protocol fees. HIP-4 charges no base fee to enter a position, while exits carry a fee of about 0.1%. Its round-trip cost can be comparable to Hyperliquid spot trading, where base taker fees are 0.070% and maker fees are 0.040%.
Applications can add a separate builder fee on entries under spot-market rules, capped at 1%. One application was reported to charge 0.81% on entry, around six times the protocol’s exit charge. In the wallet sample, builder fees affected less than 1% of volume and totalled $9 over two days; Outcome’s routing code did not add a builder fee.
High staking requirement limits venue participation
External venues must lock 500,000 HYPE to list markets, a stake estimated in the supplied figures at about $47 million per venue. The stake remains locked while any associated market remains unresolved and cannot be withdrawn for six months.
That requirement helps deter low-quality market creation, but it also creates a steep financial barrier for new operators. Using the past 30 days as a run rate, total annual fees paid by HIP-4 traders were estimated at about $480,000. Venues can receive up to half of those fees, divided among three operators. The estimated annual interest cost of a $47 million locked stake was about $1 million, while Outcome’s rewards program was running at an annualized pace of about $2.7 million.
The economics leave venues reliant on strategic reasons beyond direct fee revenue, including user acquisition, cross-selling, or future expectations of higher volume. The testnet had 95 registered deployers, compared with three on mainnet, indicating that experimentation has been far easier than committing capital to production markets.
Hyperliquid plans an upgrade that would double each venue’s concurrent-market limit to 200 and permit up to 1,000 new markets per day. Validator-approved templates have already expanded to 28 from 18 in mid-September, adding formats for sports spreads and totals, Ballon d’Or outcomes, AI-model leaderboard matchups, and IPO-related first-day market-cap questions.
Settlement design places responsibility on creators
HIP-4 settles crypto-price markets automatically by reading an agreed exchange mark price at a specified minute. Most live markets use a different method: resolution through a signature from the market creator.
Of 228 open markets in the snapshot, 223 used the signature-based path. Those contracts have no dispute window and no substitute signer if the designated creator does not resolve the market. Market terms must be selected from templates approved by validators before trading starts, constraining how questions can be written but leaving settlement execution tied to the creator’s signature.
The model gives Hyperliquid a tightly integrated way to place “Yes” and “No” shares alongside leveraged positions in one account. Polymarket’s decision to add perpetual futures for non-U.S. users in September, with 67 markets across crypto, stocks, indices, and commodities and leverage of up to 20x, shows that the combination of event contracts and leveraged trading is becoming a competitive feature rather than a unique one.
HIP-4 has demonstrated that the integration can generate bursts of activity around major events. Its next challenge is turning those bursts into deeper books, more independent venues, and regular volume that can support the capital locked by market operators.
To deepen your understanding of prediction markets’ future, explore this analysis on structural shifts ahead.
Disclaimer: The content on this page is provided for general informational purposes only and does not represent the views or financial advice of Toobit. We make no guarantees regarding the accuracy or completeness of this information and shall not be held liable for any errors, omissions, or outcomes resulting from its use. Investing in digital assets involves risk; users should independently evaluate their financial situation and the risks involved. For further details, please consult our Terms of Service and Risk Disclosure.
