Trade[XYZ] retained near-total control of Hyperliquid’s HIP-3 perpetual-markets sector during the 30 days through Sept. 13, yet its own trading volume fell 44.2% from the previous month as activity rotated toward Hyperliquid’s core order book.
Hyperliquid public API data shows Trade[XYZ] processed $64.60 billion in volume during the period, accounting for 97.8% of all HIP-3 volume. Its seven-day share was similarly concentrated at 97.6%. The dominance came alongside a steep slowdown: Trade[XYZ]’s average daily volume over seven days fell from an early-August peak of $5.36 billion to $2.01 billion, and it did not surpass the core order book’s daily volume after Aug. 18.
HIP-3 markets, which let third-party operators deploy perpetual futures markets on Hyperliquid, represented 25.8% of total perpetual volume in the latest 30-day window, down from 57.1% in the preceding 30 days. The decline reflected both weaker builder-market activity and a 117% rise in core-orderbook perpetual volume, which expanded the total trading denominator.
Among 10 registered HIP-3 operators, four remained active, five had stopped trading, and one never launched, according to the dataset assembled from Hyperliquid’s public APIs. Every venue still trading settled in USDC, while all venues that used non-USDC stablecoins had ceased activity.
Trade[XYZ] volume falls with tech-linked markets
The slowdown at Trade[XYZ] was most visible in the storage and artificial-intelligence-linked contracts that had driven much of its earlier activity. Its largest market, SK Hynix, recorded $8.50 billion in volume over the 30-day period, while the venue’s own order-book activity experienced a 62% pullback in the dataset.
Working-day comparisons over a 45-day sample showed a positive 0.47 correlation between average daily volatility in storage-related assets and Trade[XYZ] daily volume. Trading volume in the comparable conventional markets for storage and AI-linked names declined 25.7% over the same period, suggesting part of the contraction followed lower activity in the underlying equity markets.
Trade[XYZ] nevertheless fell faster than those reference markets. Across nine named assets, volume on the venue dropped 49.7%, roughly 24 percentage points more than the decline measured in traditional-market activity. The largest gaps included SanDisk, down 26.0 percentage points beyond the reference; Micron, down 25.4 points; Intel, down 21.5 points; and SK Hynix, down 17.2 points.
Nvidia and Nebius moved differently. Trade[XYZ] volume in those contracts outperformed the comparison benchmark by 36.5 and 18.6 percentage points, respectively, showing that the downturn was uneven across the venue’s technology-heavy listings.
The data does not point to traders simply leaving Hyperliquid. Combined trading across core perpetuals and HIP-3 markets rose 26% over the period, consistent with flow migrating within the platform. Trade[XYZ]’s $64.60 billion total also covered 104 markets, while its volume in the nine reference names amounted to $23.5 billion, or 1.2% of the $2.005 trillion traded in those assets on their primary venues.
Smaller operators struggle to build durable volume
Entropy was the only HIP-3 operator to briefly lead Trade[XYZ] in a directly overlapping market. It traded $1.03 billion across six live markets during 26 days of activity and surpassed Trade[XYZ] on Nebius for one week.
That lead proved short-lived. Entropy’s share of combined Nebius trading across the two venues moved from 8.7% to 53.1%, then fell to 20.4% over three weeks. In the week after Entropy’s lead, Trade[XYZ] volume in Nebius rose 61%, while Entropy’s dropped 63%.
Entropy’s open interest, the value of outstanding positions, increased 37% to $51.4 million during the same sequence, including $29.9 million in Anthropic contracts. Its trading volume, though, declined for three consecutive weeks, from $417 million to $254 million.
Paragon ran 26 live markets and recorded a 49.9% month-on-month increase, even after Trade[XYZ] launched five overlapping markets on Aug. 18. Markets by Kinetiq listed 23 markets, but two index perpetuals produced 95% of its volume. HyENA delisted all of its markets, reducing open interest to zero, after generating $33,414 in deployer revenue over its operating life.
The smaller active cohort outside Trade[XYZ] produced $1.49 billion in volume over the latest 30 days. Annualized, that pace equates to roughly $18.1 billion in volume and about $725,000 in deployer revenue at the observed 0.400 basis-point fee level. Four operators in that group had approximately $167 million worth of HYPE staked, based on the stated token price of $79.73.
Staking requirements put capital costs ahead of fee income
Operating a HIP-3 venue requires more than attracting order flow. Most registered teams have locked roughly 500,000 HYPE, worth about $40 million at $79.73 per token, to support their markets.
The dataset listed stakes of 500,973 HYPE for Entropy, 500,712 HYPE for Paragon, 508,915 HYPE for HyENA, and 588,489 HYPE across Kinetiq’s related venues. Trade[XYZ] held 500,488 HYPE at one address and another 500,269 HYPE at a second address. These stakes remain locked for at least 183 days, followed by a seven-day unstaking queue during which slashing exposure continues.
That structure makes the economics highly sensitive to HYPE’s market price. Over the eight days examined, HYPE fell from $88.37 to $79.73, reducing the value of a 500,000-HYPE stake by about $4.3 million. A 30% decline would translate into an approximately $12 million reduction in the value of such a position.
Fee income has so far lagged those capital commitments outside the market leader. Paragon generated $64,281 in lifetime deployer revenue, according to on-chain accounting data. A $39.87 million HYPE stake earning an assumed 2.2% annualized staking yield would produce roughly $877,000 a year, about 14 times Paragon’s lifetime fee income.
Trade[XYZ] has reached a different scale. Since Aug. 27, on-chain balances indicate it accumulated $1.38 million in deployer revenue on $32.30 billion in volume, equal to 0.427 basis points, or about $79,000 per day. Entropy’s $41,468 in implied revenue on $1.036 billion in volume equated to 0.400 basis points.
Stock-linked HIP-3 operators have generally used Growth Mode with a deployer fee scale of 1.0, producing all-in fees near 0.4 basis points. Future settings could allow operators to raise per-asset fees by as much as three times the discounted Growth Mode level, a potential response for venues unable to cover fixed costs through volume.
Slot auctions and reserve yield shape the next phase
Beyond HYPE staking, operators must buy additional asset-listing slots after receiving their first three free listings. Hyperliquid’s Sept. 14 Dutch auction cleared at the 500-HYPE floor, or about $39,900 per slot at $79.73 per HYPE, down from 582 HYPE one week earlier.
Builder-code routing has not yet offset the concentration in venue activity. Flowscan recorded about $5.3 billion in HIP-3 volume routed through builder codes during the latest 30 days, equal to roughly 8% of the $66.09 billion HIP-3 total. Across all time, 819 builder codes routed $52.6 billion, or 9% of HIP-3’s $587 billion in cumulative volume.
Entropy recorded $423 million in routed volume alongside $1.03 billion in total venue volume, implying that about 40% of its activity arrived through a front end it controlled. The top 10 builder codes represented 59.7% of all routed volume in the latest month, leaving 809 codes to divide the remainder.
Hyperliquid’s next financial checkpoint arrives in early October, when payments under its Aligned Quote Assets v2 framework are expected to begin. The protocol design directs roughly 90% of adjusted reserve yield from quote-asset balances to the Assistance Fund on a 30-day cycle. With USDC representing 98.3% of quote-asset supply and a reported $6.77 billion held on Hyperliquid, a 3.6% SOFR-based estimate implies annual proceeds near $200 million before undisclosed cost adjustments.
For HIP-3 operators, the immediate question is more practical: whether fee revenue and routed flow can justify keeping millions of dollars in HYPE locked while the core order book absorbs a growing share of Hyperliquid trading.
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