Hyperliquid HIP-3 is unlocking all the possibilities of perpetual contracts

Hyperliquid's performance this year has already been impressive.

But Hyperliquid's true ambition goes far beyond this. The recently launched HIP-3 upgrade has transformed Hyperliquid from a Perp DEX into a new kind of composable financial Lego.

Currently, the HIP-3 ecosystem includes more than 20 projects, covering trading frontends, liquid staking, DeFi protocols, AI infrastructure, prediction markets, and other verticals. This ecosystem has a distinct feature: most projects are still in the testnet stage, team members often use pseudonyms, and funding mainly relies on self-funding, which seems to perfectly align with Hyperliquid's anti-VC values.

The most interesting aspect of this ecosystem is that all of them are trying to apply perpetual contracts to new scenarios—whether it's pre-IPO company equity, traditional stocks, commodities, computing resources, or yield itself. The permissionless framework provided by HIP-3 is unleashing unexpected innovative energy.

Although still in its early stages, several projects with leading TVL, such as Kinetiq ($1.9 billions TVL), Unit ($800 millions TVL), and Felix ($300 millions TVL), have already demonstrated significant influence. BlockBeats has selected 16 HIP-3 ecosystem projects for introduction:

Trading Frontends

Based

Based is a trading super app built on Hyperliquid, supported by Ethena Labs. It not only offers spot and perpetual futures trading (with up to 40x leverage), the Based Visa card, portfolio management, and an affiliate program, but also features a cool function called Based Streams—a DEX-driven live streaming service where creators can broadcast their trading process, receive token tips, and reward viewers via HyperCore.

Based launched Based Streams on October 10, becoming the first frontend to support HIP-3 markets, and deployed the first XYZ100-USD index market, reaching a 24-hour trading volume of $35 millions. iOS and Android apps are expected to be released in mid-2025.

Liquid

Liquid is a mobile-first trading app designed specifically for Hyperliquid. It offers non-custodial perpetual futures trading (up to 100x leverage), yield strategies, and curated financial news. To lower the entry barrier, Liquid integrates email registration, simplifying wallet complexity and making it easy for ordinary users to get started.

The team has professional backgrounds in AI and cryptocurrency, with rich experience in DeFi and mobile development. The app launched on the App Store on August 8, integrates Privy for instant registration and yield features, and is currently in public beta.

Aura

Aura is a mobile social crypto app integrated with Hyperliquid, with the core idea of turning trading into a social activity. Users can trade with friends in real time, track each other's assets, and explore new tokens together, transforming cold trading into a warm social experience.

Liquid Staking and Lending

Kinetiq Exchange

Kinetiq is a liquid staking protocol on Hyperliquid and the project with the highest TVL in the ecosystem, reaching $1.9 billions. Users can stake HYPE to receive kHYPE tokens as liquidity certificates, delegated to top validators via StakeHub. kHYPE can be used as collateral for HIP-3 perpetual contracts, greatly lowering the deployment threshold.

Even more impressive is Kinetiq's Launch platform based on HIP-3. This platform allows teams to deploy their own perpetual contract exchanges through crowdfunding kHYPE staking pools, without needing large upfront capital. Currently, Kinetiq has staked about 36 millions HYPE, accounting for around 10% of HYPE's circulating supply.

Felix

Felix is a DeFi lending and CDP platform based on HyperEVM, forked from Liquity V2. Users can use HYPE or uBTC and other assets as collateral for lending, conduct peer-to-peer lending through the Vanilla market, and mint the stablecoin feUSD. Felix adopts a variable interest rate model, providing users with flexible lending options. Its current TVL is $300 millions.

Innovative Trading Products

Unit

Unit focuses on spot tokenization rather than perpetual contracts, supplementing the entire ecosystem by providing native spot liquidity for HIP-3 perpetual contracts. It is the largest spot asset deployer on Hyperliquid and the first project to go live on the HIP-3 mainnet, holding assets such as BTC, ETH, SOL, and more.

At the same time, Unit is attempting to launch perpetual contract markets related to major US stocks such as Tesla and Google via HIP-3, bringing traditional financial assets on-chain. The team members come from top institutions such as HRT, Jump, and Fortress, and the current TVL is $831 millions.

Ventuals

Ventuals is a decentralized derivatives platform focused on perpetual futures trading of private pre-IPO companies. Want to trade equity in SpaceX or OpenAI? It's possible on Ventuals, with up to 10x leverage. The platform uses optimistic oracles and a vHYPE liquid staking mechanism, has not taken the VC funding route, and will raise funds through community minting of "Sekai Kappas" NFTs in September 2025.

Ventuals launched its testnet in early 2025 and will open vHYPE staking deposits on October 16, testing perpetual contracts for more than 10 private companies. This is the flagship project of HIP-3, the first to extend perpetual contracts to off-chain assets, representing HIP-3's application potential in the real world.

Volmex

Volmex brings volatility-based products to HIP-3. It has released the BVIV/EVIV indices for BTC and ETH, serving as the crypto market's fear index (similar to the VIX index in traditional finance). Volmex plans to launch volatility perpetual contracts under Hyperliquid's builder market framework, allowing traders to directly trade market volatility.

Nunchi

Nunchi is building a yield-targeted perpetual contract exchange, turning yield and interest rate spreads into tradable perpetual derivatives. The platform offers two types of products: yield perpetuals (based on APY/interest rates) and basis perpetuals (based on price ratios). On HIP-3, Nunchi has launched FR-perpetuals—a meta-market for funding rates of other perpetual contracts, focusing on supplementing HIP-3's staking and fee yields.

Hyperbolic

Hyperbolic has launched commodity perpetual futures on Hyperliquid, adopting the HIP-3 standard and equipped with institutional-grade infrastructure. It allows users to trade perpetual contracts for traditional commodities such as oil, gold, and natural gas, bringing physical commodities to on-chain trading.

Ddot

Ddot is building a commodity exchange based on HIP-3, focusing on physical commodities and tradable real-world asset markets. Compared to Hyperbolic's financial derivatives, Ddot pays more attention to the trading and circulation of the commodities themselves.

Infrastructure

Global Compute Index

A real-time cloud GPU computing pricing dashboard and market index, aggregating spot and on-demand prices for major GPUs (H100, H200, A100, etc.), providing daily and 30-day average prices. It is building the world's first HIP-3-based compute perpetual futures, serving as an oracle provider to aggregate price data into permissionless perpetual markets.

The core product is already operational, displaying real-time spot prices. On-chain extensions are under development, including oracle integration with Seda.

Sekai

Sekai is an LST (liquid staking token) protocol that allows anyone to easily create CoreWriter-based LST assets on HyperEVM. It is designed for HIP-3 "unicorns" (high-potential deployers), solving the high threshold of 500,000 HYPE. Companies, projects, communities, and institutions can all launch their own liquid staking tokens through Sekai, which plans to provide LST support for every HIP-3 DEX.

Flow DEX

Flow DEX is a globally compliant liquidity provider and OTC/market-making infrastructure company. It helps Hyperliquid scale, increase on-chain depth, attract institutional capital, and supports token issuance across exchanges and protocols. As the liquidity backbone of the ecosystem, Flow DEX plays a key role behind the scenes.

Others

Hyperbet

Hyperbet is building a decentralized casino and betting platform on HyperEVM, bringing on-chain gambling games and socialized betting experiences. Although this field is controversial, it is indeed a direction for blockchain applications.

OnlyVibes

OnlyVibes is a trading community and signal-sharing group on Hyperliquid, providing trading ideas, real-time market analysis, and trading tips to help members capture trends and manage risks together. Compared to technical products, this seems more like a trader community.