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Just last week, we wrote about HIP-3’s final stages of testnet, and now it’s live on mainnet with UNIT already launching their HIP-3 DEX.
Their first product, XYZ100 — an index tracking the top 100 companies — has generated $24.1M, $21.6M, and $20.7M in volume over the first three days, respectively. This performance stands out when compared to spot volumes for tokenized equities, which typically range between $8M-$12M weekly.
Source: Blockworks Research
A powerful indicator was seeing Phantom list the XYZ100 perp via their frontend. As discussed previously, HIP-3 markets will not be originally listed on Hyperliquid’s frontend, meaning distribution is heavily dependent on builders listing markets.
Phantom (54K users) and BasedApp (28K users) have already listed XYZ100, though some builders like Axiom decided not to, showing the optionality at play here. While builders still account for a small amount of Hyperliquid’s total volume (3.5%), they have significant distribution with 37% of Hyperliquid’s users trading from these platforms.
Source: Allium HyperLiquid Dashboard
However, it remains unclear exactly how builders will approach HIP-3 market listings. According to Phantom’s documentation, “Any HIP-3 perpetual futures market can be accessed via Hyperliquid-compatible platforms, including Phantom.” This suggests that in a bull case scenario, Phantom could permissionlessly list all HIP-3 markets, though we expect some degree of curation.
The value proposition is clear: HIP-3 already provides deployers with institutional-grade orderbook technology, and with builder participation, potentially elite distribution as well. HIP-3 already abstracts the orderbook infrastructure layer, and builders will potentially abstract away the need for deployers to maintain frontends or build their own communities. The only thing that matters is listing markets users want to trade
One such project that will depend heavily on builder distribution is Ventuals. Ventuals creates synthetic perpetual futures on private company valuations for firms like OpenAI, SpaceX, and Cursor. The platform’s innovation lies in its hybrid oracle system that addresses the fundamental challenge of pricing illiquid private assets (50/50 weighting between offchain secondary market data and 8-hour EMA of mark price).
Source: Ventuals Testnet Dashboard
Builders’ decision to list these markets would abstract everything away from users, meaning the end user simply sees the ability to buy and trade pre-IPO projects directly from their wallet, though this could be a risk as end users cannot accurately distinguish risks for pre-IPO tokens such as liquidity constraints.
To secure the 500K HYPE requirement for HIP-3 deployment, Ventuals will open deposits for vHYPE on October 16 at 15:00 UTC (11 a.m. ET). vHYPE holders receive 25% of exchange revenue as ongoing fee share, in addition to earning Ventuals points toward a future protocol stake with up to a 10x boost for early participants.
However, depositors take on liquidity risk, as withdrawals are paused if total deposits sit at the minimum 500K threshold, since this stake must be maintained for the exchange to operate. Over time, Ventuals will add HYPE from their treasury and purchase additional HYPE with exchange revenue to create a withdrawal buffer above the minimum requirement.
