Hyperliquid HIP-3: Open Perptual Futures Creation Leading a New Landscape in Decentralized Finance

The HIP-3 improvement proposal launched by Hyperliquid in May 2025 has attracted widespread attention in the DeFi field, and its simplest viable version is now live on the Testnet. This is not just a simple protocol upgrade, but a key part of Hyperliquid's development blueprint that could have far-reaching implications for the future of on-chain derivatives trading.

To fully understand the importance of HIP-3, we need to first understand the overall design concept of Hyperliquid, which starts with its three core proposals (HIPs).

The Trilogy of Hyperliquid

Hyperliquid has built a layered and fully functional financial ecosystem through three key improvement proposals.

HIP-1: Breaking Through the Listing Barrier

For a long time, new projects often face issues of opacity and high costs when listing tokens on mainstream trading platforms, and they may also come with harsh terms. Project teams often have to go through lengthy negotiations, pay high fees, or relinquish a large number of tokens.

HIP-1 provides another option for project teams. It allows anyone to create new tokens on Hyperliquid without permission, similar to the ERC-20 standard. Project teams only need to pay a certain fee ( using HYPE tokens ) to create their own tokens and automatically open a spot market. This greatly lowers the threshold for assets to enter the public market, providing project parties with a fairer and more transparent issuance platform.

HIP-2: Automated Market Making

Even if the new token successfully goes live, its value is difficult to reflect if there is a lack of buying and selling depth. This is known as the "liquidity cold start" problem.

HIP-2(, also known as "Hyperliquidity"), is the native automated liquidity strategy of the Hyperliquid protocol. After a new token is created through HIP-1, HIP-2 will automatically place buy and sell orders on the order book, providing basic tradable liquidity for the new market and effectively addressing the cold start problem during the initial launch of new assets.

HIP-3: Open Perpetual Market Creation

Perpetual contracts are the largest area of trading volume in the cryptocurrency market, but before HIP-3, only the Hyperliquid core team had the authority to decide which assets to launch perpetual contracts for, which limited the platform's growth potential and asset diversity.

HIP-3(, also known as "Builder-Deployed Perpetuals"), completely opens up the creation rights of the perpetual contract market. Any "builder"( can deploy custom perpetual contracts on Hyperliquid as long as they stake 1 million HYPE.

The Builder has complete control over the market it deploys, able to independently define various key parameters, including selecting collateral, price oracles, setting leverage limits, and margin parameters. Additionally, the Builder can enjoy 50% of the trading fees from that market. This ratio may be adjusted after the official launch, which is a considerable return on investment.

After these three steps are completed, Hyperliquid has upgraded from a user-facing DEX to a "financial infrastructure layer," significantly surpassing other DEX competitors in its narrative, and has also derived new business ecosystems and gameplay.

) The major impacts of HIP-3

1. Align with the RWA trend

HIP-3 has set a high staking threshold of 1 million HYPE, equivalent to over 42 million USD. This design filters out well-capitalized and serious participants, naturally making institutional capital qualified players. These institutions are likely to target markets with large and stable trading volumes and substantial value in traditional finance, such as major global stock indices, commodities, and major currency pairs, which is precisely where RWA can be utilized.

Taking S&P 500 index futures as an example, even if it only captures 0.1% of the trading volume of the traditional market, under a fee rate of 0.1%, Builder can earn about $250,000 per day. This is extremely attractive for institutions seeking stable returns.

In addition, the modular design of HIP-3 allows Hyperliquid to customize risk parameters, collateral assets, and liquidation logic for different types of RWA, which is essential for securely and efficiently bringing diversified RWA on-chain.

2. Create a new token ecosystem

Although HIP-3 opened up the creation rights for the perpetual contract market, the staking cost of 1 million HYPE is still a huge barrier for retail investors. Additionally, the source of liquidity for newly established markets is also a problem.

The community may develop third-party solutions like HLAggregator. It allows retail investors to deposit HYPE into a public pool, raising 1 million HYPE through crowdfunding to qualify for the deployment of perpetual contracts. Users will receive staking certificates representing their shares and have the right to share in future fee revenue.

HLAggregator may also issue its own governance token HLA, influencing the selection of new perpetual contract markets. The project team may conduct airdrops for HLA holders to strive for listing opportunities, thereby increasing HLA demand and coin price.

This mechanism can also address the liquidity issues in new markets. By distributing HLA or tokens from collaborative projects, users can be incentivized to provide initial liquidity for new markets.

With the emergence of similar projects, a "Hyperliquid war" for user HYPE deposits, project collaborations, and the distribution rights of real profits may unfold, similar to the "Curve war" of the past.

3. Meet Pre-IPO trading needs

Recently, retail investors' interest in private stocks of unlisted companies ( Pre-IPO ) has been growing. Hyperliquid has a natural advantage in meeting this demand.

Hyperliquid's Hyperps feature addresses the challenge of providing futures trading for assets that are not yet officially launched or lack reliable price sources. The funding rate of Hyperps is calculated based on the difference between the current futures price and its own exponential moving average over a certain period, effectively managing price volatility.

The combination of HIP-3 and Hyperps allows anyone ### to "self-service" deploy perpetual contracts for popular private equity stocks by staking 1 million HYPE(. This provides retail investors with the opportunity to gain from the price fluctuations of these companies, while also offering price discovery functionality.

4. Agile response to exchange competition

As some compliant exchanges begin to offer futures trading services for U.S. users, Hyperliquid is facing new competition. These exchanges have the advantage of compliance, but they have disadvantages in terms of product launch speed and diversity.

The advantage of Hyperliquid is its agility. HIP-3 will turn the contract market into a "permissionless" one, further enhancing the speed of responding to market demands. This agility is difficult for traditional exchanges to achieve.

In summary, HIP-3 represents an important strategic choice for Hyperliquid, aiming to establish itself as a core financial infrastructure that connects real-world assets, revolves around the HYPE innovative ecosystem, and responds agilely to market demands, promoting the deep integration of Decentralized Finance and traditional finance.

Despite the many challenges ahead, such as effectively guiding new market liquidity and navigating the complex global regulatory environment, HIP-3 undoubtedly paints a more open, composable, and imaginative future for on-chain finance.