What is HIP-3 on Hyperliquid?

Contents

What does HIP-3 let a deployer do?#

HIP-3 (Hyperliquid Improvement Proposal 3) is the protocol feature that lets anyone who meets a staking requirement deploy a perpetual futures DEX on HyperCore. Hyperliquid's HIP-3 specification splits the work in two. The deployer owns market definition (the oracle and the contract specification) and market operation (setting oracle prices, leverage limits and settling the market if needed). HyperCore supplies the order books and the margin engine, and the trading API is the same as for Hyperliquid's own perps.

Each HIP-3 DEX has its own margining, order books and deployer settings. Asset names carry the DEX name as a prefix, so trade[XYZ]'s S&P 500 market is xyz:SP500 and Entropy's Anthropic market is io:ANTH. HIP-3 markets have been live on mainnet since October 2025, according to Hyperliquid's HIP-3 product note from June 2026, which calls them the fastest-growing segment of Hyperliquid.

All HIP-3 DEXs are included in portfolio margin, though not every HIP-3 collateral asset can be borrowed.

The markets Hyperliquid's validators list themselves, such as BTC and ETH perps, are "validator-operated perps". Everything with a dex: prefix is a HIP-3 market run by an outside deployer. For how HIP-3 fits with spot, HIP-4 outcome markets and the rest of the chain, see what Hyperliquid is and how it works.

How do you deploy a HIP-3 market?#

A HIP-3 deployer needs stake, an auction slot for most assets, and a running oracle. The rules below come from the HIP-3 specification as of 2 November 2026.

Slashed HYPE is burned, not paid to affected traders. The stake stays slashable during the 7-day unstaking queue. The specification is blunt about what counts: slashing "does not distinguish between malicious and incompetent behavior", and a deployer that faithfully follows a poorly designed contract spec is treated the same as one that deviates from a good one. For the staking side of the 500,000 HYPE requirement, see how HYPE staking works.

Deployers operate a DEX through perpDeploy actions listed in the HIP-3 deployer actions reference. The main ones are registerAsset2 (create the DEX and list an asset), setOracle (publish prices), setOpenInterestCaps, setMarginModes, setDeployerFees, setSubDeployers (delegate actions to other keys) and haltTrading. haltTrading cancels all orders and settles every position at the current mark price. A deployer can use it to list dated contracts or to wind a market down.

Each HIP-3 DEX also gets an onchain backstop liquidator at 0x4000000000000000000000000000000000000000 + dex_index, so the first HIP-3 DEX's liquidator is 0x4000000000000000000000000000000000000001. It only takes positions on assets with cross margin enabled.

How HIP-3 oracles work#

A HIP-3 deployer publishes its own prices with setOracle. This is the biggest difference from Hyperliquid's own perps, where every validator computes the spot price as a weighted median of Binance, OKX, Bybit, Kraken, KuCoin, Gate, MEXC and Hyperliquid mid prices every 3 seconds and the validator oracle is the stake-weighted median of their submissions.

On a HIP-3 DEX, one oracle updater address sends three sets of prices: the oracle price (used for funding), mark price inputs, and an external perp price that limits sudden mark moves. HyperCore takes the median of the deployer's mark inputs and the local mark (the median of best bid, best ask and last trade). The protocol adds guardrails:

• Updates need at least 2.5 seconds between calls. Deployers are expected to send one every 3 seconds.
• A mark price that gets no update for 10 seconds falls back to the local mark.
• Each mark update can move at most 1% from the previous mark.
• All prices are clamped to 10 times the start-of-day value.

Cross margin is where validators set the bar. Turning it on for an asset cannot be undone, and validators allow it only for assets with observable liquidity, a reliable external oracle and resistance to manipulation. Any time an asset's externalPerpPx moves more than 50% from the start-of-day price, validators review whether to slash the deployer. Cross margin was enabled for HIP-3 DEXs on mainnet by 24 February 2026, per Hyperliquid's weekly update, with deployers switching it on asset by asset.

Everything else about pricing is the deployer's design. trade[XYZ]'s architecture page lists the xyz deployer address as 0x88806a71D74ad0a510b350545C9aE490912F0888 and a separate oracle updater, fed by relayers the trade[XYZ] team runs. Entropy's architecture page lists the io deployer as 0xd5d18d5f4026a33ca6c8fce75551b24cbb5452ea and says RedStone implements and maintains its oracle feeds.

HIP-3 fees, deployer fee scale and growth mode#

HIP-3 trades pay Hyperliquid's normal fee tier, then a multiplier the deployer chooses. The deployer sets a fee scale per asset with setDeployerFees, between 0 and 3, or from 0 to below 10 in growth mode, with one change per 30 days on mainnet. Hyperliquid made the scale continuous from 0.1 to 3 and configurable per asset in August 2026, per its 12 August update. Above a scale of 1, the protocol's share rises to match the deployer's.

Growth mode cuts protocol fees, rebates, volume credit and rate-limit credit by 90%. It is only open to markets that do not overlap with validator-operated perps: no crypto, no crypto baskets or wrappers, and no gold (because PAXG-USDC already tracks gold). Growth mode has a 30-day cooldown per asset.

Worked example at the base tier, where a validator-operated perp charges takers 0.045%, before staking or referral discounts:

trade[XYZ]'s fee page shows the scale-1 case: its standard taker rate is 0.090% at the base tier, split 50/50 with Hyperliquid, and 0.0090% on growth-mode assets. Apps that route orders can add a builder code fee on top of both. That is a separate mechanism, covered in how Hyperliquid builder codes work. Every Hyperliquid fee in one place is in Hyperliquid fees explained.

What trades on HIP-3: stocks, commodities, FX and pre-IPO#

Most of what people search for under "Hyperliquid stock", "Hyperliquid S&P 500" or "Hyperliquid oil" is a HIP-3 market from one deployer. Payward, Kraken's parent company, said in its 16 September 2026 announcement that one venue holds 98 percent of builder-deployed open interest. Hyperliquid's HIP-3 note, cited above, names trade[XYZ] as the largest HIP-3 deployer, with over 100 markets across equities, indices, commodities, FX and pre-IPO companies by June 2026. Open interest across all HIP-3 markets reached a record $4.3 billion in mid-August 2026, per Hyperliquid's 17 August update.

The categories below read from each deployer's own specification pages, as of 2 November 2026. Leverage and hours change, so check the live spec before trading.

Sources: trade[XYZ]'s specification index and pre-IPO specification index, and Entropy's pre-IPO asset directory.

Rising single names: SpaceX and Micron#

Single stocks are where search interest grew fastest in 2026. xyz:SPCX was listed as a pre-IPO perp in May 2026, per Hyperliquid's 18 May update, and became a regular stock perp, per Hyperliquid's 16 June update. trade[XYZ]'s spec now says it tracks one Nasdaq-listed SpaceX Class A share at up to 20x, with wider weekend bounds than most stocks. xyz:MU tracks one Micron share at up to 10x. How these price off-hours, and how they differ from Hyperliquid Strategies (PURR) and the HYPE ETFs, is in the Hyperliquid stock guide.

Commodities: WTI and gold#

WTI and Brent reference designated futures contracts that roll monthly, at up to 20x, and trade through weekends inside discovery bounds. xyz:GOLD tracks spot XAU/USD at up to 25x and is the one commodity barred from growth mode, because a validator-operated PAXG perp already tracks gold. Oil is also where a public spoofing allegation on Hyperliquid landed, a Solidus Labs analysis of Brent orders from March 2026. Roll dates, funding and that report are in the Hyperliquid oil guide.

Can you trade Anthropic on Hyperliquid?#

Yes, as cash-settled perps that give no shares, no IPO allocation and no claim on the company. Anthropic has two separate pre-IPO markets, and they do not quote the same thing.

trade[XYZ]'s xyz:ANT quotes a price per anticipated share. It launched at a $125 reference price chosen by trade[XYZ], and its pre-IPO design prices it from its own order book until a listing, with funding at 1% of the usual rate. trade[XYZ]'s spec lists an anticipated listing date of 20 November 2026. That date is a market parameter set by the deployer, not an announcement by Anthropic.

Entropy's io:ANTH quotes implied market capitalization, with catastrophic bounds of 300 and 4,200. Entropy's pre-IPO oracle blends a 5-minute moving average of its own mid price with an aggregate of private-market data, and gives the order book up to 95% weight when depth is high. The mark price that drives liquidations is the order-book average alone. If Anthropic has not listed by 18 August 2028, Entropy's no-IPO rule settles the contract at the 6-month average of that mark.

Comparing the two prices needs a share count, which is why traders argue about "spreads" between them. Read both specs before treating a gap as an arbitrage.

Who can trade HIP-3 markets?#

At the protocol level, standard HIP-3 order books are open to any HyperCore account. The interfaces that run them are not. trade[XYZ]'s general disclaimer says access is prohibited to United States persons, in the United States and in other restricted jurisdictions. Entropy's restricted jurisdictions list excludes the US and its territories, Canada, the UK, most of the EU and EEA, Australia and Singapore, among others. Following an interface's terms is the trader's responsibility.

As of 2 November 2026, no US-regulated route exists. Two are announced, both subject to regulatory approval:

• Payward plans for Bitnomial, its CFTC-regulated exchange and clearinghouse, to be the deployer of HIP-3* markets, with NinjaTrader Clearing carrying client accounts. Only accounts onboarded by NinjaTrader and on both NinjaTrader's and Bitnomial's allowlists could trade.
• ICE, which owns the New York Stock Exchange, signed a definitive agreement on 29 October 2026 to operate trade[XYZ]'s regulated markets in the US. Its press release says KYC and AML-verified customers would reach them through futures commission merchants once approvals are in place, and that ICE is making a strategic investment in trade[XYZ]. Hyperliquid's 29 October announcement says existing trade[XYZ] HIP-3 markets stay unchanged.

What is HIP-3*?#

HIP-3* is an optional permissioned mode for HIP-3. A deployer turns it on at creation with isStar: true, and it adds an onchain allowlist the deployer or its sub-deployers manage. Hyperliquid's 26 October announcement calls it strictly additive: existing markets stay unchanged, and the first release is on testnet with a preliminary spec. The deployer actions reference still labels HIP-3* testnet-only as of 2 November 2026.

The testnet spec gives a HIP-3* deployer more control over its users than plain HIP-3 does. Through proxy operations the deployer can add or remove a user (modifyApproval), restrict them to reduce-only (setReduceOnly), cancel their orders, place reduce-only orders for them, and move collateral from their account on that DEX to another account on the same venue (sendAsset). On a HIP-3* venue, the mark price is computed onchain from the deployer's spot oracle input, an external perp price taken from the main Hyperliquid market with the same name, and the local book. These are the tools a regulated operator needs, and they are also the reason a permissioned venue asks for more trust in its operator.

Risks of HIP-3 markets#

The matching engine is rarely the problem on HIP-3. The contract spec and the oracle are. Four risks matter most.

Oracle prints: the SK Hynix incident#

On 27 July 2026 at 23:01 UTC, trade[XYZ]'s SK Hynix mark price fell from $1,127.90 to $917.25. trade[XYZ]'s statement on X said the move came from an executed trade on the primary Korean pre-market venue, relayed by multiple data providers, and that the oracle "worked as intended according to its specification". It said it would cover liquidation losses attributable to the move as a one-time, discretionary decision. Galaxy Research, citing onchain analysts, put liquidated notional at $57 million to $80 million across roughly 960 long accounts, with profitable shorts auto-deleveraged in the cascade.

The fix changed the spec, not the chain. A trade[XYZ] changelog entry has since removed the 8:00 to 8:50 a.m. pre-market window from external pricing for Korean equities. Its Korea session rules, as of 2 November 2026, also switch to internal pricing after a 15-second gap in external data.

Weekend and off-hours pricing#

When the underlying market is closed, the price you trade is set by the HIP-3 book, not by the stock exchange. trade[XYZ]'s oracle methodology then moves the oracle by a 30-minute moving average of the order book's impact prices. For US stocks that internal session runs from Friday 8:00 p.m. to Sunday 8:05 p.m. ET.

Discovery bounds cap how far the mark can move during those hours: a band around a reference price, set per market and usually near one divided by max leverage, with a set number of re-anchors. The worked weekend ranges per market are in the stock and oil guides. A position whose liquidation price sits outside the active bounds cannot be liquidated while they apply. The gap risk moves to the reopen: when external prices return, the oracle snaps to them on the next tick.

Auto-deleveraging (ADL)#

If liquidations cannot close an underwater position, HyperCore auto-deleverages the other side. It ranks profitable positions by (mark_price / entry_price) * (notional_position / account_value) and closes the highest first at the previous mark. The HIP-3 backstop liquidator only covers cross-margin assets, so isolated-only HIP-3 markets, which include many single stocks on trade[XYZ], are more exposed to ADL. trade[XYZ]'s own ADL page describes the same waterfall for xyz markets.

Caps, halts and wind-downs#

Every trade[XYZ] market has an open interest cap. At the cap, new positions cannot open and only reductions go through. A deployer can also halt a market and settle it at the mark price. That happened during the USDH sunset: the Ventuals, Kinetiq and Felix HIP-3 DEXs settled their USDH-denominated markets by 20 June 2026, per the 16 June update cited above. HyENA's HIP-3 DEX began sunsetting in late August, per Hyperliquid's 31 August update. A HIP-3 position can end on the deployer's schedule, not yours.

HIP-3 and HIP-4: perps versus outcome markets#

HIP-3 and HIP-4 share a 500,000 HYPE deployer stake and a slashing model, but they build different products. HIP-4 is Hyperliquid's version of prediction markets, which it calls outcome markets: fully collateralized Yes and No tokens that settle between 0 and 1, with no leverage and no liquidations.

For the HIP-4 mechanics, see HIP-4 outcome markets explained. Totalis, which publishes this guide, builds on HIP-4 rather than HIP-3: its Hyperliquid introduction shows how single outcomes trade on HyperCore and Combos of 2 to 5 outcomes settle on HyperEVM, and Combo fees and limits lists what each part costs. Both trade in the Totalis app. For why the Combo vault lives on the EVM side, see HyperCore vs HyperEVM.