EL7.AI
CryptoMedium•22 October 2026•
3 min read

Commodity and Equity Perpetuals Reach 51% of Hyperliquid Trading in July

Key Facts

1Commodity and equity perpetuals accounted for 51% of Hyperliquid trading in July 2026, up from 0.2% in October 2025.
2Trading across XYZ markets collectively exceeded $100 billion since October 2025, with an annualized pace of more than $600 billion at the time of the statement.
3Perpetual contracts are cash-settled and margined in stablecoins, without giving holders a claim on the underlying asset.
4Payward's proposed offering of on-chain perpetual contracts is subject to regulatory approval.

Commodity and equity perpetuals accounted for 51% of trading volume on Hyperliquid in July 2026, up from 0.2% in October 2025, according to data platform Dune. The contracts thus accounted for more than half of the platform's trading, after making up only a small share at the start of the period. The shift encompasses contracts linked to both commodities and equities, in markets that offer exposure to traditional asset prices through blockchain. In a separate statement, S&P Dow Jones Indices said cumulative trading volume across XYZ markets had exceeded $100 billion since October 2025. It added that trading in these markets was running at an annualized pace of more than $600 billion at the time of the statement. Both figures cover XYZ markets collectively, while Dune's percentage measures commodity and equity perpetuals as a share of total Hyperliquid trading.

Perpetual contracts linked to these assets provide price exposure with cash settlement, according to Dune's description of the instrument. The platform said they provide "cash-settled price exposure," with positions valued against a reference price supplied by an oracle mechanism. The contracts are margined in stablecoins, while giving holders no claim on the underlying asset whose price they track. For equity-linked contracts, this means gaining exposure to price movements without owning the stock itself. On the timing of activity, Dune reported that trading volumes in tokenized equities and commodities on decentralized exchanges, as well as perpetuals linked to real-world assets, fall sharply over weekends.

Hyperliquid allows markets to be created without prior permission, including perpetual futures markets created by external developers, according to Alchemy documentation. The perpetual market deployer operates the market it creates, including maintaining the oracle prices used as valuation references. Its responsibilities also include leverage limits and settlement when needed. The market deployer's duties thus extend from creating the market to operating its pricing and transaction components, under the mechanism described in the documentation. Across the broader infrastructure for trading assets through blockchain, Dune says its market data service covers liquidity spread across more than 200 platforms on 12 networks.

In a forthcoming move tied to this infrastructure, Payward, the parent company of Kraken, announced plans to create on-chain perpetual futures markets for U.S. clients. The company said it intends to begin with developer-created Hyperliquid markets. That choice puts markets created by external parties at the start of Payward's plan to offer the proposed contracts. Making them available to U.S. clients remains subject to regulatory approval, according to the company's announcement. Payward underscored this condition with the phrase "subject to regulatory approval," which governs proceeding with the launch of these contracts.