ARK Invest analyst: Hyperliquid enters the RWA era, HIP-3 trading volume surpasses crypto assets for the first time

Core Viewpoint

I. Translation of the Original Text

We are entering a new era of DeFi.

For the first time in history, Hyperliquid has seen trading volume from real-world assets (RWA) exceed that of crypto assets within a single week. RWA accounted for 54% of total trading volume.

Another interesting trend is that since June, the trading volume of individual stocks on HIP-3 has surpassed that of indices and commodities. Currently, 61% of all RWA trading volume comes from individual stocks.

I am no longer convinced that RWA trading will naturally concentrate on the same trading platforms as crypto assets. It is likely that different leading categories will emerge within RWA. The importance of mastering BTC, ETH, and SOL order flows may be far lower than many expect in the future.

To better understand the scale:

Last week, the total perpetual contract trading volume across all DEXs was $79 billion.

Hyperliquid's trading volume was $50 billion.

Of this, the HIP-3 RWA trading volume was $26 billion.

In other words, the RWA market on Hyperliquid alone has already surpassed the combined perpetual contract trading volume of all other DEXs for crypto assets.

If you are still only focusing on crypto token trading, I believe you are looking at the wrong market.

Source: Blockworks.

II. What This Chart Really Indicates

From the weekly trading volume structure in the chart, before the end of 2025, Hyperliquid's trading volume will mainly be contributed by Bitcoin and other layer one tokens. After entering 2026, the proportion of RWA will continue to rise, reaching about 54% in the most recent week, becoming the largest trading category on the platform.

This means that Hyperliquid's product positioning is undergoing a significant leap:

Hyperliquid is evolving from a "on-chain crypto perpetual contract exchange" to a "global, round-the-clock, multi-asset derivatives trading platform."

The strategic value of this change is very high. The tradable varieties and total market size of crypto assets are relatively limited, while the derivatives markets for stocks, indices, commodities, foreign exchange, and other traditional assets provide a much larger potential trading pool. Therefore, Hyperliquid's growth ceiling is no longer entirely constrained by the cryptocurrency market.

Notably, the core of RWA growth has shifted from macro assets like gold, crude oil, and the S&P 500 to individual stocks. Current third-party market snapshots show that in Hyperliquid HIP-3's daily trading volume, stocks account for about 63%, indices for about 20%, and commodities for about 16%, which is basically consistent with the 61% mentioned in the original text.

This indicates that the strongest demand from on-chain users may be:

Leveraged price exposure to U.S. individual stocks traded around the clock using stablecoins as collateral.

What users are truly purchasing is global access, 24-hour trading, leverage, low-friction capital transfer, and a self-custody experience.

III. The Term "RWA Trading" Needs Accurate Understanding

The stocks, indices, and commodities on HIP-3 are primarily perpetual contracts. Traders gain synthetic exposure to the price of the underlying assets, with no actual stock delivery, shareholder voting rights, or claims to company assets. Prices are kept close to external markets through oracle and funding rate mechanisms.

Therefore, this set of data proves that:

On-chain synthetic stock derivatives have generated strong trading demand.

It cannot directly prove that the tokenization of real stocks, on-chain equity registration, and atomic settlement of securities have achieved the same level of adoption.

These are two different development paths:

Synthetic asset path: Users trade stock prices using USDC as collateral.
Securities tokenization path: Users actually hold on-chain securities with legal rights.

The former has a faster startup speed and higher capital efficiency, while also bearing risks related to oracles, funding rates, market manipulation, and regulation. The latter requires coordination among custodians, issuers, brokers, transfer agents, clearing systems, and securities regulations, leading to a slower advancement.

IV. The Original Author's Judgment on "Platform Differentiation" is Only Half Correct

The author believes that RWA may form independent leading subcategories, and stocks, commodities, and crypto assets may not ultimately concentrate on the same platform. This judgment has some merit, as different assets require different oracles, market makers, trading session handling, risk parameters, and regulatory arrangements.

However, the HIP-3 architecture allows for this specialization to occur within Hyperliquid.

HIP-3 allows third parties to deploy their own perpetual contract markets. Deployers are responsible for defining contracts, oracles, leverage limits, and market operations, while inheriting HyperCore's order book and margin infrastructure. The current deployment threshold is to stake 500,000 HYPE, and deployers receive a fixed 50% of the related trading fees.

Thus, a two-tier structure may form in the future:

Bottom-tier trading infrastructure leader: Hyperliquid.

Segment asset operation leaders: HIP-3 deployers like trade[XYZ].

In the current snapshot, trade[XYZ] contributed about $5.577 billion to HIP-3's daily trading volume, while the total HIP-3 trading volume was about $5.585 billion, accounting for nearly 99.9%. This indicates that current RWA growth is highly concentrated among a single deployer.

Therefore, the emergence of leading subcategories in RWA does not necessarily weaken Hyperliquid. As long as these leaders continue to use HyperCore's matching, margin, and settlement infrastructure, Hyperliquid still controls the key underlying components.

V. There is an Obvious Arithmetic Issue with This Set of Numbers

According to the numbers provided in the original text:

The total perpetual trading volume across all DEXs is $79 billion.

Hyperliquid's volume is $50 billion.

The total for other DEXs should be $29 billion.

Hyperliquid's HIP-3 RWA trading volume is $26 billion.

Therefore:

$26 billion is less than $29 billion.

The statement at the end of the original text that "Hyperliquid's RWA trading volume is greater than the combined perpetual trading volume of all other DEXs for crypto" cannot be directly derived from the above three sets of numbers.

This may stem from different statistical time windows, different data sources, or the $79 billion statistic not including part of the HIP-3 trading volume. The original text did not clarify this. Simple rounding cannot explain the approximately $3 billion discrepancy.

VI. Impact on HYPE Investment Logic

This is a strong positive signal for HYPE's long-term fundamentals, with three core values.

First, TAM expansion. Hyperliquid is beginning to enter the stock, index, commodity, and foreign exchange derivatives markets, with a potential trading pool much larger than the pure crypto perpetual market.

Second, revenue sources are becoming less cyclical with crypto. Individual stock earnings reports, macro data, commodity volatility, and geopolitical events can independently generate trading demand, potentially reducing the platform's reliance on BTC bull and bear cycles.

Third, network effects are strengthened. More markets bring more traders, market makers, collateral assets, and developers, further increasing the difficulty of cold-starting new platforms.

However, trading volume cannot be directly equated with revenue and token value capture. HIP-3 deployers receive 50% of the trading fees, and trade[XYZ] has enabled Growth Mode for some contracts, which can reduce trading fees by over 90%. During rapid volume increases, unit trading revenue may simultaneously decline.

The most important indicators moving forward should be:

RWA fee income, open interest, active trader retention, bid-ask spreads, non-incentivized trading proportion, and the amount of RWA fees that ultimately enter the HYPE value capture mechanism.

VII. Impact on USDC and Circle

Currently, trade[XYZ]’s stock perpetual contracts use USDC as collateral, with stock prices denominated in U.S. dollars.

This is a direct benefit to USDC, as USDC begins to take on three roles:

Trading margin.
Profit and loss settlement unit.
A unified capital account between stocks, crypto assets, and other assets.

However, a weekly trading volume of $26 billion does not mean an increase in USDC demand by $26 billion. Perpetual contract trading volume is a nominal amount that circulates repeatedly; the same USDC collateral can support multiple trades within a week.

The extent to which Circle truly benefits depends on:

Average margin balance, the long-term accumulation of USDC on Hyperliquid, and whether USDC can maintain its status as the primary collateral asset on HIP-3.

Final Judgment

The importance of this set of data is very high, but the most accurate conclusion should be:

The RWA application that is currently exploding in on-chain finance may be the round-the-clock synthetic stock trading using USDC as collateral, rather than the on-chain migration of real stock ownership.

Hyperliquid has preliminarily proven that the same on-chain order book and stablecoin margin system can simultaneously support price exposure for both crypto assets and traditional assets. It is moving closer to a combination of an open, global on-chain CME and Nasdaq derivatives platform.

The original author's direction of "focusing only on crypto trading may miss a larger market" is worth noting. The judgment that "BTC, ETH, and SOL order flows will no longer be important" is still premature. Crypto trading flows provide Hyperliquid with initial users, market-making capital, collateral, branding, and liquidity, which are important cold-start advantages for entering the RWA market.

It is recommended to set up weekly monitoring to continuously track HIP-3's RWA trading volume, open interest, fee income, trade[XYZ] concentration, and USDC collateral balances.

Hyperliquid's RWA Landscape: Which Stocks, Indices, and Commodities are Being Traded on HIP-3

As of real-time data around July 24, 2026, there are about 115 HIP-3 markets on Hyperliquid, involving four deployers. RWA trading volume is almost entirely concentrated in XYZ, with the current structure roughly being: individual stocks 63%, commodities 19%, indices 17%, and other categories about 0.4%. (OAK Research)

I. Individual Stocks and Stock ETFs

This is currently the largest and fastest-growing category.

Semiconductors and AI Supply Chain

NVDA, AMD, MU, INTC, SNDK, MRVL, TSM, ASML, AVGO, QCOM, WDC, SKHX, SMSN, KIOXIA, DRAM, SMH, LITE.

Among these, SK Hynix SKHX, Micron MU, DRAM index, and SanDisk SNDK have recently shown very prominent trading volumes, indicating that the growth of individual stocks on HIP-3 is largely driven by AI, storage, and semiconductor trends. (OAK Research)

Large Tech and Software

AAPL, MSFT, GOOGL, AMZN, META, ORCL, NFLX, PLTR, NOW, IBM, ARM.

Crypto Finance and High-Volatility Stocks

CRCL, COIN, HOOD, MSTR, STRC.

These assets have a highly overlapping user base with the crypto market, making them naturally suitable for round-the-clock trading using USDC as collateral. (OAK Research)

New energy, space, AI infrastructure, and other popular stocks

TSLA, RIVN, RKLB, SPCX, CRWV, NBIS, CBRS, BOT, HIMS, LLY, GME, DKNG, DELL, BX, BABA, SOFTBANK, etc. (OAK Research)

Asian Stocks and Country ETFs

SKHX, SK Hynix SMSN, Samsung Electronics HYUNDAI, Hyundai Motor TSM, TSMC ADR BABA, Alibaba EWY, Korea Stock ETF EWJ, Japan Stock ETF EWT, Taiwan Stock ETF.

trade[XYZ] will convert the Korean stock prices in KRW to USD prices using the USD/KRW exchange rate, and then use USDC for margin and profit and loss settlement. (Trade Docs)

II. Stock Indices

Mainly includes:

XYZ100, a large non-financial tech growth stock index similar to the Nasdaq 100.
SP500, S&P 500 index.
KR200, Korea KOSPI 200 index.
JP225, Nikkei 225 index.
Some third-party deployers also offer similar products like USA500.

XYZ100 and SP500 are currently among the largest markets by trading volume on HIP-3. (OAK Research)

III. Commodities

HIP-3 has formed a relatively complete macro commodity product line:

Energy

CL, WTI Crude Oil BRENTOIL, Brent Crude Oil NATGAS, Henry Hub Natural Gas.

Precious Metals

GOLD, Gold SILVER, Silver PLATINUM, Platinum PALLADIUM, Palladium.

Industrial Metals

COPPER, Copper.

Currently, one of the highest trading volume markets on HIP-3 is WTI crude oil, with Brent crude oil, silver, and gold also having significant volumes. Commodities can continue to be traded on HIP-3 during traditional futures market closures, allowing for price discovery during weekend geopolitical and macro events. (OAK Research)

IV. Foreign Exchange

Currently mainly includes:

EUR, EUR/USD JPY, USD/JPY GBP, GBP/USD.

The maximum leverage can reach about 50 times, with normal external price coverage time closely resembling the traditional foreign exchange market's 24 hours, five days a week. (Trade Docs)

V. Industry and Thematic ETFs

In addition to country ETFs, HIP-3 has also launched some industry and thematic ETFs:

URNM, Uranium Mining and Nuclear Energy Industry ETF SMH, Semiconductor ETF XLE, U.S. Energy Sector ETF EWY, Korea ETF EWJ, Japan ETF EWT, Taiwan ETF.

These products are sometimes classified under "Stocks" in statistical classifications, so the 61% stock trading volume in the chart may strictly include some ETFs and stock-like products. (OAK Research)

VI. Pre-IPO and Special Assets

HIP-3 can also launch valuation contracts for unlisted companies.

Currently, relevant examples in trade[XYZ] documents include:

QNT, Quantinuum pre-IPO contract.

Historically, contracts for private companies like OpenAI, Anthropic, SpaceX, and Cursor have also appeared. However, Ventuals has ceased operations, and its original HIP-3 market arrangements were settled and stopped trading before June 19, 2026, so OpenAI and Anthropic can no longer be considered part of the current active market. (Trade Docs)

After completing an IPO, companies like SpaceX can be converted or reclassified as ordinary stock perpetual contracts.

VII. Current Assets Contributing Major Trading Volume

From recent 24-hour rankings, major RWA with significant HIP-3 trading volumes include:

WTI Crude Oil CL.
SK Hynix SKHX.
Nasdaq 100-like index XYZ100.
Brent Crude Oil BRENTOIL.
Micron MU.
S&P 500 SP500.
DRAM Storage Index.
SpaceX SPCX.
Silver SILVER.
SanDisk SNDK.

Thus, the current core of RWA growth on HIP-3 can be summarized as:

AI semiconductor stocks, U.S. stock indices, energy commodities, and precious metals. (OAK Research)

It is important to note that all of the above are synthetic perpetual contracts. Traders gain price exposure to the corresponding assets without holding real stocks, ETFs, or commodities, and do not have rights to dividends, voting, or legal ownership. Trading typically uses USDC as collateral, tracking external asset prices through oracles, funding rates, and market-making mechanisms. (OAK Research)
I can track the new assets, individual stock trading volume rankings, and changes in RWA fee income on HIP-3 weekly.

Join ChainCatcher Official

Telegram Feed: @chaincatcher

X (Twitter): @ChainCatcher_