Messari Researcher: Using PERP DEX to Trade US Stocks, the Next New Blue Ocean

Author: Sam

Compiled by: Deep Tide TechFlow

Key Insights

• Perpetual stock contracts remain a high-potential but unproven area, with limited on-chain marketplace appeal mainly due to audience misalignment, weak demand, and more popular alternatives (such as 0 DTE options).
• For example, the Ostium platform’s daily average trading volume of stock perpetual contracts is only $1.8 million, while cryptocurrency perpetual contracts reach $44.3 million, indicating weak market demand.
• This may suggest that due to infrastructure and regulatory restrictions, market demand has not yet been fully unlocked. Hyperliquid’s recent HIP-3 upgrade offers the best opportunity for stock perpetual contracts, but adoption is expected to be gradual.

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Source: Messari ( @0xCryptoSam)

Stock perpetual contracts are considered an inevitable next blue ocean in the on-chain marketplace, but current data shows that breakthrough in this area is still challenging in the short term. Ostium, a decentralized exchange focused on real-world assets (RWAs) for perpetual contracts, has a daily average trading volume of only $1.8 million for stock perpetual contracts, compared to $44.3 million for cryptocurrency perpetual contracts, reflecting weak demand.

This adoption gap mainly stems from audience misalignment. On-chain traders show little interest in stocks, while off-chain platforms (like Robinhood) make it easy to trade stocks and options but cannot trade perpetual contracts. International investors could be a potential target group since they cannot directly access the US stock market. However, these investors might prefer directly holding stocks to gain shareholder rights while avoiding funding fees and liquidation risks.

Compared to tokens, stocks face fewer interoperability challenges, while tokens benefit from the convenience of synthetic wrapping. For ordinary investors, nearly every stock in the global market has been abstracted through individual stock codes in search bars. Therefore, although perpetual contracts add permissionless and censorship-resistant features to stocks, most retail stock investors are either unaware or uninterested.

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The most likely users of stock perpetual contracts are retail options traders (who drive 50%-60% of 0 DTE trades on Robinhood). However, traditional exchanges relying on banking services will only adopt stock perpetual contracts when legal clarity is established. The US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has approved perpetual contracts for BTC and ETH, but both are classified as non-securities. While perpetual contracts are more intuitive than options, their adoption by retail traders is closely tied to legal clarity, which may slow down the proliferation of stock perpetual contracts more than expected.

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Source: @Kaleb@0x

Let’s explore the potential development paths for stock perpetual contracts in the context of Hyperliquid’s HIP-3 upgrade. HIP-3 introduces a permissionless perpetual contract marketplace, and data shows that fewer than 10% of Hyperliquid addresses have bridged to Aster, Lighter, and edgeX, with even fewer users holding multiple perpetual contract DEXs. This indicates that Hyperliquid’s funds are sticky and of high quality. Based on this data, two outlooks for the future of stock perpetual contracts can be forecasted:

1. Hyperliquid users are loyal to the platform; regardless of asset listings or features, they prefer Hyperliquid over other perpetual contract DEXs.
2. Hyperliquid users are satisfied with the current perpetual contract market offerings.

Both perspectives seem valid. Considering that Hyperliquid users have not significantly transferred funds when incentivized, they may be loyal to Hyperliquid. However, since most trading volume and open interest on Hyperliquid are concentrated in mainstream assets, similar to other perpetual contract DEXs, it remains unclear whether Hyperliquid users care about market diversity, and whether stock perpetual contracts are attractive to ordinary users—especially large investors holding 70% of open contracts on Hyperliquid.

Additionally, these traders might hold accounts on traditional exchanges and broker platforms, further limiting the potential market size for stock perpetual contracts on Hyperliquid.

It’s important to note that stock perpetual contracts may not generate new open contracts or trading volume for Hyperliquid but could divert existing trading flows.

Although Ostium (with an average annual perpetual contract trading volume of $22 billion) and stock token wrapping tools (such as xStocks, with spot trading volume of $279 million) have yet to see explosive growth, this likely reflects infrastructure limitations rather than a lack of demand. This pattern resembles early growth trajectories of perpetual contracts. GMX demonstrated the demand for on-chain perpetual contracts, but infrastructure at the time could not support sustained trading volume. Hyperliquid has addressed this bottleneck, unlocking potential demand. Similarly, once HIP-3 provides the necessary performance and liquidity, stock perpetual contracts may find their first scalable product-market fit on Hyperliquid. While current data cannot confirm this outcome, the precedent is worth noting.

Compared to 0 DTE options, the long-term potential of stock perpetual contracts remains evident. Projects like Trade [XYZ] could leverage regulatory arbitrage to build an early user base before entering traditional exchanges. However, the real challenge lies in attracting off-chain retail traders, which has historically been difficult for crypto applications.