Real-world asset perpetuals accounted for more than half of Hyperliquid’s trading volume for two straight weeks in July, marking the first time contracts tied to stocks, commodities and indexes outpaced crypto markets on the platform.
In the week of July 13 to 19, RWA perps generated $25.1 billion in volume, equal to 52% of Hyperliquid’s $48.2 billion total. Their share remained above 50% in the following week, extending a shift that has become increasingly visible across the exchange’s market mix.
RWA markets move to the center
The milestone highlights how quickly non-crypto markets have grown on Hyperliquid. Lorenzo Valente, director of digital asset research at ARK Invest, described the development as a sign of a new phase for DeFi, saying it was the first time HyperliquidX had produced more weekly volume from RWAs than from crypto.
Within the RWA segment, single-stock contracts were the main driver. They accounted for 61% of RWA volume, surpassing indexes and commodities and helping lift the category above crypto for the first time on the venue.
Single-stock products lead the expansion
Much of that activity is concentrated in HIP-3 markets, Hyperliquid’s framework for builder-deployed perpetuals. The system launched in October 2025 and requires deployers to stake 500,000 HYPE in order to list markets.
HIP-3’s share of Hyperliquid perpetual volume rose from about 2% at the start of 2026 to roughly 50% by mid-July. The dominant deployer is trade.xyz, which accounts for more than 90% of HIP-3 volume and offers markets tied to single names such as Nvidia and Tesla, along with the XYZ100 Nasdaq tracker and commodities including gold. Ventuals also operates pre-IPO perpetuals linked to OpenAI and SpaceX.
Growth in traditional assets masks weaker crypto activity
The rise of these products comes about nine months after Hyperliquid opened permissionless market deployment. According to the source report, that expansion is now being driven more by traditional-asset exposure than by crypto pairs.
The same report says the strength in RWA markets is covering for a contracting crypto perpetuals business. Hyperliquid’s RWA market by itself was larger than the combined crypto perp volume of every other decentralized exchange, even as the platform’s own crypto activity has been losing ground.
Quarterly volumes show the broader shift
Overall trading on Hyperliquid has also cooled from earlier highs. Quarterly volume fell by roughly half from an approximately $1 trillion peak in the third quarter of 2025 to about $550 billion in the second quarter of 2026.
That decline has not been evenly distributed across product types. Growth in RWA-linked contracts has helped support the platform’s topline while trading in crypto pairs has weakened, making the recent two-week stretch a clear indication of where momentum has shifted for now.
Source: thedefiant.io