HIP-4 Battle Heats Up: Who Will Become the Next trade.xyz?

Original: Odaily Planet Daily (@OdailyChina)

Author: Azuma (@azuma_eth)

On August 29, Outcome, the prediction market project within the Hyperliquid ecosystem, officially announced that it has completed deployment on the Hyperliquid mainnet as the first permissionless HIP-4 Builder project — to secure this entry ticket, the Outcome team staked 500,000 HYPE as collateral, valued at approximately $42 million at the time.

The launch of Outcome marks the official commencement of HIP-4 permissionless deployment on Hyperliquid, and signals that the expansion into the prediction market sector has officially entered the Builder era.

Given that leading platforms such as Kalshi and Polymarket have already captured significant user bases and market mindshare, it would be difficult for Hyperliquid to catch up simply by creating a few markets on its own. Instead, its chosen path is to open up its core strengths — on-chain trading, order books, margin, and settlement infrastructure — while delegating user acquisition, product operations, and market creation to third-party teams within the ecosystem.

This is the same path HIP-3 once took. Today, custom markets created by third-party Builders have become an integral part of the Hyperliquid ecosystem, with trade.xyz standing out as one of the most representative success stories.

Now, the same question faces HIP-4 — as Hyperliquid opens up the prediction market stage to third-party players, who will be the first to find users, establish liquidity, and ultimately become the prediction market version of trade.xyz?

Beyond Outcome, which has already taken the lead, teams such as Unit, Skew, and trade.xyz have also expressed interest or begun laying groundwork for HIP-4. A battle over Hyperliquid prediction market entry points, liquidity, and users has now begun.

What is HIP-4? (Skip if familiar)

In simple terms, HIP-4 is Hyperliquid's "Outcome Markets" mechanism, allowing users to trade on the outcome of future events.

Taking the simplest binary market as an example, users can trade on "whether a certain event will happen or not." If the final outcome is "yes," the contract settles at 1; if "no," it settles at 0 — the first batch of markets launched on the Hyperliquid mainnet were intraday binary contracts related to BTC prices, where users could trade on whether BTC would be above a specified price at a given time.

From a product perspective, HIP-4 can naturally support a wide range of trading scenarios, including prediction markets and binary options. However, one of the key differences from platforms like Polymarket is that HIP-4 does not attempt to build a standalone prediction market; rather, it is built directly on Hyperliquid's HyperCore trading infrastructure, sharing the underlying trading and settlement systems with existing spot and perpetual contracts.

Permissionless deployment is the most critical change in the next phase of HIP-4. Going forward, validators will no longer need to review each individual event market; instead, they will first approve standardized templates, and third-party Builders can create specific markets within these templates while sharing fee revenue with Hyperliquid. As the cost of obtaining this permission, deployers need to stake 500,000 HYPE (same as HIP-3), with a 6-month lock-up period, and bear corresponding responsibility for the normal operation and settlement of the markets.

In other words, Hyperliquid's goal is not simply to become the next Polymarket itself, but rather to build out the underlying trading infrastructure for prediction markets and let different teams compete on top of the same foundation.

HIP-3 has already proven that this model can nurture a Trade.xyz. Now it's HIP-4's turn, and new Builders are already entering the arena.

• Note from Odaily: See HIP-4 Opens Permissionless Deployment — Can Hyperliquid Kill Polymarket?

Outcome: Striking First

As the first market to complete deployment, Outcome is clearly the furthest along among HIP-4 ecosystem players.

As early as May this year, Outcome publicly stated that it had self-raised 500,000 HYPE; and following the opening of HIP-4 permissionless deployment, it quickly announced becoming the first team to deploy markets on the mainnet. According to Outcome's team, the 500,000 HYPE staked as collateral provides over $42 million in economic backing for its market integrity.

In terms of product direction, Outcome's current roadmap covers cryptocurrencies, stocks, indices, commodities, and sports events. It has already launched 28 prediction events, with cumulative trading volume reaching $1.16 million within 2 days of launch. To capture early liquidity, Outcome has also initiated a trading rewards program totaling over $1 million.

In summary, Outcome's greatest advantage is its first-mover position — it no longer needs to explain to the market "what it plans to do," but has already entered the actual operational phase.

However, being "first" does not necessarily mean becoming the biggest. The real challenge of prediction markets is not just deploying contracts, but continuously creating markets with trading value, while solving liquidity, user acquisition, and market distribution issues. What Outcome needs to prove next is whether it can convert its "early bird" label into true scale advantages.

Skew: The Second Project to Launch

Following Outcome, another HIP-4 Builder project, Skew, has also completed deployment of its first event contract on the Hyperliquid mainnet this morning.

Skew's biggest advantage is its partnership with Nasdaq-listed Hyperion DeFi, which will provide 500,000 HYPE to meet the staking requirement. Notably, in July, Hyperion DeFi and Skew's collaboration direction was still focused on HIP-3, building perpetual contract markets for institutional clients, but it quickly pivoted to HIP-4 in August.

According to Skew's disclosure on official social media, the project had previously opened testnet qualification registration. As of August 6, over 40,000 unique users had registered to apply for Skew's private test access.

While these 40,000 test registrants may not fully represent eventual active users, and the true conversion rate remains to be seen, it at least indicates that Skew has accumulated a certain level of potential demand before its official product launch.

trade.xyz: The Reigning Champion Enters the Fray

trade.xyz is the most unique presence in this competition. The question posed in this article is "who will become the next trade.xyz," but interestingly, Unit Labs — the development team behind trade.xyz — has also been viewed by the market as a potential HIP-4 participant.

Community monitoring has found that Unit Labs recently significantly increased its HYPE holdings, and subsequently adjusted its HYPE staking structure in "500,000" integer increments:

• First, the address that deployed trade.xyz HIP-3 withdrew 500,000 HYPE from the Infinitefield validator node and staked it to the Hyperliquid Strategies × Unit validator node.
• Subsequently, the same address unstaked an additional 500,000 HYPE (totaling exactly 1 million HYPE), with these tokens scheduled to arrive by September 5.

Since launching a HIP-4 requires staking 500,000 HYPE, and if a deployer has previously deployed HIP-3, an additional 500,000 HYPE is required. Based on the above on-chain movements, Unit Labs is highly likely targeting HIP-4, though it remains uncertain whether the new HIP-4 will continue using the trade.xyz name (unit.xyz is more likely).

trade.xyz itself is one of the most successful cases of the HIP-3 model. Unit Labs has already proven it can turn Hyperliquid's underlying infrastructure into a trading product that people actually use.

If HIP-4 replicates the success model of HIP-3, then trade.xyz and Unit Labs clearly possess the most mature experience and user base. trade.xyz's existing stock, index, and commodity trading businesses can also naturally synergize with related event markets — while traders trade a given asset, they may also want to trade outcome markets around earnings reports, price breakouts, or macroeconomic events.

However, as of now, further attention is needed on Unit Labs' specific product plans and deployment progress for HIP-4. Compared to Outcome and Skew, which have already launched, their biggest advantage is having "already won once," but whether they will fully commit to this new competition remains key to determining if they can emerge victorious.

The Battle Has Just Begun

From Outcome to Skew, and to the suspected trade.xyz (Unit Labs) preparing to enter, the first batch of HIP-4 Builders has begun to emerge. But at present, this competition is still in its very early stages.

The two projects that have completed deployment are just getting started, with market counts, trading volumes, and user scales still quite limited; and trade.xyz's (Unit Labs') specific product form has yet to be revealed. It is clearly too early to judge who will ultimately win, and whether HIP-4 can replicate HIP-3's success story remains an open question.

But precisely because it is still early, the space HIP-4 leaves for Builders remains vast. Prediction markets themselves constitute a sufficiently large sector — from financial assets and macroeconomic data to sports events and breaking news, theoretically almost any event with a clear outcome can become a trading market. Hyperliquid provides the unified trading and settlement infrastructure, while Builders truly compete on how to design markets, acquire users, and solve liquidity.

This is also HIP-4's biggest challenge going forward. Open deployment itself does not equal success. Whether a prediction market ultimately takes off still depends on whether enough traders are willing to participate, and whether buyers and sellers can continuously provide liquidity. More markets may also mean further fragmentation of liquidity; finding the balance between "rapidly creating new markets" and "concentrating limited liquidity" will be a challenge all Builders must face.

HIP-3 has already proven that Hyperliquid's permissionless model can indeed produce success stories like trade.xyz. Now, as the HIP-4 track has just opened, who will become the prediction market version of trade.xyz? There is no answer yet — but what is certain is that as more and more Builders enter, Hyperliquid's target this time extends beyond just the perpetual contract market, into the broader "trade everything" market.