Hyperliquid was once best known for crypto-native markets, where bitcoin, ether and other major digital assets drove much of the action. Now, RWA trading is forcing the platform into a very different conversation.
The shift is happening through HIP-3, Hyperliquid’s permissionless system for launching perpetual markets. Earlier this summer, markets built through the framework accounted for nearly half of the platform’s perpetual futures volume, compared with roughly 2% at the start of the year.
TradeXYZ’s equity markets are doing much of the work, including contracts tied to the Nasdaq-100 and individual stocks. The result is a platform where exposure to traditional financial assets is becoming a major part of the activity.
The move is not limited to Hyperliquid. Across exchanges, RWA perpetual volumes reached about $470 billion in June, up from $85 billion in January. Binance, Hyperliquid and OKX together handled more than 80% of that volume.
For Dragonfly Capital Managing Partner Haseeb Qureshi, the numbers point to a broader change in what blockchains are being asked to handle.
“Crypto native assets are great, but they’re not the lion’s share of what matters in the world,” Qureshi said in an interview with The Block’s Gareth Jenkinson at the Avalanche Summit in New York.
His argument is that crypto has already demonstrated it can support markets built around blockchain-native assets. The harder test is bringing stocks, bonds and other real-world assets onchain while meeting the requirements of major institutions.
Why RWA Trading Could Make One Blockchain Not Enough
Qureshi expects institutions such as Goldman Sachs and BlackRock to eventually use dedicated blockchain environments with their own compliance and operational controls.
That puts pressure on the idea that one general-purpose blockchain will eventually dominate everything. Qureshi specifically rejected a winner-take-all view of Ethereum, Solana or Avalanche.
His comparison is less about technology than geography. Speaking from New York, he pointed to the city’s enormous financial and cultural network effects while noting that global economic activity cannot fit into one place.
“I think the same thing is true of blockchains,” he said. “They have network effects, like cities, but they’re not infinitely scalable the way that networks like Facebook or Instagram might be.”
That vision gives RWA trading a role beyond simply adding more assets to crypto exchanges. As traditional financial instruments move onchain, different networks could develop around different institutional needs, rules and operating models.
For Hyperliquid, the immediate story is volume. For the broader industry, the more interesting question is whether bringing real-world markets onto blockchains also means accepting a future with many chains rather than one universal home.