Permissionless Prediction Markets Go Live on Hyperliquid

HIP-4 permissionless deployments have hit mainnet, much quicker than I expected.

As of Saturday, anyone with 500K HYPE can now launch their own outcome markets. We previously covered the parameters for permissionless deployments a few weeks back and, since then, not much in terms of rules has changed.

1. Required stake remains the same at 500K HYPE, locked for six months and slashable for poorly defined or incorrectly settled markets.
2. Each deployer may currently have 100 outcomes deployed concurrently while deploying up to 500 new outcomes per day. Once an outcome settles, its slot becomes available again. This is just a launch cap though: Hyperliquid expects to scale this to 1,000 concurrent outcomes and 5,000 daily deployments.
3. Deployers remain responsible for defining and settling markets according to their template’s criteria.
4. For now, HIP-4 markets are effectively denominated in USDC.
5. Only markets fitting into predetermined outcome templates, approved by validators, can go live.
6. Deployers can collect up to 50% of the trading fees generated by their markets.

This last restriction is really the main difference between HIP-4 permissionless deployment and HIP-3.

During HIP-4’s permissioned phase, validators determined and deployed individual markets themselves. Now, validators instead approve reusable market structures, or templates, which deployers can use to launch individual markets without another validator vote.

Moreover, compared to testnet, permissionless deployment currently bears a tighter scope. Seven template records are currently approved on mainnet: binaryPrice, priceTouch, scalarPrice, policyRateDecision, policyRateIncrease, policyRateDecrease, and policyRateNoChange. Functionally, that is fewer than seven distinct market types, since the policy-rate templates work together to create multi-outcome questions.

Allowed markets therefore revolve around finance, spanning price action and policy decisions rather than (as of now) also including the sports markets that catalyzed HIP-4’s growth during the World Cup.

What’s Live Now

There are two current HIP-3 deployers live, the first of which is Outcome. Currently, they support financial markets spanning crypto alongside stocks, indices, commodities, and economic events, including markets tied to BTC, HYPE, the S&P 500, Nasdaq, gold, silver, WTI, and the September Fed decision.

To celebrate launch, they’ve also unveiled a $1M liquidity program, beginning with $50K in USDC rewards per week across eligible markets, though this sadly remains unavailable to U.S. users.

The second live deployer is Skew, who sourced their 500K stake from HYPE DAT Hyperion DeFi and will be splitting fees with them as part of the agreement. Skew’s first announced market is a BTC hourly Up/Down market, though it has since begun rapidly deploying others as well. This already puts it into the same broad price-prediction territory Hyperliquid’s validator-deployed, canonical markets from HIP-4’s permissioned phase.

And overlap here is very much allowed, meaning different builders can offer effectively identical markets alongside one another.

Further, though permissionless deployments are upon us, canonical markets will not be sunset and their offerings could even expand in the future, though this expansion will be limited.

Hyperliquid said validators should ideally deploy fewer than 10 outcomes or questions per year. So, existing canonical markets remain alongside the new permissionless ones, while fees on validator-deployed markets have now been switched on, contributing to HYPE buybacks and burns.

What Comes Next

The most obvious catalyst from here is expanding the template set.

We can imagine sports will come soon given there prominence in driving prediction market volume and that we’re tiptoeing into football and then basketball season (the latter of which cannot come soon enough for me).

Then there’s Trade.xyz. Unit Labs has been moving HYPE in 500K-sized chunks in a way that strongly suggests it’s preparing for HIP-4, but it has not confirmed a deployment.

It’s hard to not see their success with HIP-3 setting them up well for HIP-4 too given they likely have the capital and distribution needed to deploy deep outcome markets from day one. I have a sneaking suspicion their deployment will coincide with a sports template, though this is entirely speculation on my part. Sports were one of HIP-4’s biggest use cases during its validator-deployed phase and would be a worthwhile opportunity for the largest HIP-3 provider to pursue.

Beyond sports, it will be interesting to see if/how quickly we get election markets. As I’ve written, I believe they represent a large opportunity, supported by the fact that Kalshi’s 2026 Midterms Hub has already generated roughly $710M in volume with Election Day still two months away. HIP-4 capturing a portion of this would be a strong win.

HIP-4 Must Get Ready for the Midterms on Bankless

HIP-4 permissionless deployments are live on testnet. Hyperliquid should make sure they get to mainnet by the midterms.

Finally, all of this looks pretty bullish for USDC. More HIP-4 markets mean another place for capital to sit in USDC on Hyperliquid.

Ultimately, permissionless deployment removes HIP-4’s biggest bottleneck: Hyperliquid itself no longer has to decide and deploy virtually every market users might want to trade. Now it’s mostly a question of how quickly validators expand the template set and which deployers are best positioned to capitalize when they do. Football, basketball, and the midterms give us three very obvious chances to find out.