Running a HIP-3 market · Lesson 2 of 5 · 3 min
Settlement currency and the economics
Ten teams have opened a HIP-3 dex. A year in, four are trading, five have shut every market and one never started. Lined up over time, the record shows one clear dividing line and one hard economic fact. Both should shape your plan before you stake anything.
The dividing line: what your dex settles in
Every dex picks a collateral token when it is deployed. Read from each dex's on-chain settings:
| Settles in | Operators | Outcome |
|---|---|---|
| USDC | trade.xyz, EntropyIO, Paragon, Markets by Kinetiq | trading |
| USDH | Felix, Ventuals, Kinetiq Markets | shut down (Kinetiq re-opened on USDC) |
| USDe | HyENA | shut down |
| USDT0 | Dreamcash | shut down |
The shutdowns were mostly not about the markets. When USDH ended and Hyperliquid aligned on USDC, Felix, Kinetiq, Dreamcash and HyENA each named the move to USDC as the reason. It was a change none of them controlled, and it took a working business with it.
The economic fact: almost all the volume goes to one place
- trade.xyz had 81–100% of all HIP-3 volume in every single month.
- Opening a dex takes 500,000 HYPE, worth roughly $32–40M. All operators other than trade.xyz together earned about $747K in fees (Blockworks Research).
- Outside trade.xyz, the 10 largest accounts held 40–72% of each operator's open interest on a typical day (Hydromancer's daily snapshots). A handful of traders leaving can empty a market.
Where newcomers have held ground
- Somewhere trade.xyz is not. The newcomers still trading picked indices (Paragon, Kinetiq) and pre-IPO names (EntropyIO, which is growing).
- Not what Hyperliquid already lists. HyENA did 98% of its volume in coins like BTC that Hyperliquid's own markets already offer.
- The first three months decide a lot. Every operator that left had its busiest weeks in its first three months, and shrank from there.
Dreamcash launched in January 2026 with weekly incentives and a market-making partner, and traded $19.5B in 164 days, more than anyone but trade.xyz. It closed between 30 June and 2 July 2026 to move off USDT0. Volume did not protect it from the settlement change.
All ten operators side by side, with sources: What happened to HIP-3 operators.
- Settle in USDC unless you have a reason that outweighs five shutdowns.
- Name the markets you will list that trade.xyz does not, and who trades them today.
- Write down how many months you can carry the stake if fees stay near today's levels.
- Plan the first three months: which front-ends will show your markets, who quotes them.
Next: the price itself, and how one update moved a market 15.6%.