Jeff just went on stage at DAS 2026 and touched on onchain options multiple times. I listened back to this talk, as I’m obviously very bullish onchain options with my biggest exposure being Derive.
My take has been that Hyperliquid will not attack options themselves and instead will wait on a builder / deployer to be successful, because they would either have to:
- hire aggressively
- make an acquisition
This talk pretty much confirms my take. Building out options isn’t an easy feat, and their team remains very lean.
Jeff points to HIP-4 and names options as the next big opportunity here. During the talk, he appealed to deployers multiple times to build on top of their infra and grab this market.
There are lots of synergies here, as an options deployer gets access to HL’s orderbooks making it easy for both traders and MMs to utilize and hedge against perp and spot positions. That’s the real value unlock.
So we’ll likely see the same thing as has unfolded with Trade.xyz and RWA perps: a cracked team builds out the options product on HIP-4 / connected to core writer, and distro + volume come from HL’s frontend.
Only a few teams to watch in this HL niche so far, namely Hypercall. The question is how long it will take for such a deployer on HL to succeed. But until major developments unfold, teams already competing in this space like Derive and Paradex continue to lead the race, enjoying a first mover advantage.
To close, I don’t think the chances are zero that Hyperliquid will build onchain options themselves. I just believe they will wait until this sector actually grows in volume and see if a deployer can build the product for them. Once the sector is bigger and either no deployer has cooked a good options product or the incentives make a ton of sense for HL to build it, it’s certainly possible they will go for it themselves.
🇸🇬 DAS: Hyperliquid founder @chameleon_jeff says at @blockworksDAS that options are the obvious next piece for the platform, so traders can hedge them against spot and perps on the same order books. pic.twitter.com/tZRVJ7EGzu
— Unknown (@unknown)