On February 13, Hyperliquid announced that the cross margin feature for HIP-3 permissionless perpetual markets has been enabled on testnet, though not yet on mainnet. The feature now qualifies for mainnet-level bug bounty rewards, signaling final preparations for deployment.
Launched in October 2025, HIP-3 allows anyone to deploy their own perpetual market by staking 500,000 HYPE tokens. Cumulative trading volume on HIP-3 has surpassed $10 billion since inception.
According to official notes, a HIP-3 deployer must first enable cross margin for a given asset before users can trade it with cross margin.
Protected Cross Margin design
The standout element is the Protected Cross Margin mechanism. Under a unified account, all cross margin perpetuals using the same collateral asset share margin even across multiple DEXs, eliminating the need to deposit separately for each DEX and boosting capital efficiency.
Shared margin typically raises concerns about risk contagion — could a violent swing on one DEX drag down other positions? Hyperliquid says no: assets from different DEXs are protected up to their maintenance margin level to avoid automatic deleveraging (ADL) triggered by severe price moves elsewhere. Whether this holds in practice remains to be seen.
Not for DEX abstraction
Hyperliquid also stressed that cross margin is not designed for DEX Abstraction interfaces; those interfaces should not allow cross margin trades. Users should access HIP-3 cross margin via Unified Account or Portfolio Margin to get the intended behavior.