Outcome became the first permissionless HIP-4 Builder to deploy on the Hyperliquid mainnet on Aug. 29, marking the first live step in Hyperliquid’s effort to open its prediction-market stack to third-party teams. To secure that slot, the team staked 500,000 HYPE as a bond, worth about $42 million at the time.
The launch gives Hyperliquid a new route into prediction markets. Rather than trying to catch up with established platforms such as Kalshi and Polymarket by listing markets on its own, it is opening its trading, order book, margin and settlement infrastructure to outside builders, leaving product design, market creation and user acquisition to ecosystem teams.
What HIP-4 changes on Hyperliquid
HIP-4 is Hyperliquid’s framework for outcome markets, allowing users to trade around the result of a future event.
In a simple binary market, users trade whether an event will happen. If the final outcome is yes, the contract settles at 1. If the outcome is no, it settles at 0. Hyperliquid’s first mainnet markets under this structure were intraday binary contracts tied to BTC prices, letting traders take positions on whether BTC would be above a specified level at a given time.
The design means HIP-4 can support prediction markets, binary options and similar products. One major difference from platforms such as Polymarket is structural: HIP-4 is not built as a standalone prediction-market venue. It sits directly on top of Hyperliquid’s HyperCore trading infrastructure and shares the same underlying trading and settlement rails used by spot and perpetual products.
The key shift in the next phase is permissionless deployment. Validators will no longer need to review every single event market one by one. Instead, they approve standardized templates first, and third-party builders can then launch specific markets within those templates while sharing fee revenue with Hyperliquid.
That access comes with a sizable requirement. Builders must stake 500,000 HYPE, the same threshold used in HIP-3, lock it for six months, and take responsibility for normal market operations and settlement.
Put plainly, Hyperliquid is not only trying to become another Polymarket. It is trying to provide the base trading infrastructure for prediction markets and let multiple teams compete on top of the same rails.
Outcome takes the early lead
Among the projects now in public view, Outcome is the furthest along.
The team had already said in May that it had raised 500,000 HYPE on its own. After permissionless HIP-4 deployment opened, Outcome quickly announced that it had become the first team to launch markets on mainnet. According to the team, that 500,000 HYPE stake serves as collateral backing the integrity of its markets with more than $42 million in economic security.
Its current product plan spans crypto, stocks, indexes, commodities and sports. Outcome has listed 28 prediction events so far, recorded cumulative trading volume of $1.16 million within two days of launch, and introduced a trading rewards program worth more than $1 million to help attract early liquidity.
Its advantage is obvious: Outcome is already operating, not just talking about plans.
Still, being first does not guarantee the largest share of the market. The hard part in prediction markets is not simply deployment. Projects need to keep listing events people actually want to trade, while solving for liquidity, user acquisition and market distribution. Outcome now has to show whether that first-mover status can turn into durable scale.
Skew becomes the second live builder
Skew has also moved onto mainnet. On the morning referenced in the source report, it completed deployment of its first event contract on Hyperliquid, making it the next HIP-4 Builder to go live after Outcome.
Its clearest edge is its partnership with Nasdaq-listed Hyperion DeFi, which will provide the 500,000 HYPE needed to meet the staking threshold.
That relationship was aimed elsewhere only a month earlier. In July, Hyperion DeFi and Skew had been working around HIP-3 with a plan to build perpetual markets for institutional clients. By August, the direction had shifted to HIP-4.
Skew also disclosed on social media that it had opened registration for test access earlier. As of Aug. 6, more than 40,000 independent users had applied for a private beta slot.
Those applications do not automatically translate into active users once the product is fully live. Conversion remains an open question. Even so, the number suggests Skew had already built a pool of potential demand before launch.
Unit Labs and trade.xyz are under watch
trade.xyz is the most unusual name in this contest.
The article’s framing asks who will become the new trade.xyz in HIP-4. At the same time, Unit Labs, the team behind trade.xyz, is itself being viewed by the market as a possible HIP-4 entrant.
Community tracking pointed to recent on-chain moves involving HYPE. Unit Labs was seen increasing its HYPE position and then reshuffling staked tokens in blocks of 500,000, a figure that stands out because of HIP-4’s staking rules.
- The address that deployed trade.xyz under HIP-3 withdrew 500,000 HYPE from the Infinitefield validator node and restaked it to the Hyperliquid Strategies × Unit validator node.
- The same address later unstaked another 500,000 HYPE, bringing the total involved to exactly 1 million HYPE. Those tokens are due to arrive on Sept. 5.
Launching HIP-4 requires 500,000 HYPE, and builders that have already deployed HIP-3 need another 500,000 HYPE. Based on those movements, the report said Unit Labs is very likely targeting HIP-4. It is not yet clear whether the new product would keep the trade.xyz name, though the report said unit.xyz appears more likely.
trade.xyz is already one of the clearest success stories from the HIP-3 model. Unit Labs has shown that it can turn Hyperliquid’s underlying infrastructure into a trading product with real usage.
If HIP-4 follows the same playbook that worked in HIP-3, Unit Labs enters with experience and an existing user base. trade.xyz already operates in stocks, indexes and commodities, and those lines could pair naturally with event markets tied to earnings, price breakouts or macro developments.
For now, though, Unit Labs’ specific HIP-4 product plan and deployment timetable remain unknown. Compared with Outcome and Skew, which are already live, its strongest advantage is that it has already won once. Whether it commits fully to this new arena may decide how far it goes.
The contest is only beginning
With Outcome live, Skew now deployed, and trade.xyz or Unit Labs possibly preparing to enter, the first group of HIP-4 builders is starting to take shape. The field is still in its opening stage.
The two live projects are just getting started, and their market count, volume and user scale remain limited. Unit Labs has not even revealed a concrete product form yet. It is too early to say who will come out ahead, and there is no settled answer on whether HIP-4 can repeat HIP-3’s success.
That early stage also means room remains wide open. Prediction markets cover a large surface area. Financial assets, macro data, sports and breaking news can all, in theory, become tradable events as long as the outcome is clear. Hyperliquid supplies the shared trading and settlement layer. Builders still need to compete on market design, user acquisition and liquidity formation.
That is the central problem ahead. Opening deployment is not the same thing as making a market work. A prediction venue still depends on enough traders showing up and on buyers and sellers providing liquidity over time. More markets can also mean thinner liquidity across the board. Every builder will have to deal with that tradeoff between launching new markets quickly and concentrating limited liquidity where it matters most.
HIP-3 has already shown that Hyperliquid’s permissionless model can produce a project like trade.xyz. HIP-4 has only just opened, and there is no answer yet on who will become its prediction-market equivalent. What is clear is that as more builders join, Hyperliquid is reaching beyond perpetuals and pushing toward a broader market built around trading almost anything.