Actual-world belongings (RWAs)—tokenized variations of conventional monetary devices like firm shares, crude oil, and market indices traded as blockchain contracts—accounted for 54% of Hyperliquid’s weekly buying and selling quantity throughout July 13–19, the primary time non-crypto belongings have dominated the alternate.
ARK Make investments’s director of digital belongings analysis Lorenzo Valente mentioned Hyperliquid’s $26 billion in RWA buying and selling final week surpassed the mixed crypto perpetual quantity of each different decentralized alternate on earth.
South Korean chipmaker SK Hynix—a direct rival to Samsung in AI reminiscence manufacturing—drove many of the curiosity on Hyperliquid’s third-party market platform.
For the primary time, merchants on Hyperliquid moved extra money via shares and commodities than via crypto. Lorenzo Valente, director of digital belongings analysis at ARK Make investments, introduced the milestone Thursday on X: “We’re coming into a brand new period for DeFi.” Hyperliquid, he mentioned, had for the primary time generated extra buying and selling quantity from so-called real-world belongings, or RWAs, than from crypto in a single week.
RWAs—that means tokenized variations of conventional monetary devices like firm shares, crude oil, or the S&P 500, transformed into blockchain-based contracts that merchants should buy and promote across the clock—totaled $25.1 billion throughout July 13–19, or 52% of Hyperliquid’s $48.2 billion in weekly quantity, per Blockworks knowledge. Valente put the newest operating determine at $26 billion and 54%.
The context makes that quantity land tougher. Whole perpetual DEX quantity throughout the business final week was $79 billion. Hyperliquid processed $50 billion of it. The $26 billion in RWA buying and selling alone—simply the inventory bets, the oil contracts, the index performs—was bigger than the mixed crypto perpetual quantity of each different decentralized alternate in the marketplace.
How shares ended up on a crypto alternate
The mechanism behind that is HIP-3, a framework Hyperliquid launched in October 2025 that lets outdoors groups construct their very own perpetual markets—contracts that monitor an asset’s value with no expiry date, letting merchants guess on it going up or down with borrowed cash—utilizing Hyperliquid’s present infrastructure. Builders stake 500,000 HYPE tokens, at present value roughly $30 million, to entry the system.
We’re coming into a brand new period for DeFi.
For the primary time ever, @HyperliquidX generated extra quantity from RWAs than crypto in a single week. RWAs accounted for 54% of whole buying and selling quantity.
An much more fascinating pattern: since June, single shares have overtaken indices and… pic.twitter.com/INbfCwc5pJ
— Lorenzo Valente (@LorenzoARK) July 23, 2026
Since June, particular person shares have overtaken indices and commodities inside HIP-3, with single-stock perpetuals now making up 61% of all RWA buying and selling. The HIP-3 platform has already hosted pre-IPO markets for SpaceX, Anthropic, and OpenAI. “RWAs accounted for 54% of whole buying and selling quantity,” Valente famous.
Probably the most-traded inventory is SK Hynix, the South Korean reminiscence chipmaker that competes with Samsung in supplying DRAM and high-bandwidth reminiscence for AI programs.
ARK’s curiosity in Hyperliquid goes again additional. In September 2025, CEO Cathie Wooden advised the Grasp Investor podcast that the platform “jogs my memory of Solana within the earlier days,” including that Solana had confirmed its value and earned its place with the largest names in crypto. She referred to as Hyperliquid “the brand new child on the block,” and ARK has not confirmed any place since.
Now one in all ARK’s personal analysts is elevating a tougher query for the entire business. “I am now not satisfied RWA buying and selling will naturally mixture on the identical venue as crypto,” Valente wrote, predicting that devoted class leaders might emerge inside RWA—and {that a} platform’s grip on Bitcoin and Ethereum move might show “far much less vital than many individuals assume.”
Merchants nonetheless targeted solely on crypto tokens, he added, “are specializing in the incorrect market.”
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