Hyperliquid Bets Big on Prediction Markets With Permissionless HIP-4 Push

Hyperliquid announced on July 19 that its outcome markets product, HIP-4, will transition to permissionless deployment in a future network upgrade, starting with testnet before mainnet. The move aims to expand the range of tradeable binary outcomes, currently limited to validator-published markets such as recurring bitcoin price events.

HIP-4 allows traders to bet on binary outcomes of real-world events, with prices between 0 and 1 reflecting probability. Contracts settle in stablecoins and share collateral with Hyperliquid’s perpetuals, so users need not make separate deposits for event bets.

Permissionless access means anyone meeting the requirements can launch markets. Validators maintain quality through a template system, where each template defines settlement criteria for a market category and lives onchain. Templates will be constrained by validator vote to ensure health and clarity. Validators can still deploy canonical markets directly, but Hyperliquid expects fewer than 10 per year.

Deployers must stake 500,000 HYPE, locked for six months. Validators can slash the stake if a market is poorly defined, settled incorrectly, or left unsettled for over a week. To unstake, a deployer must settle all launched markets. Each deployer starts with an allocation of 100 outcomes (200 outcome tokens), and settling frees slots. A future feature may allow bidding for larger allocations via auction.

Deployers can set a fee share of up to 50%, though detailed fee configuration tools are not live yet. Only AQAv2 quote tokens qualify for HIP-4 markets under current rules. Hyperliquid described these terms as preliminary and will publish updated documentation for the testnet phase.

Hyperliquid enters a rapidly growing prediction market space. Combined monthly volume on Kalshi and Polymarket reached $44.8 billion in June 2026, per Dune Analytics, with the top ten platforms hitting $49.9 billion. Kalshi, a federally regulated U.S. exchange, did roughly $33 billion of that total, boosted by World Cup contracts. Polymarket posted a record $10.7 billion and has a $600 million investment from ICE, NYSE’s parent. In July so far, the same ten platforms recorded $38.6 billion.

Hyperliquid’s pitch leverages its existing infrastructure: HIP-4 contracts share collateral with perpetuals, enabling effortless cross-product trading. The exchange previously claimed its early bitcoin outcome markets outperformed comparable ones on Polymarket and Kalshi shortly after launch, though no updated volume figures accompanied the July 19 announcement.

The permissionless rollout has no set timeline; only testnet and mainnet phases are confirmed. Currently, traders can access validator-deployed HIP-4 markets. The approach mirrors Hyperliquid’s HIP-3 perpetuals rollout, suggesting permissionless access could eventually expand the range of tradeable events far beyond the current bitcoin binaries.

Source: https://news.bitcoin.com/hyperliquid-bets-big-on-prediction-markets-with-permissionless-hip-4-push/