S&P 500 options are the hottest bet on this Hyperliquid exchange

Trading around the clock is the draw. "Hyperliquid has become the best venue for trading these markets outside exchange hours," Sylvestre said.

Hypercall’s exchange's market makers, the firms that quote prices, "hedge on Hyperliquid's perpetual futures, including on weekends when the cash equity market is closed," Sylvestre said. Earnings, economic data and company news can move an underlying asset while its home exchange is closed, and makers "have to price those events around the clock."

Hypercall isn't pitching itself as a replacement for Deribit, the Coinbase Global COIN-owned biggest crypto options venue, which mostly lists bitcoin BTC$83,212.45 and ether ETH$2,504.79 options.

"Most of our traders aren't leaving Deribit; they're trading markets Deribit doesn't list," Sylvestre said.

Two market makers are active and three more are being onboarded.

"We haven't named them publicly yet and expect to over the next few weeks," Sylvestre said. "User collateral is held on-chain," it said, but "order matching is off-chain only." Parts of margining and liquidation also run off-chain.

Individual stocks

Index options aren't the only draw. Options on SpaceX SPCX, Nvidia NVDA, Micron Technology (MU) and SanDisk (SNDK) make up more than half of all trades, followed by Apple AAPL, Microsoft MSFT, Meta META, Alibaba (BABA), ether and bitcoin.