Hyperliquid has announced a big update wherein the platform is letting anyone build prediction markets on its exchange, as long as they stake 500,000 HYPE first. This is the permissionless phase of HIP-4, the outcome markets upgrade that went live on mainnet on May 2. Phase 1 of HIP-4 included a curated set of markets that the team approved one by one. The permissionless phase, where any builder meeting the staking requirement deploys without approval, is the next step. Builders deploy event contracts into the same slot that runs a builder-deployed DEX, and the stake is slashable and burned if validators catch a builder manipulating the oracle or pushing an invalid settlement. For now, Hyperliquid said permissionless outcome markets will begin rolling out in an upgrade on testnet first and then mainnet once its properly battle-tested.
Until now the team decided which outcome markets existed. The first was a daily Bitcoin price binary run by Outcomexyz. With this update, builders can pick the events, run the oracle and keep up to half the trading fees their markets generate. Hyperliquid supplies the matching engine and its existing liquidity.
Onchain Settlement Skips the Oracle Fight
HIP-4 settles onchain against objective sources through Hyperliquid‘s validator set. There is no token vote deciding what happened. Polymarket routes contested resolutions through UMA’s optimistic oracle, where holders vote on disputed outcomes, a design that produced repeated blowups this year, including a roughly $60 million market that resolved against the documented facts. HIP-4 removes that layer. A validator set publishes the result and the contract settles to 0 or 1.
Kalshi sidesteps the dispute problem by being centralized and CFTC-regulated, but that leaves a gatekeeper deciding what gets listed. Kalshis own head of crypto co-authored the HIP-4 proposal.
One margin account for a perp and a bet
The structural edge is where the contracts sit. HIP-4 positions live in the same account as a traders perpetuals and spot holdings, drawing on the same collateral and feeding one unified margin balance. A trader can hold a long ETH perp and buy a downside event contract as a hedge without moving funds between platforms. Standalone prediction sites cannot match that. Polymarket is a betting venue. Kalshi is a betting venue. Hyperliquid is the exchange your other positions already live on.
Liquidity is the second gap. A new market on Polymarket or Kalshi opens into an empty book and has to bootstrap depth from nothing. HIP-4 markets launch on top of Hyperliquids 1.4 million users and the $5 billion to $6 billion in daily perp volume the platform already clears. The order flow is there before the market opens.