Hyperliquid has rolled out its biggest update yet, HIP-3 growth mode, offering massive fee cuts and fresh opportunities for market creation.
Key Takeaways
- HIP-3 slashes taker fees by over 90 percent, with new rates as low as 0.0045 percent, incentivizing new markets and liquidity.
- Deployers can permissionlessly launch new markets with flexible fee settings and without needing centralized approval.
- Staking 500,000 HYPE tokens is required to activate HIP-3, aligning deployer interests with platform growth.
- Excluded assets include crypto perpetuals and indexes, focusing HIP-3 on novel and underrepresented trading markets.
What Happened?
Decentralized derivatives exchange Hyperliquid has launched HIP-3, a major upgrade designed to boost liquidity and attract new market creators by offering ultra-low trading fees. This new “growth mode” allows deployers to roll out markets without needing centralized permission, paving the way for more innovation across diverse asset classes.
Hyperliquid announces HIP-3 Growth Mode, which allows deployers to activate a 90% fee reduction if they wish to accelerate adoption. This cannot be done on cryptocurrencies or, for example, $GOLD, as Hyperliquid has already released $PAXG. pic.twitter.com/aBOR0GhbTQ
— Hyperliquid News (@HyperliquidNews) November 19, 2025
HIP-3 Growth Mode Lowers Entry Barriers for Market Deployers
With the HIP-3 upgrade, taker fees for newly launched markets drop from 0.045 percent to just 0.0045 percent, making trading significantly cheaper. Those who qualify under the top staking and volume tiers can see fees dip even lower to between 0.00144 percent and 0.00288 percent, a dramatic shift aimed at beating centralized competitors on cost.
Key details of the HIP-3 fee structure:
- All-in taker fees: 0.0045 percent to 0.009 percent for new growth mode markets.
- Further discounts possible through staking and high-volume activity.
- Deployers must set their own fee scale between 0 and 1, representing the share of user fees they retain.
To activate growth mode for an asset, deployers must stake 500,000 HYPE tokens, currently valued around $20 million. This stake can be slashed by validators in cases of misconduct, providing an extra layer of security and accountability.
Strict Market Criteria to Avoid Overlap
Hyperliquid wants to ensure that HIP-3 supports new and unique market types. The platform has explicitly barred markets that replicate existing validator-operated assets or mimic closely related products. This includes:
- Crypto perpetuals.
- Crypto indexes.
- ETFs.
- Assets like the PAXG-USDC gold perpetual.
Once HIP-3 is turned on for a market, the settings are locked in for 30 days, ensuring stability and consistency for traders and market makers.
Real-World Assets and Market Expansion
The HIP-3 rollout isn’t just a technical upgrade. It’s a strategic move to expand into off-chain asset classes like equities, commodities, and foreign exchange. Recent HIP-3 deployments include:
- XYZ100: A market tracking the top 100 U.S. non-financial companies, generating over $1.3 billion in volume.
- Tesla perpetual contract: An equity-based derivative showing the platform’s expanding capabilities.
The update strengthens Hyperliquid’s push to become the infrastructure backbone for on-chain finance, taking on centralized giants like Binance and Bybit.
Despite the excitement, the platform’s native token HYPE dipped 6 percent, currently trading below $39, possibly reflecting broader market conditions rather than negative sentiment toward HIP-3 itself.
CoinLaw’s Takeaway
In my experience covering decentralized exchanges, this kind of dramatic fee reduction is rare and can genuinely shift market behavior. HIP-3 is not just a cost-cutting tool; it’s a growth engine aimed at solving DeFi’s liquidity bootstrapping problem. I found the no-permission market creation especially powerful. It shows Hyperliquid isn’t just tweaking the margins; it’s reimagining how markets launch and scale. If it gains traction, this could be one of the most influential upgrades in on-chain derivatives this year.
