Hyperliquid plans to throw open its prediction markets to any developer, ending the validator-gated system that has governed the product since its debut. In a Telegram announcement on Sunday, the decentralized exchange said it would open its HIP-4 “outcome markets” to permissionless deployment in a coming upgrade, arriving on testnet before mainnet.

Today, only Hyperliquid’s validators can list outcome markets. Under the change, developers would be able to spin up their own markets from standardized templates that validators approve and store onchain. “Permissionless deployments are especially important for the growth of outcome markets,” Hyperliquid said, arguing that the “possible universe of tradeable outcomes is vast” and far larger than the set of assets behind conventional perpetuals or spot tokens.

A 500,000 HYPE Ticket

The access carries a steep price. Each deployer must stake 500,000 HYPE, worth roughly $30 million at recent prices near $60, locked for six months, and can lose part or all of it by validator vote if a market is poorly defined, settled incorrectly, or left unsettled for more than a week. In return, deployers can keep up to 50% of the fees on the markets they run and will start with room for 100 outcomes each, with an auction to buy more capacity planned as a follow-up.

Validators will still list a handful of “canonical” markets directly, but Hyperliquid said those should be rare, ideally “fewer than 10 outcomes or questions per year.” It cautioned that the terms remain preliminary and could change with community feedback.

Chasing a Booming Sector

The push deepens Hyperliquid’s move into a market dominated by Polymarket and Kalshi. The exchange launched HIP-4 on mainnet in May, using its own validators rather than an external oracle to settle bets, and drew about $100 million in trading volume in the first month. Interest in prediction markets has surged this year, with heavy wagering on the FIFA World Cup, drawing platforms like Coinbase and Robinhood into the sector.

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