Ventuals, a crypto trading startup built on Hyperliquid's permissionless HIP-3 infrastructure, said it is shutting down after less than a year of operation despite processing more than $650 million in trading volume.
In an X post on Monday morning, June 15, the team said it had decided to "wind down Ventuals and join another team building in the Hyperliquid ecosystem," adding that more details would be shared later.
- The project let users trade perpetual contracts tied to private companies such as OpenAI and Anthropic, alongside thematic indexes and commodity markets.
- It pitched the product as a way to give retail traders exposure to private technology companies without accredited investor requirements, lockups or paperwork.
The team said users collectively deposited more than 500,000 HYPE into its vHYPE product while trading surpassed $650 million.
That made Ventuals one of the biggest experiments to emerge from Hyperliquid's HIP-3 framework, which allows third parties to launch their own perpetual markets by posting a 500,000 HYPE bond.
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- The model has helped Hyperliquid expand beyond crypto into markets tied to stocks, commodities and private companies.
Ventuals said all markets will now be settled and halted. OpenAI and Anthropic contracts will be resolved using their respective 24-hour time-weighted average mark prices, while commodity and index products will settle later this week using the latest external reference prices.
Users who deposited HYPE through vHYPE will be able to withdraw their tokens on a one-to-one basis plus accrued staking rewards.
The team also said there will be no Ventuals token, with its points and referral programs ending immediately.
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