OpenSea teases perpetual futures launch on Hyperliquid

OpenSea, one of the biggest and most popular NFT marketplaces in the crypto industry, has teased a potential upcoming offering of perpetual contracts trading platformed on the Hyperliquid blockchain’s infrastructure.

This was signaled by OpenSea’s product marketing lead, Zack Brenner, via a post on X on Monday.

OpenSea cooking perps product

Zack posted on X on June 1 teasing the new product and asking his followers about who would love early access to perpetual contracts on the platform. The post drew almost 800 replies and over 1,000 likes.

A follower then asked whether Hyperliquid would power the feature, to which Brenner replied “YES.” However, OpenSea has not published a product page, launch date, list of supported assets, or possible user terms for the planned feature yet.

Why OpenSea is building with Hyperliquid

Hyperliquid has over the past year proven to be a major on-chain platform for derivatives trading and general blockchain features. By integrating Hyperliquid’s infrastructure directly into OpenSea’s framework, the NFT marketplace platform could offer perp trading without an entirely new exchange being built in into the marketplace.

The partnership between these two crypto giants is expected to give the marketplace a relatively smooth introduction into crypto derivatives trading, which is already a market dominated majorly by centralized exchanges and some decentralized protocols.

Hyperliquid will also expect to gain a heavier wave of new volume on its network, as it would be partnering with a global consumer-intensive brand with with a large pool of users and wallets.

Hyperliquid has also drawn a lot of interest from traditional finance in recent months, in addition to its retail offerings in derivatives trading. Grayscale recently updated an ETF filing tied to Hyperliquid under the ticker HYPG with a 0.29% fee, while 21Shares and Bitwise already offer Hyperliquid-based products.

OpenSea’s position in NFTs

NFTs have lost plenty of ground since the 2021 peaks and the NFT boom in 2022, however, OpenSea is still doing $66.52 million in monthly NFT trading volume, a value representing 19.9% of the entire NFT exchanges’ market share. This ranks OpenSea at third on CoinGecko’s latest NFT marketplace rankings, according to data by WuBlockchain.

A perpetual trading product would represent a sharp strategic pivot from strictly NFT trading. OpenSea had delayed its SEA token launch in March due to weak market conditions, with CEO Devin Finzer stating at the time that the team wanted to ensure “every piece is in place” before launching the token.

Adding derivatives and perpetual contracts trading in partnership with Hyperliquid could help the NFT marketplace’s serve existing users who would want to hedge NFT floor prices or take positions on multiple other crypto assets without leaving the platform.

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