HTX Research｜從美股到鏈上：永續合約重塑全球股票交易格局

1. Product Architecture and Evolution Logic of the Tokenized Stock Market

The true paradigm shift in the tokenized stock market occurred between 2023 and 2025, driven by the maturation of three key variables. First, on-chain perpetual contract mechanisms matured—GMX's GLP pool model, dYdX v4's order book architecture, and Hyperliquid's dedicated L1 engine built on Arbitrum Stylus reduced on-chain derivatives latency to milliseconds while offering round-the-clock trading capabilities impossible for traditional centralized exchanges through built-in oracles and liquidation engines. Second, oracle infrastructure saw a leapfrog upgrade—Chainlink Data Streams and Pyth Network enabled Asian stock prices to be uploaded to the chain with sub-second latency, resolving the long-standing bottleneck of price source reliability for tokenized financial products. Third, the regulatory framework began to take shape—the SEC signaled positive intentions from late 2025 to early 2026, preparing to introduce an "Innovation Exemption" to provide a regulatory sandbox path for compliant tokenized products; Coinbase officially launched four CFTC-regulated stock index perpetual contracts (AI10, China10, Defense10, Tech100) on June 8, 2026, marking the official entry of regulated entities into this space.

In terms of product structure, the current market consists of two distinct yet complementary product types. The first is fully collateralized spot tokenization, represented by Ondo Finance, xStocks, and Backed. Ondo Finance holds an absolute leading position with a TVL of $887.8 million, accounting for 60.87% of the total market share, covering 231 stocks; xStocks ranks second with a TVL of $394.2 million, holding a 27.03% share. The core value of these products lies in cross-border investment accessibility and settlement efficiency—investors can hold global stocks without opening local brokerage accounts, and on-chain settlement shortens T+2 to T+0. 

The second type is perpetual contracts, represented by Hyperliquid, Binance, and dYdX. These products do not hold actual stocks; they only use stablecoins as margin to track asset price targets. Their main advantages are 24/7 trading, leverage up to 20x, and the ability to list rapidly without needing to custody the underlying assets. A typical example is Hyperliquid's community, which, after passing the HIP-3 proposal in October 2025, successively launched perpetual contracts for South Korean blue-chip stocks like Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix, triggering a wave of tokenized stock contract launches centered on the Asian market, which Binance quickly followed by listing similar targets.

2. Market Structure Reshaping and Competitive Landscape Driven by Perpetual Contracts

In 2026, the competitive landscape for tokenized stock perpetual contracts presents a clear three-tier structure: the leading layer of on-chain protocols, the catching-up layer of centralized exchanges, and the gradually entering layer of institutions. Hyperliquid, leveraging the ultra-low latency and zero gas fees of its dedicated L1 chain, commands approximately 50% of the trading volume in the perpetual contract market. Its core strategy can be summarized as 'geographic arbitrage'—prioritizing coverage of high-liquidity Asian markets like South Korea and Japan, building liquidity moats during the closure of local exchanges, thereby attracting speculators and hedgers from global time zones. Binance, as the world's largest crypto trading platform, accelerated the expansion of its tokenized stock perpetual contract product line in late 2025, forming a duopoly with Hyperliquid. The average price difference for the same target between the two platforms ranges from 0.93% to 1.03%, and can reach up to 2.3% during extreme market conditions. This not only reflects the insufficient competition among market makers but also creates natural ground for arbitrage trades.

Coinbase, on the other hand, follows a 'compliant alternative' path backed by its CFTC regulatory license, offering the first regulated on-chain stock derivative entry point for US institutional investors. The four index perpetual contracts launched in June 2026 (AI10, China10, Defense10, Tech100) use a centralized clearing model, with every transaction undergoing KYC verification and anti-money laundering checks, starkly contrasting with Hyperliquid's decentralized, permissionless model. dYdX v4, built on the Cosmos SDK as an independent application chain, focuses on institutional-grade order books and cross-chain interoperability. GMX's GLP model provides more flexible listing and liquidity provision mechanisms for smaller targets. Observing the evolution of competitive focus, the market is shifting from 'who lists first' to 'who prices most accurately'—oracle latency, market maker depth, and liquidation mechanisms have become the three pillars determining a platform's competitiveness. Empirical research shows that the correlation coefficient between the price of perpetual contracts and the opening price of the underlying stock the next day is as high as 0.85 to 0.89, with regression coefficients of 0.93 and 1.00 respectively. This indicates that tokenized stock perpetual contracts are no longer merely tools for passively tracking prices but are evolving into an independent information aggregation and price discovery mechanism operating outside traditional exchanges.

3. On-Chain Data Evidence: The Triple Value Creation of Perpetual Contracts

The fundamental reason tokenized stock perpetual contracts have garnered such widespread attention is that they create triple unique value that traditional stock markets cannot provide. The first value is overnight price discovery. Systematic research on perpetual contracts for Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix reveals that the after-hours movement of these two targets systematically leads the next day's opening price. Specifically, if the Samsung Electronics perpetual contract shows an upward trend after the KOSPI closes, the probability of a higher opening the next day is approximately 82%; conversely, a downward trend indicates a 96% probability of a lower opening. SK Hynix data is equally striking: an upward trend predicts a 95% probability of a higher opening, and a downward trend predicts a 78% probability of a lower opening. More critically, regression coefficient analysis shows values of 0.93 and 1.00, suggesting that overnight perpetual contracts can not only predict the direction of the next day's opening but also quite accurately forecast the magnitude of the opening gap. This information aggregation capability stems from the 24/7 operational nature of on-chain markets—global macroeconomic news, company announcements, and industry developments can be reflected in perpetual contract prices in real-time, without waiting for the next trading day's opening auction.

The second value is the funding rate-driven Delta-neutral arbitrage mechanism. The funding rate design of perpetual contracts naturally transfers profits between long and short positions—when market sentiment is bullish, longs pay funding to shorts, and vice versa. Data shows that the Samsung Electronics perpetual contract generates an average intraday premium of about 0.15%, while SK Hynix's is about 0.23%. Theoretically, constructing a Delta-neutral strategy—buying a fully collateralized spot token while simultaneously shorting an equivalent amount of perpetual contracts—can completely eliminate directional exposure and achieve an annualized return of 66.7% to 119.7% solely through funding rates. Of course, in actual execution, factors like slippage costs, basis risk, and capital utilization will compress theoretical returns, but this is already sufficient to attract professional market makers and quantitative hedge funds to enter on a large scale. The third value is the structural opportunities for cross-exchange arbitrage. Because the same target is listed on multiple independently operated platforms without a unified clearing mechanism, the average price spread for Samsung Electronics perpetual contracts between Binance and Hyperliquid remains at 0.93%, reaching a maximum of 2.3% during extreme periods. Notably, during nighttime and weekends, when on-chain liquidity decreases due to spot market closures, the spread widens further, providing natural periodic profit windows for arbitrageurs with multi-platform access capabilities.

4. Four Directions for Innovation Trends and Business Opportunities

The rapid expansion of the tokenized stock perpetual contract market is fostering four innovation directions with independent commercial value. The first direction is specialized market maker services. Unlike the monopoly of franchise market makers in traditional financial markets, on-chain perpetual contract market making is open to any participant with sufficient capital and technical capabilities. The current situation where the same target is independently priced across multiple platforms means spreads naturally widen to 0.15% to 0.75% during nighttime and weekends, creating continuous and highly predictable profit opportunities for professional market makers. The second direction is regional oracle services. The pricing demand for Asian market stocks outside New York and London trading hours has birthed a new oracle market segment—oracle service providers capable of supplying high-frequency, multi-layer verified pricing data for Asian stocks during their market closures will become key infrastructure providers in this sector. The third direction is tokenization issuance intermediary services. Currently, a large number of targets in the KOSPI 200, Nikkei 225, and Hang Seng Index have not yet been tokenized. There is vast market space for a one-stop 'Issuance as a Service' platform that provides compliant liaison, asset custody, pricing parameter setting, and liquidity guidance between traditional security issuers and on-chain trading platforms. The fourth direction is basis-based on-chain hedge funds. Compared to traditional basis hedging, the on-chain perpetual contract version offers unique advantages such as faster capital turnover (no security settlement cycle) and compound return sources from cross-platform spreads. Professional hedge funds can dynamically allocate positions across multiple platforms, achieving high-frequency turnover to amplify returns.

From a broader industry perspective, Coinbase's launch of CFTC-regulated index perpetual contracts marks the beginning of U.S. regulators formally classifying this new financial product. The Basel Committee restarted its review of rules for bank crypto asset exposure in November 2025. Once banks are permitted to hold tokenized stock exposure, liquidity across the entire sector is expected to grow exponentially. 4Pillars Research predicts that if 1% of the global stock market capitalization is tokenized, the market size could reach $1.34 trillion by 2030, while current penetration is less than one in ten-thousandth.

5. Risk Framework and Investment Strategies

Although the tokenized stock perpetual contract market is growing rapidly, its risk structure is complex and multi-layered. Smart contract risk is the most direct technical threat—cumulative losses from oracle attacks, liquidation logic vulnerabilities, and frontend manipulation in perpetual contract-like protocols between 2024 and 2025 exceeded $500 million. The most cautionary event was the liquidation mechanism flaw exposed by the Hyperliquid JELLY token incident in February 2025, causing actual losses for some users under involuntary circumstances. On the market risk front, high leverage amplifies returns but also exponentially increases liquidation risk—low liquidity environments during earnings seasons or major policy events can trigger cascading liquidations, leading to price crashes. Liquidity fragmentation risk constitutes a third-dimensional systemic threat—perpetual contracts for the same target, like Samsung Electronics or SK Hynix, are priced independently across multiple platforms without a unified clearing coordination mechanism, potentially leading to large and persistent price spread distortions between parallel markets during extreme conditions.

Regulatory uncertainty remains the biggest external variable. National stances diverge significantly on this issue: the legislative progress of the US CLARITY Act, which proposes a safe harbor clause for DeFi developers, is stalling overall; the specific coverage of on-chain stock derivatives under the EU's MiCA framework is not yet clear; Hong Kong and Singapore, as Asian financial hubs, have not yet issued specific regulatory guidance for tokenized stocks; and the cautious attitude of Japan's Financial Services Agency towards crypto derivatives may also limit the product's growth pace in the Japanese market.

Based on the above risk framework, investment strategies can be constructed from three dimensions. The first dimension is platform token allocation strategy—the HYPE token is highly correlated with Hyperliquid platform trading volume due to its 30% fee buyback and burn mechanism, while ONDO and DYDX represent core beta targets for the leading protocol in the RWA sector and decentralized derivatives infrastructure, respectively. The second dimension is ecosystem participation strategy—quantitative teams can deploy automated trading systems based on funding rate arbitrage and cross-platform spread arbitrage; retail investors can use overnight price discovery functions to optimize next-day trading decisions for traditional stocks, with empirical data showing it can enhance short-term strategy win rates in Asian markets by approximately 7 to 12 percentage points. The third dimension is Gamma market-making strategy—simultaneously providing liquidity on multiple exchanges, automatically hedging exposure to earn bid-ask spreads, while utilizing the periodic directional returns from funding rates to boost overall returns. Key risk monitoring indicators should focus on three timelines: the legal implications of the Roman Storm trial results in the second half of 2026 on DeFi developer liability boundaries; whether the CLARITY Act can achieve substantive legislative progress in Congress; and the specific compliance requirements for the Travel Rule in DeFi scenarios in the next FATF standards revision.

6. Conclusion and Future Outlook

The true historical significance of tokenized stock perpetual contracts lies in their attempt to answer the most central question since the inception of blockchain technology: Can on-chain finance transcend the narrow category of 'on-chain finance for cryptocurrencies' and truly become 'on-chain finance for all assets'? The 85% price movement consistency and the regression coefficients of 0.93 to 1.00 for the Samsung Electronics perpetual contract strongly prove that on-chain derivatives can not only effectively track the price movement trajectory of traditional assets but also independently perform effective price discovery and information aggregation functions during traditional market closures. Judging from an investment clock perspective, the second half of 2026 through 2027 is a key catalytic window for this sector—the market reaction following the launch of Coinbase's regulated index perpetual contracts, whether the SEC's 'Innovation Exemption' can be formally implemented, and whether Hyperliquid can maintain its leading market share in the on-chain perpetual contract space—these three observation indicators will serve as the core reference system for determining whether the tokenized stock market can transition from an experimental phase to the mainstream. For investors with sufficient risk tolerance, the huge gap between the current penetration rate of less than 0.01% of global stock market capitalization and a compound growth rate exceeding 200% presents a classic early-stage sector investment landscape—high return potential coexisting with high uncertainty. Participation should be guided by screening investment targets based on the yardsticks of controllable underlying risk, traceable compliance paths, and verifiable technological iteration.