TL;DR 1) Ventuals is the first on-chain perpetual futures protocol built on the HIP-3 standard, enabling long and short trading on the valuation of private, pre-IPO companies. 2) vHYPE serves as theTL;DR 1) Ventuals is the first on-chain perpetual futures protocol built on the HIP-3 standard, enabling long and short trading on the valuation of private, pre-IPO companies. 2) vHYPE serves as the

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What is Ventuals? The First On-Chain Derivatives Protocol for Private, Pre-IPO Company Valuations

Author: MEXC

Beginner

Sep 21, 2026MEXC

10 min

TL;DR

1) Ventuals is the first on-chain perpetual futures protocol built on the HIP-3 standard, enabling long and short trading on the valuation of private, pre-IPO companies.

2) vHYPE serves as the core economic model, allowing users to stake HYPE to receive transferable liquid staking tokens, earning both native yield and platform points.

3) The hybrid oracle mechanism combines off-chain valuation data with on-chain EMA pricing to balance real-world accuracy with market-based price discovery.

4) The protocol features a Ventuals Points system that rewards early participants, testnet traders, and market makers.

5) Smart contracts have undergone dual audits by Nethermind and Zenith, and a $1 million bug bounty pool has been established.

1. Ventuals Project Overview

1.1 What Is Ventuals?

Ventuals is an innovative protocol that transforms company valuations into tradable derivative assets, built on the Hyperliquid HIP-3 standard. This architecture offers two key advantages:

Any team can create an independent sub-exchange (Sub-DEX).
All sub-markets directly share Hyperliquid's underlying matching and clearing system powered by HYPE, significantly reducing technical development costs.

Based on this foundation, Ventuals introduces perpetual futures for pre-IPO company valuations. In simple terms, they allow investors to take long or short positions on the future valuation of private technology companies. If investors believe a company's valuation will rise, they can go long; if they expect it to fall, they can go short, participating in trading without waiting for the company's IPO.

Through this design, Ventuals achieves its vision of making innovation a tradable asset. It provides retail investors with the opportunity to participate in innovation cycles that were once exclusive to institutions and insiders, while also introducing a new asset class to DeFi, the valuation of private, pre-IPO companies.

1.2 Ventuals: Market Opportunity

Over the past decade, the average time for companies to go public has doubled. Technology leaders such as OpenAI, SpaceX, and Anthropic have seen their valuations surge within short periods, yet ordinary investors, despite recognizing these waves of innovation, have been unable to participate due to high entry barriers.

Ventuals fills this gap. Through Valuation Perpetual Futures (Valuation Perps), anyone can directly express their view on a company's future value. This not only introduces a transparent price discovery mechanism to the private market but also establishes a new intermediary layer between the private and secondary markets. Globally, the private company valuation market has already exceeded $10 trillion, and Ventuals effectively opens an on-chain gateway to this massive asset class.

2. Ventuals Tokenomics

2.1 Model and Distribution

At present, Ventuals has not issued a native governance token. Its economic system is primarily composed of two core elements: the vHYPE liquid staking token and the Ventuals Points system. Each serves a distinct role and value function within the protocol.

Type	Core Function	Source of Yield	Future Value Direction
vHYPE (Staking Token)	Meets the HIP-3 requirement of a minimum 500,000 HYPE stake for Sub-DEX creation and represents ownership of the staked HYPE principal.	Native Hyperliquid staking rewards, including trading fee sharing and network security incentives.	Freely transferable and supports conditional unlocking and withdrawals.
Ventuals Points	Incentivizes early ecosystem participation, covering activities such as staking, trading, and market making.	Distributed based on staking duration, staking tier multiplier, and early participation (e.g., testnet trading).	Specific use cases have not yet been announced; may serve roles in community governance or future incentive mechanisms.

The release schedule for Ventuals Points has been confirmed. In the initial release period (October 16–23, 2025), a total of 5 million points will be issued, followed by a fixed weekly release of 1 million points thereafter. This gradual release model is designed to sustain strong participation incentives for early contributors.

2.2 Unlock and Distribution Schedule

The design of vHYPE takes liquidity needs fully into account. There is no fixed lock-up period, and withdrawal rules are linked to the total amount of HYPE staked in the system:

When the vault balance is above the 500,000 HYPE minimum stake requirement, holders may withdraw at any time. Each withdrawal request enters the Hyperliquid unstaking queue, with a seven-day waiting period.
If the vault balance falls to or equals the 500,000 HYPE minimum, withdrawals will not be processed until additional HYPE is added. This mechanism ensures the stable operation of Sub-DEXs and prevents system risk caused by insufficient collateral.

As for the governance token, Ventuals has not yet announced an issuance schedule. However, the official architecture indicates a clear roadmap: in the future, Ventuals Points may evolve into tokenized governance rights, ultimately forming a closed-loop economic model of staking HYPE, receiving vHYPE and Points, and converting Points into governance rights.

3. Ventuals Product Design

The core of Ventuals centers on perpetual futures for pre-IPO company valuations, built around four primary modules: the Perpetual Futures Market, Price Oracle, Funding Rate Mechanism, and VLP Market-Making System. These components work together to ensure both a smooth trading experience and robust system security.

3.1 Perpetual Futures Market

Users can take long or short positions on the valuation of target companies. The contract design emphasizes usability and efficiency, featuring:

Leverage: Fixed at 10x, balancing potential returns with risk exposure.
Margin Mechanism: Supports cross-margin, allowing capital to be automatically reused for improved capital efficiency.
Settlement: Real-time execution enables users to realize profits without waiting for contract expiration.

3.2 Hybrid Oracle

To address the challenge of limited accessibility and verifiability of unlisted company valuation data, Ventuals employs a hybrid pricing model composed of 50% off-chain and 50% on-chain data sources:

Off-chain data: Provided by professional data institutions such as Notice, covering metrics including the latest funding round valuations, secondary market transaction quotes, and 409A assessments (the U.S. IRS-recognized standard for determining the fair market value of private company equity). These ensure that valuation inputs remain authentic and reliable.
On-chain data: Derived from Hyperliquid's 8-hour EMA price, which reflects market participants' expectations of valuation movements and provides space for price discovery.

This semi-decentralized mechanism mitigates bias from any single data source, preventing manipulation of off-chain data while avoiding excessive deviation of on-chain prices from actual valuations. It stands as one of the core design highlights of the Ventuals protocol.

3.3 Funding and Pricing Mechanism

Funding Rate: Set at 1/20 of the Hyperliquid standard, significantly reducing the cost impact of short-term price deviations and encouraging participation from high-frequency traders.
Mark Price Smoothing: The platform employs a proprietary Liquidity and OI-aware smoothing algorithm, which dynamically adjusts the mark price based on order book depth (liquidity) and open interest (OI). This mechanism effectively prevents low-liquidity assets from being manipulated.

3.4 VLP Market-Making Vault

Supported by Hyperbeat, the community market-making vault (VLP) allows regular users to participate in market making by providing stablecoin liquidity, earning a share of trading fee revenue in return. The primary function of this module is to ensure ample liquidity for Ventuals' valuation perps markets during the early stages of the project, helping prevent sharp price fluctuations caused by insufficient market depth.

4. Ventuals Architecture and Risk Management

4.1 System Architecture

The Ventuals architecture fully inherits Hyperliquid's decentralized matching and clearing framework, with clearly defined responsibilities:

Asset custody and trade matching: Both are executed on Hyperliquid's base layer. The Ventuals protocol itself does not directly handle user assets.
Protocol responsibilities: Focused solely on the incentive system (such as point distribution) and trade settlement, thereby minimizing potential security risks.

This non-custodial design provides a critical safeguard. Even if Ventuals services were to be interrupted, user assets would remain fully accessible and withdrawable at the Hyperliquid layer, eliminating the risks of centralized platform failures or asset freezes.

4.2 Security Mechanisms

Core security measures have already been implemented:

Smart Contract Audits: Dual audits conducted by Nethermind and Zenith cover key modules including vHYPE staking, VaultManager fund operations, and RoleRegistry permission control, ensuring code integrity and the absence of critical vulnerabilities.
Bug Bounty Program: A $1 million bounty pool is open to global white-hat hackers, with rewards of up to 5% of the affected funds. This community-driven testing model encourages proactive identification of potential risks.
Vault Stability Mechanism: A strict withdrawal queue and LIFO (Last-In-First-Out) tiering design help prevent liquidity shocks or vault instability caused by mass withdrawals.

4.3 Risk Controls

To mitigate trading-related risks, Ventuals employs a multi-layered risk control framework:

Maintenance Margin: Maintains a dynamic margin range between 5% and 16.7%. When an account balance falls below the maintenance margin threshold, automatic liquidation is triggered to prevent negative balance risk.
Price Update Frequency: The mark price and funding rate are updated every three seconds, supporting high-frequency trading environments and ensuring that market prices consistently reflect real-time conditions.

5. Ventuals Community and Ecosystem Development

The Ventuals community is built around the vision of co-developing an open private market, structured through a three-tier framework combining testnet incentives, Hypurr NFT holders, and points rewards.

In August 2025, Ventuals launched its testnet trading campaign, allowing users to trade using mockUSDC and compete on a leaderboard. Following the mainnet launch in October 2025, the protocol introduced vHYPE staking, Ventuals Points distribution, and the issuance of Genesis NFTs.

On the ecosystem front, Ventuals maintains a deep integration with Hyperliquid, sharing its matching engine and settlement layer. It also partners with Hyperbeat to power the VLP market-making module, ensuring sufficient initial liquidity. According to RootData, Ventuals reached a popularity index of 600 in Q3 2025, with 96% of community sentiment rated as bullish, reflecting strong and growing market attention.

6. Ventuals: Market Opportunity and Competitive Analysis

6.1 Market Opportunity

Ventuals is entering a market segment that has yet to be brought on-chain, the valuation market for unlisted companies. Globally, this market exceeds $10 trillion in size but has long suffered from limited liquidity and lack of transparency.

By introducing perpetual futures for pre-IPO company valuations, Ventuals enables instant liquidity and transparent settlement for such assets, creating a new investment layer between private and secondary markets. As valuations in industries such as AI, aerospace, and robotics continue to expand rapidly, Ventuals has the potential to become the on-chain pricing layer for the innovation cycle.

6.2 Challenges and Risks

The key challenges facing Ventuals include:

Data Latency: Private market valuations are updated infrequently, which may result in delayed price anchoring.
Liquidity Development: Newly listed assets may experience shallow market depth during the early stages, requiring strong incentive and market-making mechanisms.
Compliance and Regulation: Perpetual futures for private, pre-IPO company valuations could exhibit characteristics of securities, requiring a balance between regulatory compliance and decentralization.
User Education: The concept of company valuation-based derivatives is complex and will require time and education to achieve broader user adoption.

6.3 Competitive Landscape

Current competitors to Ventuals can be broadly categorized into two groups: traditional private equity trading platforms and other DeFi derivatives protocols. Through comparative analysis, Ventuals' differentiated advantages become clear:

Project	Model	Key Difference from Ventuals
Polymarket	Prediction Market	Based on binary betting outcomes of real-world events, without a continuous valuation mechanism.
dYdX	Crypto Perpetual Contracts	Focused on token-based assets and does not include private market valuation instruments.
Synthetix	Synthetic Assets	Requires high collateralization ratios and relies heavily on centralized oracles.
Kinetiq (HIP-3 Ecosystem)	Synthetic Derivatives	Also built on the HIP-3 framework, but focuses on volatility-based assets rather than valuation assets.

Ventuals' differentiated advantages lie in its unique asset focus (private company valuations), non-custodial security architecture, hybrid pricing mechanism, and liquid staking-based economic model. It is not merely a new form of derivative but an emerging infrastructure for innovative valuation.

7. Ventuals Roadmap

Date	Milestone
August 7, 2025	Testnet launch, enabling mockUSDC trading and leaderboard access.
October 16, 2025	Mainnet deployment begins, introducing vHYPE staking deposits and Ventuals Points rewards.

Ventuals follows a progressive decentralization roadmap: rapid launch, model validation, and phased governance activation. This approach aligns with the HIP-3 ecosystem's philosophy of secure iteration and community-driven ownership.

8. Conclusion

Ventuals is defining a new paradigm of bringing private market valuations to DeFi. Centered on HIP-3 architecture, a hybrid oracle system, and a liquid staking model, Ventuals transforms traditionally inaccessible private valuations into an on-chain, tradable market.

Through its vHYPE and Points system, the protocol establishes a sustainable community-driven economic loop, even without issuing a native token.

Looking ahead, Ventuals' ability to truly become the price discovery layer for private company valuations will depend on two critical factors: data accuracy and liquidity depth. If these challenges are successfully addressed, Ventuals could not only extend the boundaries of DeFi, but also serve as a key bridge in transforming global capital markets toward greater openness and accessibility.

Disclaimer: This material does not constitute advice on investments, taxes, legal matters, finance, accounting, consulting, or any other related services, nor is it a recommendation to buy, sell, or hold any assets. MEXC Learn provides information for reference only and does not constitute investment advice. Please ensure you fully understand the risks involved and invest cautiously. All investment decisions and outcomes are the sole responsibility of the user.

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