The place The Price Bites
Hyperliquid got here in 7% to 24% cheaper than the centralized median on bitcoin, Zcash and $HYPE, and 1% to eight% cheaper on ether and Solana. Lighter was over 60% cheaper throughout the basket.
The centralized benefit on uncooked slippage held just for the 2 largest property, and it narrowed with measurement. Hyperliquid’s bitcoin slippage was 11 instances the centralized determine at $1,000, 3.2 instances at $100,000 and 1.4 instances at $1 million. At $1 million, Hyperliquid posted the bottom slippage of the 5 venues measured, at 3.7 bps towards 3.8 bps on Binance, 4.5 bps on OKX and 4.6 bps on Bybit.
Resting measurement inside 10 bps of the mid instructed the identical story. Hyperliquid held $54.5 million on bitcoin towards a $47.4 million centralized median, $4.7 million on Solana towards $3 million, and greater than the centralized median on Zcash and $HYPE. It held 94% of the centralized depth on ether throughout U.S. hours. Lighter carried roughly a 3rd of the centralized bitcoin depth.
Bitcoin funding ran between 1.9% and seven.6% annualized throughout each venue within the set, centralized and onchain.
Seven Of The Prime Ten
Fort Labs frames the execution numbers towards a shift in what perp merchants are shopping for. RWA markets made up greater than 27% of all perp quantity in July 2026, and 7 of the ten most-traded perp property as of Sept. 10 have been RWAs, led by the Nasdaq 100 index and gold, which collectively carried greater than $1.4 billion in 24-hour quantity and $850 million in open curiosity. RWA perp quantity reached $123 billion in August, or 15% of onchain quantity, with TradeXYZ and Variational accounting for 90% of it.
The Defiant reported in August that RWA markets topped half of Hyperliquid’s weekly quantity for 2 straight weeks in July, the primary time perps on shares, commodities and indexes out-traded crypto there.
Decentralized exchanges (DEXs) now maintain over 13% of worldwide perp quantity, up from 4% in 2024, with a peak of 14% in December 2025. Centralized venues traded $4.56 trillion in perps over a 30-day window towards $615 billion onchain. Fort Labs places the class’s document open curiosity at $15.2 billion. Perp DEX open curiosity stands at $14.1 billion in the present day, with Hyperliquid at 58%, Aster at 10%, Variational at 7.4% and Lighter at 5.9%, DefiLlama information reveals.
The Weekend Index Drift
For shares, indexes and commodities, Fort Labs discovered TradeXYZ tighter and deeper than the centralized median on 4 of 5 property, with gold the exception. Taken venue by venue, Binance quoted tighter than TradeXYZ on Nvidia, gold and West Texas Intermediate crude, whereas TradeXYZ was tighter on SanDisk and silver.
Amongst onchain RWA venues at $100,000, TradeXYZ posted the tightest unfold at 0.35 bps and the bottom slippage at 0.84 bps. Lighter was least expensive all-in at 1.04 bps as a result of it fees no price. Variational’s perp markets got here to 2.82 bps, Ondo to 4.91 bps and QFEX to eight.83 bps.
The divergence seems when the reference market closes. Fort Labs in contrast the indexes of TradeXYZ, QFEX and Lighter throughout weekday, in a single day and Saturday readings. Crypto indexes agreed. RWA indexes unfold aside, reaching 30 bps on weekends.
Funding follows the design selection. Binance, Bybit, OKX and QFEX charged nothing on gold and silver whereas the reference was shut; QFEX zeroes funding outdoors an emblem’s market hours. TradeXYZ, Lighter and Ondo saved charging. Over two weekends, Lighter’s price got here to 95% annualized for longs on crude and about damaging 20% for shorts on each fairness indexes.
Fort Labs traced WTI funding averages of damaging 21% to damaging 65% annualized throughout all venues, together with centralized ones, to 4 days in September. TradeXYZ’s oil oracle rolls from the front-month Chicago Mercantile Alternate (CME) contract to the subsequent between the fifth and tenth enterprise day of every month. That window ran Sept. 8 to Sept. 15 and overlapped a provide shock that moved crude about $6 a barrel on Sept. 10.
The place Pre-IPO Costs Cut up
Personal-company perps confirmed the widest dispersion within the research. Venue costs for Anthropic differed by 3.8% and OpenAI by 5.7%. The identical measure on Nvidia was 0.1 bps. Zhipu, Minimax and Unitree, listed as pre-IPO perps months in the past, now commerce inside 1 bps to five.8 bps of one another after going public.
Holding prices diverge with the index. A one-year lengthy on Anthropic value 18.3% on Entropy, 1.1% on Lighter and damaging 0.8% on QFEX. A protracted on SHEIN value 47% on TradeXYZ and seven.2% on Lighter.
Liquidity is skinny. No venue held greater than $160,000 inside 10 bps on any pre-IPO market, and none may fill $1 million. A $100,000 Anthropic order value 2 to 13 bps in slippage on QFEX, 30 bps on Entropy and 67 to 218 bps on Lighter. Entropy traded essentially the most pre-IPO quantity, at $4.2 million a day on Anthropic.
Measured In 45-Second Slices
The readings come from public venue software programming interfaces (APIs) masking order books, index and mark costs, open curiosity, price schedules and margin necessities. Fort Labs priced a hard and fast basket on Binance, Bybit, OKX, Hyperliquid, Lighter, TradeXYZ, Entropy, Ondo, Variational and QFEX on the identical instantaneous, repeating each 45 to 60 seconds for 10 to twenty minutes, on Sept. 14, 15, 16, 19, 23 and 24.
Each venue is priced at its customary entry price tier. TradeXYZ and Entropy run most markets in a development mode that cuts the taker price to 0.9 bps; gold on TradeXYZ is excluded and pays 9 bps, which Fort Labs utilized. QFEX fees 10 bps on single shares at entry tier and 1.5 bps at its prime tier. Institutional merchants pay lower than entry-tier charges on most venues.
Lighter instructed Fort Labs that venues misjudge what an inventory requires. “The error is typically treating an inventory as a launch. It isn’t. You want the market maker, hedge path, distribution, and person demand prepared on day one,” the group stated. “We’ve got listed markets too early earlier than, and so they did not work as a result of a number of of these items have been lacking.”
