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Ventuals is building the market structure for the new innovation economy, where product velocity, user traction, and public perception move faster than traditional capital markets can adapt. Just as commodities trade through futures and crypto thrives on perpetual contracts, Ventuals introduces a native derivative tied to the progress of technology itself. Its first markets are perpetual contracts on pre-IPO company valuations, built directly on Hyperliquid’s HIP-3 orderbook standard.

In the 1990s, startups often went public within a few years, giving ordinary investors a chance at upside. Today, many of the world’s most transformative companies remain private for a decade or more, keeping gains locked behind insider allocations and secondary markets that charge steep fees. Retail investors are left with little more than lottery tickets, while real innovation passes them by. Ventuals seeks to close that gap by making private valuations transparent, liquid, and tradable.

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Founders and Origins

Ventuals was co-founded by Alvin Hsia, along with his sister, who has been his long time collaborator for over a decade. She spent six years working on Airbnb’s search engineering team, gaining deep technical experience before moving full time into crypto. The siblings have worked side by side through different stages of their careers, first at Airbnb where they built their foundation, and later in the fast growing world of crypto. At the end of 2020, both decided to leave Airbnb and fully commit themselves to building in the crypto ecosystem. During 2022, they contracted with several DeFi companies, using this period to learn the landscape while actively searching for ideas that could scale on a global level.

In early 2023, their journey took them to Paradigm, where they joined as Entrepreneurs in Residence. During this time, they built Shadow, an onchain data simulation platform that secured real paying customers such as Pendle, Uniswap, and OP Labs. Shadow proved that they could execute and attract adoption, but its target market was too narrow to sustain their long term ambitions. This realization led Alwin and his sister to pivot at the beginning of 2024 toward a broader and more impactful idea: creating perpetual futures for pre-IPO companies. This new direction formed the foundation of what is now Ventuals.

Today, the siblings lead Ventuals with a lean and highly focused team of four to five full time members, supported by a group of part time contributors. They continue to build from Paradigm’s shared office in SoHo, New York, driving the project forward with the same close partnership that has defined their professional journey from Airbnb to crypto innovation.

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Discovery of Hyperliquid

The decision to build Ventuals on Hyperliquid was shaped directly by the founders’ own trading experiences. Before arriving at Hyperliquid, they had spent time trading across other platforms such as dYdX, GMX, and Jupiter Perps. Each of these venues gave them valuable insights, but in April 2024, while searching for a market that could offer access to assets unavailable elsewhere, they came across Hyperliquid for the first time.

What immediately stood out was the product’s remarkable execution speed and the smooth, polished trading experience. Compared to the other platforms they had used, Hyperliquid delivered a level of performance that impressed them right away. This first encounter quickly grew into long term usage, and Hyperliquid became their primary trading venue. They also participated in the platform’s airdrop, which further demonstrated the strength of the community and the fairness of its token distribution. Convinced by both the technology and the ecosystem, they continued to accumulate more tokens and deepen their involvement.

When Hyperliquid introduced the HIP-3 standard, it opened up entirely new possibilities for builders. For Alvin Hsia and his team, HIP-3 provided exactly the infrastructure they needed to bring their vision for Ventuals to life. The combination of Hyperliquid’s proven execution, community driven foundation, and the flexibility of HIP-3 made it the natural home for Ventuals, anchoring the project on infrastructure capable of supporting their ambitions at scale.

Market Design

At its foundation, Ventuals is designed to transform the way people interact with private company valuations. Rather than trading shares or gaining direct ownership, users on Ventuals trade perpetual contracts that reflect the changing valuations of startups and pre-IPO companies. This creates a simple but powerful model: participants are able to speculate on whether the valuation of a company will rise or fall, without needing to hold equity or be part of insider rounds.

To make valuations clear and easy to understand, Ventuals divides them by one billion and represents them as Valuation Units. For example, if OpenAI’s total valuation is $350.24 billion, then a single unit of vOAI on Ventuals is priced at $350.24. This structure makes it straightforward for traders to read, compare, and act on valuations as if they were trading standard perpetual contracts in the crypto space.

The platform also supports leverage of up to ten times, giving traders the opportunity to amplify their conviction in either direction. This leverage system comes with inherent risks, including the possibility of liquidation if margin levels drop too low, but it also creates space for meaningful exposure with less upfront capital.

What sets Ventuals apart from pool based models, such as those used by GMX or Ostium, is its reliance on an orderbook model. Pool based systems depend on external oracles and often expose depositors to directional risks and valuation drift, which can undermine sustainability over time. By contrast, Ventuals uses Hyperliquid’s HIP-3 orderbook infrastructure to ensure that every trade is matched transparently between counterparties. The protocol itself does not take any directional view of the market. This design makes Ventuals far more reliable and sustainable in the context of illiquid private markets, ensuring that the system remains neutral and robust even in volatile conditions.

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Oracle, Funding, and Mark Price

Private companies lack liquid spot markets, so Ventuals uses a hybrid oracle. Each oracle price is a 50/50 blend of offchain valuations and onchain trading data. Offchain sources include verified secondary transactions, fundraising rounds, mutual fund marks, 409A valuations, and peer comparisons. Onchain inputs come from the eight-hour EMA of recent mark prices.

Funding payments align perp prices with these oracles. Every hour, traders on one side pay the other, depending on whether the contract trades above or below the oracle. Ventuals uses Hyperliquid’s funding model with a dampening multiplier of 0.04575 on testnet, which allows for wider divergence between perp and oracle prices compared to crypto perps with real time spot feeds. These payments are peer to peer; Ventuals takes no cut. The mark price is the unbiased reference for PnL and liquidation handling. It prevents manipulation during volatility and anchors all core mechanisms of the system.

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Margining and Liquidation

Ventuals operates with cross margin. Required margin equals position size × mark price ÷ leverage. As trades move, unrealized PnL automatically updates available margin. Profits can be withdrawn at any time, provided enough collateral remains to support open positions; the rule of thumb is to keep at least 10% of position size in margin.

Maintenance levels are leverage specific: 16.7% at 3×, 10% at 5×, and 5% at 10×. Fall below these levels and positions are liquidated automatically at market. The liquidation price is displayed in the UI and can shift with funding or other positions. Traders can mitigate risk by lowering leverage, setting stop-losses, or adding margin.

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Orders and Execution

Ventuals provides traders with access to a complete set of order types, giving them the flexibility and control needed to manage positions effectively. At the most basic level, market orders allow trades to be executed instantly at the best available price, which is useful for traders who want immediate entry or exit. For those who prefer precision, limit orders make it possible to set an exact price at which a trade should be executed, ensuring that users only enter or exit positions under the conditions they choose.

Beyond these, Ventuals also supports advanced order types designed for risk management and strategy execution. Stop market orders trigger a market order once the price reaches a predefined level, helping traders set clear stop losses or capture breakout moves. Similarly, stop limit orders combine the stop condition with the precision of a limit order, offering tighter control over execution in fast moving markets.

To provide additional flexibility, users can also configure their orders with different options. They can mark them as good-til-cancelled (GTC), which keeps the order active until it is either filled or manually cancelled. Reduce only orders are available to ensure that new trades only serve to decrease or close out an existing position, avoiding accidental reversals. Finally, traders can attach profit and stop loss targets to automatically lock in gains or minimize downside without needing to monitor markets constantly.

Together, these tools mirror the sophistication of established perpetual markets, giving Ventuals users the same level of trading functionality they would expect from leading exchanges, but applied to the unique context of startup valuations.

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Liquidity and the VLP Vault

Ventuals’ liquidity is supported by both professional market makers and the Ventuals Liquidity Provider vault (VLP), a HIP-3 LP vault that executes market making strategies on the exchange. Before mainnet, deposits are allocated into Hyperbeat USDT to earn yield and rewards. Once live, capital will move directly into Ventuals’ orderbook. The initial $10 million cap was filled instantly, leading to an expansion to $30 million, with yields around 13% APY. Independent market makers are also invited to contribute, with contact via mm@ventuals.com

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User Experience and Testnet

Ventuals is currently live on Hyperliquid Testnet, pending HIP-3’s rollout on mainnet. To get started, users create an account via wallet connect or email through Privy. A small payment of 1 USDC or 0.0003 ETH unlocks 500 mockUSDC for trading with up to ten-times leverage.

The platform mirrors Hyperliquid’s fee tiers. Makers pay the same as on Hyperliquid, while takers pay an additional 20 basis points. On testnet, fees are not yet activated. A public leaderboard tracks performance, and while trading is for fun, top users may be rewarded.

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Protocol Activity and Growth

Ventuals  has shown clear signs of traction even in its early testnet phase. Within the first five weeks of launch, the platform drew in more than 18,000 traders, a strong indicator of demand for markets tied to private company valuations. Weekly activity levels remained consistent, with between 6,000 and 7,000 traders actively participating during this period. By September 10, cumulative usage figures reflected this growth: 18,104 traders had joined, executing a total of 569,235 trades with notional volume reaching $269.25 million. Over just the prior 30 days, 14,974 unique traders placed 440,139 trades, generating $205.97 million in activity, a concentration that highlights how quickly interest has accelerated.

By 13 September 2025, the scale had increased even further. At that point, cumulative trade volume had risen to $277.92 million, with 606,135 trades executed across the platform and a total of 18,561 traders onboarded. Market activity displayed notable peaks, with daily volumes surpassing $8 million during several stretches in mid August and again in early September. Open interest also climbed sharply during this period, reaching between $30 million and $34 million around August 18–21 before tapering off and dropping below $10 million by the beginning of the second week of September.

The breadth of companies available on Ventuals adds further weight to these numbers. Traders are already able to take positions on firms such as Anthropic, OpenAI, SpaceX, Kraken, Anduril, Cluely, Cursor, and Stripe, representing some of the most high profile names in AI, robotics, defense, crypto, and frontier technology. Together, these listings underline the scale of the opportunity: Ventuals has successfully transformed interest in headline making innovation into measurable trading activity, establishing itself as a serious experiment in opening private market exposure to a wider base of participants.

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Legal and Regulatory Positioning

From the very beginning, Ventuals has treated regulatory considerations as a core part of its design. The team has engaged with multiple layers of legal expertise, working closely with internal counsel, Paradigm’s in-house regulatory group, and external advisors to ensure that the platform’s structure aligns with existing frameworks. The central question in this analysis has been how to classify the products being offered specifically, whether they fall under the category of security swaps or commodity swaps. This distinction is critical, since it determines how regulators view the contracts and what requirements apply to them.

Ventuals has taken a deliberate path by framing its markets as valuation linked perpetual futures rather than securities themselves. In practice, users do not buy shares or receive ownership rights; instead, they trade contracts that reflect changes in company valuations. This approach avoids the legal complexities that come with direct equity exposure, while still allowing traders to capture directional views on private firms. By doing so, the protocol positions itself within regulatory boundaries rather than attempting to operate outside of them.

Another important decision has been the rejection of pooled counterparty models, such as those used in some decentralized exchanges where user deposits serve as a trading pool. For private companies, which lack reliable or liquid reference markets, this design carries significant risks, including valuation drift and unsustainable exposure for depositors. By building instead on Hyperliquid’s HIP-3 orderbook, Ventuals eliminates this problem. Every trade is matched transparently between participants, and the protocol itself avoids taking on directional risk. This not only strengthens the sustainability of the platform but also aligns more closely with compliance considerations, making Ventuals a structure that regulators can more easily evaluate and understand.

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Future Listings

Ventuals’ first focus is on frontier pre-IPO companies in artificial intelligence, robotics, defense, and space. Expansion plans include biotech, neurotech, and brain tech, alongside a broader set of sectors such as stablecoins, crypto, financial services, enterprise, and SaaS. Together, these represent a multi trillion dollar asset class historically closed to retail. Once these companies go public, Ventuals markets will seamlessly convert into standard perps. Public company listings may follow, but the greatest value lies in bridging private-market access.

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Why Ventuals Matters

Ventuals transforms private markets into public, tradable venues. For the first time, retail investors can take positions on private companies shaping the future without insider deals or accreditation. Built on Hyperliquid’s HIP-3 orderbook, with hybrid oracles, structured funding, automated liquidations, and transparent liquidity provision, it provides a sustainable framework for innovation finance.

With thousands of traders, hundreds of millions in volume, and active communities already experimenting on testnet, Ventuals is proving demand for this new asset class. Backed by an experienced team, Paradigm support, and regulatory foresight, Ventuals is positioned to become a cornerstone of Hyperliquid’s ecosystem, turning speculation about innovation into real, tradable markets. To explore Ventuals, start trading on the official website, join the community on Discord, and follow updates on X (Twitter).

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