Assumptions
Assumption: Global Transition to Continuous (24/7) Markets
We assume market participants will increasingly prefer financial venues that operate 24/7, e.g. retail can trade on the weekend or in the evening. This demand is already observable through incremental adaptions in legacy systems:
24X National Exchange will offer 15/5 TradFi Equity Markets from October 2025.
Kraken xStocks launching 24/7 spot equities for a handful of assets and ETFs via Backed from July 2025.
We would bet that Robinhood are about to introduce 24/7 synthetic equities that are settled on chain via their recent Bitstamp purchase.
Assumption: Perpetual Contracts as a Financial Primitive
Perpetual futures are one of the greatest innovations to come out of crypto, shout out to BitMEX. Combined with leverage, these are a simple and capital-efficient mechanism for users to express long or short opinions on the underlying. They abstract away traditional complexities, primarily contract expiry, and offer retail a simple way to access excess returns via leverage.
To drive adoption of tokenized assets in DeFi, it is important to create financial products that are both essential and exciting, where excitement can be provided via leverage. This is why interest rate markets in TradFi work, e.g. to enter a 100mio SOFR position you only need 160k usd of margin. Perpetuals lower the barrier to leveraged exposure.
Perpetual markets funding can be marked to any custom index via an oracle, this allows you to create innovative contracts where the underlying can simply be a formula.
The only gap perpetuals don't fill lies in the absence of physical settlement. This constraint is particularly relevant for commodities or assets where delivery of the underlying is integral to its utility, e.g. CME's Live Cattle Futures which require the actual delivery of cattle at expiration. Nonetheless, for synthetic exposure, perpetuals remain the most expressive and scalable product in finance.
Assumption: Next Generation of Financial Futures
The current financial system is increasingly mismatched with the pace of technological and societal change. We assume there is growing demand for new classes of financial derivatives. Examples include:
GPU and Compute futures - Instruments offering exposure to fluctuations in compute demand, driven by surging needs in AI training and inference. These contracts enable firms and startups to hedge the cost of their future cloud compute usage.
AI Ecosystem Derivatives - Futures markets indexed to the usage of leading AI model providers, allowing investors to express views on the ongoing AI arms race.
Retail-optimized spread contracts - Simple, capital efficient, limited-risk contracts that allow retail to express an opinion on macro trends, sector divergences, or thematic exposures while limiting the downside through product structure.
Pre-IPO futures - Derivatives based on the notional valuation of high-profile private companies, e.g. OpenAI or SpaceX.
Yield-Linked Derivatives - Perpetuals marked to daily yield of popular yield offering products such as stHype or Ethena. This matures the interest rate market of DeFi.
Product Usage Futures - Marked to daily demand of specific digital products, e.g. Cursor vs Windsurf.
Asteroid Resource Futures
Perpetual Bonds
and of course 24/7 Equities, Commodities and Fixed Income - Adapted for permissionless global markets.
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