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TSLAequityETHfirst marketBTCnextSOLcryptoGOLDcommodityCLcrude oilEURforexJPYforexAAPLequityNVDAequityTSLAequityPerp-backed options · Hyperliquid
Write options backed by a leveraged Hyperliquid perp, for a fraction of the capital. Priced by the market, kept solvent by HyperCore's own liquidation engine. No approval, no black box, no walled garden.
The precedent
Leverage was a big-firm privilege for a real reason. In 1929 the public piled into reckless leverage with nothing to catch a position before it blew up, and afterward it got gated to the professionals.
Perpetual futures fixed it the right way: permissionless leverage, with liquidation engines built for the 21st century that close a position before it goes underwater. That is what let Hyperliquid open leverage to everyone on equal terms.
Capital-efficient options writing is the next privilege gated the same way, waiting for the same unlock. And our collateral is a Hyperliquid position.
The opportunity
Hyperliquid already holds around $13B in leveraged perp open interest, and until now not a dollar of it could back an option. Perp-backed writing turns that exposure into the deepest pool of options sellers on-chain, and once the writers are there, the buyers and spread traders come for the liquidity.
Write against your Hyperliquid perp for a fraction of the capital. The leveraged position is the collateral, kept solvent by HyperCore, so a perp holder becomes an option writer without posting the full notional.
Defined-risk spreads, secured in cash rather than a perp. You lock only the width between the strikes, there is nothing to liquidate, and the spread traders who move real volume get a product built for them.
The mechanism
Letting anyone write on a fraction of the capital sounds reckless, the same way permissionless leverage did before perps. It works because the cover only fails when your option is worth less than the bond you locked, and everything that catches the rest, the bond, the auction, the backstop, runs on-chain in the open, not on a risk desk you have to trust.
Sell a call, back it with a long perp; sell a put, back it with a short perp. The only move that can liquidate your cover is the one that leaves your option worth less than the bond you locked. trader.sol reads the sign of your perp on-chain and blocks any write that breaks the hedge.
At mint you lock a refundable premium bond. A conservative volatility smile, floored by governance and run through Black-Scholes on-chain, sizes it to what resolving your short could cost, not what you sold the option for. Close or add margin in time and it is refunded in full. The bond is the most you can ever lose.
Let HyperCore liquidate your perp instead of closing, and an on-chain resolution auction recollateralizes your short from your bond: a holder hands back their long for premium, or a new writer takes over the position with fresh collateral and a fresh bond. Whatever the auction does not spend comes back to you, less a small cut (10 to 25%, governance-set) that seeds the insurance pool.
If the auction finds no taker, a sibling insurance contract recollateralizes the short with its own Hyperliquid position. It is funded on-chain, by protocol fees, a slice of the excess bond from every successful auction, and the whole bond when one fails, so a bad tail never reaches another market.
HyperCore-native safety
The bond is priced on-chain by a conservative volatility smile, with a floor set by governance, so anyone can check the number your margin is built on. HyperCore liquidates the perp natively. Nothing about your risk sits on a private server you have to trust.
Neutral terms
Optionbolt builds the full stack, the core, an exchange, and a frontend, to start the market. What keeps it fair is not that we stay out of the upper layers: it is that the terms are structural. The core and matcher split is hardcoded in the contract and uniform, and the exchange and frontend are open-source and fork-invited. A fork still clears through the core and pays the same split.
Post the margin and write, the way anyone provides liquidity on Uniswap. No whitelist, no gatekeeper. Open access plus a fraction of the capital is the pool of sellers every on-chain options venue has lacked.
Like a lending protocol, we publish simple, conservative collateral rules anyone can verify, and let buyers and sellers agree the price themselves. Open rules and a market price, not a trusted operator's number.
The exchange and frontend are open-source. Build your own or route to ours, the split is identical either way, and you can always clear through the core directly. Terms no one can bend, not a marketplace we lock down.
The market that never closes
Hyperliquid runs around the clock; traditional options markets do not. Nights, weekends, and holidays, listed options on forex, indices, and commodities are shut, and the moments that matter most tend to land exactly then. On-chain and always on, we can be the only open venue in the world for options on those assets.
The rollout targets assets that already have deep, liquid options markets: BTC and ETH first, then oil, major equities, indices, and FX, as the volatility engine matures. Adding a market is a listing action, never a redeploy.
A permissionless, perp-backed options protocol. Anyone can write an option backed by a leveraged Hyperliquid perp for a fraction of the capital, priced by the market, and kept solvent by HyperCore's own liquidation engine. We build the full stack, the core, an exchange, and a frontend, but the core and matcher split is hardcoded and uniform, so it stays fair.
Your collateral is a leveraged Hyperliquid perp position, not a full lockup. You post margin, the way you post margin on any leveraged trade, and that perp is the cover. A defined-risk position locks only what it can actually lose.
When you sell a call you back it with a long perp, so the only move that can liquidate your collateral is the same move that leaves your option worth less than the bond you locked. Short put, short perp: the mirror image. Because the option is worth less than the bond in that scenario, a liquidation is always funded and resolves itself.
HyperCore liquidates the perp. Because your collateral is a Hyperliquid position, HyperCore's own liquidation engine, already securing billions in perps, closes it natively if it goes underwater. If that leaves your short uncovered, an on-chain resolution auction takes over, funded by your bond. The bond is priced by a conservative volatility rule that lives on-chain, so nothing about your margin sits on a private server you have to trust.
A small, refundable bond you lock when you mint, sized by a conservative on-chain Black-Scholes floor rather than whatever you sold the option for. Buy the option back or close before liquidation and it is refunded in full. You only forfeit it by letting yourself get liquidated.
No. There is no whitelist and no gatekeeper. Post the margin and write, the way anyone provides liquidity on Uniswap. Open access plus a fraction of the capital is how the pool of sellers finally shows up on-chain.
Hypercall is a company-run exchange: a private risk model on their servers sets everyone's margin, they approve who can sell, and the activity stays inside their app. Optionbolt prices risk in the open: a conservative volatility model that lives on-chain, market-set option prices, HyperCore-native perp liquidation, and a core and matcher split hardcoded and uniform in the contract, with the exchange and frontend open-source and forkable.
ETH is the first market. Any Hyperliquid perp asset works through a governed listing, so BTC and other crypto come next, then the traditional assets Hyperliquid is bringing on-chain, commodities, indices, FX, and equities, as the volatility engine matures. Adding a market is a listing action, not a redeploy.
Not yet. It is coming to Hyperliquid, testnet first, with mock markets that mirror live prices but risk no real money. It is early, experimental, and unaudited, and it says so plainly.
Where this goes
We build the full stack to start the market, on terms hardcoded to stay fair. The core clears every trade; the exchange and frontend are open, forkable, and optional. The goal: turn Hyperliquid's trading base into the deepest options market on-chain.