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How do Hyperliquid HIP-4 markets differ from perps?

Learn how Hyperliquid HIP-4 markets differ from perps at the API, contract, and research-workflow levels.

Reviewed by Alphora Research

Updated June 30, 2026

What to remember

  • Time-to-expiry becomes a first-class feature.
  • Side-specific liquidity matters because the two sides are separate assets.
  • You should not assume perp concepts like funding translate cleanly.

At the API layer, they are different objects

Perp endpoints use the perp `meta` response and integer asset indices. By contrast, Hyperliquid's official outcome docs say outcome assets are built from an `outcome` id plus a binary `side`, with representations like `#<encoding>`, `+<encoding>`, and `100_000_000 + encoding`.

That is a useful signal for researchers: HIP-4 markets are not just one more perp namespace. They are a separate instrument family with their own identity scheme.

At the contract layer, they ask a different question

Hyperliquid's perp and hyperp docs revolve around continuous exposure, mark prices, and funding logic. The official `outcomeMeta` example instead centers on fields like `expiry`, `targetPrice`, and `Yes` or `No` side specs.

So the research object changes. One side of your work is no longer a continuous contract you can think about in the same way as a perp; it is a defined outcome question with dated terms.

What changes for traders and quants

The biggest mistake is to port perp intuition straight across. Outcome markets can still trade on the same venue, but the features you care about and the failure modes you watch are different.

  • Time-to-expiry becomes a first-class feature.
  • Side-specific liquidity matters because the two sides are separate assets.
  • You should not assume perp concepts like funding translate cleanly.

Why this matters for Alphora-style research

This is exactly the sort of surface where explicit metadata, forward testing, and run provenance matter. A clean chart is much less useful if you lost the actual market question the chart came from.