Hyperliquid co-founder Jeff Yan argues options and perpetuals serve complementary purposes, with HIP-4 enabling options protocol development on the platform.
DeFi & Yields ·
At DAS Asia 2026 on October 7, Hyperliquid Labs co-founder Jeff Yan addressed skepticism around options adoption on derivatives platforms. A year prior, he remained uncertain whether options traders would gravitate entirely toward perpetuals, but he has since shifted his view—concluding that both products will coexist rather than one displacing the other.
Yan outlined the functional distinction: perpetuals already meet the needs of many users, yet some traders find perpetuals insufficient for expressing their full market perspectives. This gap, he argued, positions options and perpetuals as complementary instruments serving separate use cases rather than as direct substitutes. He pointed to HIP-4 as enabling a clear route for developers to launch options protocols within the Hyperliquid ecosystem.
The statement reflects a broader industry question about whether centralized perpetual exchanges will absorb options demand or whether both derivatives categories maintain distinct demand pools. Yan's argument does not specify which use cases options would capture, nor does it detail whether HIP-4 adoption by builders has yet begun.