IPOP markets reference anticipated public equity, convert to standard perps once shares list, and settle by TWAP if the listing fails.
Hyperliquid-based perpetuals platform TradeXYZ on Friday launched Pre-IPO Perpetuals (IPOP), a new contract type designed to enable continuous price discovery for companies in the weeks leading up to a public listing.
According to the platform’s documentation, IPOP markets are cash-settled perpetuals that reference a company’s anticipated public equity, trade on share price rather than market capitalization, and are expected to convert into standard externally-priced perps once the underlying company lists and there is sufficient market data to support oracle pricing.
The first IPOP market is Cerebras (CBRS), the wafer-scale AI chipmaker that filed its public S-1 with the SEC on April 17 and is targeting a mid-May Nasdaq debut. The CBRS contract launched today with an Outside Launch Date of May 30 and a 60-day Settlement Period running through July 30. If Cerebras lists by May 30, the market converts to a standard CBRS perp. If not, settlement defaults to a time-weighted average of the IPOP price across the market’s full lifespan.
TradeXYZ said the contracts are not shares, IPO allocations, or tokenized equity, and confer no ownership, voting, or dividend rights. Pricing uses a Hyperp-style mechanism that replaces an external oracle with a market-derived reference price, with funding calculations based on a 30-minute exponentially weighted moving average of the previous day’s minutely mark prices.
The launch extends TradeXYZ’s push into on-chain real-world asset (RWA) exposure. The platform secured a license from S&P Dow Jones Indices in March to launch the first officially sanctioned S&P 500 perpetual.
TradeXYZ flagged risks specific to IPOP markets in a separate disclaimer, including the possibility of step changes in mark price at conversion that could trigger liquidations on positions near maintenance margin, alternative settlement methodologies in cases of acquisition or material adverse events, and the prospect of foreign listings or business combinations being treated as conversion or settlement triggers.
This article was written with the assistance of AI workflows. All our stories are curated, edited and fact-checked by a human.
