Papertrade's Leveraged Perpetuals Exchange Draws Reported $3 Billion in Positions on Launch
A HyperEVM venue opens with a reported $3 billion in leveraged bets
Papertrade launched its trading venue on HyperEVM (a blockchain layer built on Hyperliquid's network) on Oct 10. Within about 51 minutes of opening, analyst Josh Ong reported roughly $3 billion in open interest — the total dollar value of outstanding leveraged positions across the platform. The figure was shared at 10:51 a.m. ET and has not been independently verified onchain.
Key numbers at a glance
- Reported open interest: approximately $3 billion in the first hour of trading
- Total value locked (TVL) per DefiLlama at 10:08 a.m. ET: $137.1 million, combining trader balances and the house liquidity pool
- Pre-launch deposits reported by The Defiant: about $85.3 million
- Maximum leverage offered: up to 1,000 times a trader's collateral
- Individual position cap: $10 million, though users can open multiple positions
- Short-term opening headroom per market and direction: $1 billion
Open interest is not the same as available funds
Open interest describes the total exposure traders have taken on the venue, not the money sitting in accounts or profits that are actually owed. Because Papertrade offers very high leverage, a relatively small amount of collateral can generate positions with a large notional value.
DefiLlama's $137.1 million figure includes both customer trading balances and the protocol-owned pool that takes the opposite side of each trade. Papertrade's structure means that winning traders are ultimately paid from losses made by others on the venue. Administrator @izebel_eth has clarified that a trader's own collateral does not enter the house pool; only realized losses do. If a winning position is closed while a payout queue exists, the trader's collateral is returned, but the profit joins the queue for later settlement.
At the time of reporting, the current balance of the house pool and whether unpaid profits had accumulated could not be established.
How the trading venue works
Papertrade lists synthetic bitcoin and ether perpetual futures contracts, which are instruments that let traders take leveraged long or short positions without owning the underlying asset. Prices are set using the midpoint between Hyperliquid's best bid and best ask, and the venue's own pool acts as the counterparty to each trade rather than matching traders directly against each other.
The team's rollout plan requires all launch transactions to pass through the approved frontend and designated relayers. Transaction priority depends on the type of action and its notional value, with liquidations (forced closures of under-collateralized positions) ranked above new position openings.
What remains unconfirmed
The headline $3 billion figure is based on a single analyst report and has not been verified through independent onchain measurement. There is also no publicly available breakdown of how much of the $137.1 million TVL is trader collateral versus house liquidity, or how much the house pool has accumulated in losses to date.
Sources
Newisty Editorial Team covers technology, cryptocurrency, digital products, online platforms, developer tools and the wider digital economy. Our content is researched from official sources, company announcements, public documentation, market data and other primary or reputable sources. Articles are reviewed and edited before publication for clarity, accuracy and useful context.
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