Onchain commodity trading is here to stay, but liquidity remains an issue

Onchain commodity trading is proving it’s more than a short-term spike, but limited liquidity continues to hold the market back from competing with traditional venues.

Hyperliquid’s HIP-3 market recorded a new all-time high on March 23, with roughly $5.4 billion in perpetual futures volume across commodities and macro assets. Silver led the activity at $1.3 billion, followed by WTI crude oil at $1.2 billion, Brent crude at $940 million and gold at $558 million. Equity indices, including the Nasdaq and S&P 500, also saw notable volumes.

Industry participants say the spike shows growing demand for macro exposure onchain. “Previously, onchain commodity futures were mostly a venue for crypto-native investors, that is no longer the whole story,” said Iggy Ioppe, chief investment officer at Theo. “The real tell is not just the volume, it’s when the volume shows up and who is showing up to trade.”

Ioppe noted that onchain oil futures markets are now processing more than $1 billion in daily volume over weekends, when traditional exchanges are offline. He said the shift is being driven in part by individual traders from traditional finance, who are accessing these markets through personal accounts. “Geopolitics does not stop on Friday afternoon, and markets are starting to adapt to that fact,” he said.

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Weekend gap gives onchain markets an edge

The ability to trade around the clock has emerged as a defining advantage for onchain venues. With a roughly 49-hour gap between the close of traditional markets on Friday and their reopening on Sunday, decentralized platforms have become one of the few places where traders can react to macro developments in real time.

That dynamic is starting to influence how prices are formed outside regular trading hours, even if the bulk of liquidity still sits in traditional markets. “For now, onchain is the price discovery layer when the rest of the market is asleep,” Ioppe said. “TradFi is still the depth layer when size matters most.”

On the CME, oil futures alone regularly see between 1 million and 4.5 million contracts traded daily, equivalent to roughly $100 billion to $300 billion in notional volume.

“Traditional venues still dominate when it comes to liquidity, execution quality, and institutional-scale pricing depth,” Sergej Kunz, co-founder of 1inch, said. He noted that deeper liquidity and tighter spreads remain the main barrier. Without them, onchain markets struggle to handle large trades without moving prices, limiting institutional participation.

Additional challenges include pricing reliability, market structure maturity and regulatory clarity, according to Shawn Young, chief analyst at MEXC Research.

Young said commodity tokenization shows “signs of real behavioral changes” but remains in an early phase, with gaps in liquidity and price aggregation still to be addressed.

Related: Perp DEXs become the latest battleground for blockchains

Onchain macro trading expands beyond commodities

Despite certain constraints, activity continues to build. “The broader direction is clear: traders are becoming more comfortable accessing macro-style exposure onchain,” Kunz said.

Gold and oil have led the current wave, but market participants expect similar patterns to emerge in other asset classes as volatility shifts.

Ioppe concluded that trading activity on onchain futures markets is likely to persist as trust builds around weekend pricing. As more traders begin to rely on these markets during off-hours, volume starts to follow. That, in turn, supports growing open interest, reinforcing confidence in the prices being formed. Over time, this creates a self-reinforcing cycle, where higher participation strengthens market credibility and draws in even more flow.

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