Kinetiq founder Omnia shared in an interview that their flagship DEX product, Markets, is more than just a trading platform—it serves as a reference implementation for the entire "Exchange-as-a-Service" business model.
This means that, in the future, any team can use Kinetiq’s Launch platform to quickly deploy their own decentralized exchange, much like building an online store with Shopify.
Strategic Transformation: From LST Cornerstone to "Exchange Factory" Evolution
Kinetiq’s journey began with a solid foundation. As the largest liquid staking protocol on Hyperliquid, it manages over $700 million in assets. Centered around the HYPE liquid staking token, kHYPE, the protocol forms a critical infrastructure layer for both the HyperCore and HyperEVM ecosystems.
A turning point came when Hyperliquid launched the HIP-3 protocol. This technical upgrade fundamentally changed the game, transforming HyperCore from a single product into an open platform.
Kinetiq quickly recognized the potential of this shift. No longer content to remain just a liquid staking service provider, they set out to build a much broader vision—an "exchange factory."
This transformation reached a major milestone on January 12, 2026, when Kinetiq launched the Markets DEX. The platform went live supporting perpetual contracts for a diverse range of assets, including BABA, crude oil indices, and the Russell 2000 Index.
Markets is more than just an exchange; it’s the first full-scale demonstration of Kinetiq’s "Exchange-as-a-Service" business model. It validates the feasibility of rapidly deploying professional-grade DEXs based on the HIP-3 protocol, paving the way for many more exchanges to follow.
Model Breakdown: How HIP-3 Is Rewriting the DEX Playbook
Traditionally, building a DEX has been a resource-intensive undertaking. Teams needed to develop matching engines, margin and liquidation systems, and oracle integrations from scratch—creating a high technical barrier to entry.
The innovation of the HIP-3 protocol lies in its complete removal of these technical obstacles. Now, anyone who stakes 500,000 HYPE can leverage the same core infrastructure as Hyperliquid’s main platform to deploy their own perpetual contract market.
This marks a shift in market creation from a competition of technical prowess to one of capital and market design. Builders can focus their efforts on identifying "demand surfaces"—that is, the speculative demand for specific assets or data sets—and anchoring them to reliable oracles.
The XYZ100 market on Hyperliquid demonstrates the power of this model. Within just three weeks of launch, cumulative trading volume exceeded $1.3 billion, showcasing how standardized infrastructure enables new asset classes to scale at remarkable speed.
Kinetiq’s Markets is a prime example of this new paradigm. It specializes in bringing traditional financial assets into the perpetual contract framework, pays close attention to oracle construction, and aims to become the authoritative trading code among HIP-3 products tracking the same underlying asset.
Ecosystem Blueprint: How the Launch Platform Builds a Scalable DEX Ecosystem
The Launch platform is the core production engine of Kinetiq’s "exchange factory" model. Founder Omnia likens it to a combination of "Shopify + Kickstarter."
This ready-made platform allows for the creation of permissionless LST infrastructure and enables deployers looking to launch their own custom DEXs to leverage HIP-3 functionality.
The Launch platform’s mechanism skillfully balances the interests of multiple parties. Project teams raise at least 500,000 HYPE through community staking, with the lock-up period determined at the start of fundraising. Once the initial term expires, they can renew the agreement with the community or even replace part of the community stake with their own funds.
This design provides projects with the community support and ownership needed to get started, while the flexible renewal mechanism helps avoid issues that could arise from mass unstaking.
Kinetiq also encourages project teams to align incentives with stakers through a mix of token and revenue sharing. Markets, as the first HIP-3 exchange built via Launch, distributes 10% of its revenue to kmHYPE holders and allocates 90% for growth, setting a market standard for future projects.
This value capture mechanism continues to evolve. Kinetiq’s governance token, KNTQ, sits at the heart of the protocol, with its stakers (sKNTQ holders) accumulating value from all Kinetiq business lines.
Growth Flywheel: The Trinity of Liquidity, Asset Innovation, and Institutional Channels
Liquidity fragmentation is a key challenge for the HIP-3 model. As more exchanges launch perpetual contracts for the same stocks, ensuring sufficient liquidity depth for each market becomes a critical issue.
Kinetiq addresses this with a two-pronged strategy. They maintain a list of potential listing codes and closely track the anticipated taker volume for each. By ensuring that every listed asset has strong taker demand, they naturally incentivize market makers to provide liquidity in these markets.
At the same time, Kinetiq leverages its status as the largest liquid staking protocol on Hyperliquid to build a robust network of market makers. These market makers have already expressed interest in supplying deep liquidity for Markets.
Asset innovation is another growth engine. As industry insiders describe it, the tradable asset universe is expanding from traditional "fat head" categories to the "thick middle" and "long tail."
These new frontiers include real-world data sets, commodity indices, and even niche signals such as local real estate prices or cultural trend indices.
Building institutional channels is equally essential. Kinetiq’s partnership with Hyperion DeFi led to the launch of iHYPE—a permissioned, KYC/KYB-compliant liquidity pool.
This compliant staking solution is seen as a crucial bridge for traditional financial capital entering the Hyperliquid ecosystem.
Value Redefined: From Narrative-Driven to Cash Flow-Driven DEX Valuations
The crypto market in 2026 is undergoing a profound shift in valuation logic. Capital no longer indiscriminately chases every project; instead, it selectively targets protocols that generate real revenue and channel it to their tokens.
Hyperliquid itself is a textbook example of this trend. The protocol uses 99% of perpetual contract fees to buy back HYPE, directly linking protocol cash flow to token value.
As of November 2025, cumulative buybacks had reached 34.4 million HYPE, about 10% of the circulating supply.
Kinetiq’s business model fits perfectly with this new valuation logic. As an "exchange factory," it not only generates direct revenue through Markets but also supports the creation of more exchanges via the Launch platform, forming a scalable revenue matrix.
When asked about KNTQ’s value accrual mechanism, the founder made it clear: KNTQ stakers will benefit from all of Kinetiq’s business lines, including programmatic KNTQ buybacks funded by all revenue streams.
This direct link between protocol growth and token value gives Kinetiq a significant edge in the performance-driven market environment of 2026. It positions Kinetiq not just as a technical innovator, but as an ecosystem builder with a sustainable economic model.
Industry Insights: How the Infrastructure Race Is Reshaping DEX Competition
Kinetiq’s "exchange factory" model reflects a broader industry trend—the competitive focus among DEXs is shifting from backend engineering to market design and user experience.
Once the technical barriers to launching exchanges are removed, differentiation no longer depends on who has the best matching engine or clearing system. Instead, it hinges on who can best identify market demand, design compelling trading products, and deliver a seamless user experience.
This shift also moves DEXs away from zero-sum competition with centralized exchanges and onto entirely new growth trajectories. The HIP-3 model enables DEXs to expand into non-crypto assets and real-world data, attracting new traffic, users, and forms of demand.
It’s a PvE dynamic where the total addressable market keeps growing, rather than a PvP battle for a fixed market share.
For trading platforms like Gate, this trend offers both inspiration and challenges. Gate recently upgraded its Web3 ecosystem to Gate DEX, delivering a unified multi-chain trading experience that reflects the industry’s demand for specialized, integrated DEX solutions.
Gate DEX combines the convenience of centralized finance with the freedom of decentralized protocols, showcasing the potential of a hybrid CeFi-DeFi model.
Looking ahead, competition among trading platforms will no longer be a single-dimensional contest. Instead, it will be a comprehensive race in ecosystem completeness, speed of innovation, and user value. By lowering the barriers to innovation with its "exchange factory" model, Kinetiq may foster more specialized and vertical DEXs, further enriching the decentralized trading landscape.
Conclusion
When Markets DEX went live on January 12, it wasn’t just enabling perpetual contracts for BABA or crude oil indices—it was ushering in an entirely new DEX creation paradigm.
This paradigm encapsulates technical complexity within the infrastructure layer, allowing market innovators to focus on what they do best: identifying demand, designing products, and optimizing user experience.
Within the Hyperliquid ecosystem, over $700 million in staked assets is flowing through Kinetiq’s pipeline, transforming into one specialized trading market after another.
This infrastructure-driven race has only just begun.
