Papertrade, a leveraged trading venue built on HyperEVM — Hyperliquid's Ethereum Virtual Machine environment — drew roughly $3 billion in open interest within its first hour of trading on Oct. 10, according to a report by Josh Ong. The figure was logged at 10:51 a.m. ET, following the exchange's scheduled 10 a.m. opening. It remains a reported number rather than an independently verified onchain measurement.

The venue, where traders' losses fund payments to winners, offers up to 1000x leverage on synthetic bitcoin and ether perpetuals — price-tracking futures contracts with no set expiry. According to DefiLlama, the products are priced using the midpoint of Hyperliquid's best bid and offer, with Papertrade's own pool acting as counterparty — a setup that ties payouts to the resources of that single pool.

DefiLlama's TVL Reading

DefiLlama recorded $137.1 million in total value locked on the platform at 10:08 a.m. ET. Its methodology combines customers' trading balances with the protocol-owned pool that takes the other side of positions. That total is therefore not a reserve available entirely to pay winning traders, nor is it directly comparable with the notional value of leveraged positions.

The distance between that balance and the $3 billion open-interest reading reflects leverage at work: notional exposure can run far ahead of the collateral backing it, and the two readings were taken at different points in the opening hour.

Open interest, meanwhile, measures outstanding position exposure — not deposits or realized profits owed to traders. The distinction matters for winning traders because it affects when profits become available. Papertrade administrator @izebel_eth has explained that collateral does not enter the house pool — only losses do. If a winning position closes while a payout queue exists, the trader's original collateral becomes available again, but profits join the queue. The current house-pool balance, and whether unpaid profits had accumulated, could not be established.

From Predeposits to Live Trading

The launch moves Papertrade beyond the predeposit stage covered in The Defiant's earlier reporting, which recorded about $85.3 million deposited ahead of trading. The later TVL reading includes both trader balances and house liquidity; it does not establish how much the house has earned from losses. Together, the $85.3 million in predeposits, the $137.1 million TVL reading and the reported $3 billion in open interest form the opening benchmarks against which the platform's post-launch activity can now be tracked.

Launch Rules and Position Limits

Papertrade's launch rules cap individual positions at $10 million, though a user may hold multiple positions. The team also set $1 billion of short-term opening headroom per market and direction — not a single $1 billion ceiling for the exchange.

Under the rollout plan, launch transactions must pass through the frontend and approved relayers. The team said transaction priority generally depends on action type and notional value, with liquidations ranked above position openings.