According to a ChainCatcher message, a new research report from the Hyperliquid Policy Center (HPC) states that perpetual contracts expand hedging choices and improve price discovery, and it finds no evidence of statistically significant damage to the benchmark futures market. The report argues that perpetual contracts and traditional futures with expiry dates are complementary rather than zero-sum substitutes.

Using a natural experiment created by the traditional market being closed on weekends and perpetual markets continuing to trade, the study compares 205 Bitcoin trading-weekend samples and 19 on-chain oil perpetual (xyz:CL) samples over weekends. The report states that, with expiring futures, the rollover must be conducted on a calendar schedule: rolling a $10 million notional exposure on the Monday of April 2026 would cost about $950,000, while doing so on Friday would cost about $110,000. Perpetual positions do not have this forced rollover cost. For on-chain oil perps, the median trading amount during non-trading hours is about $1,300, which is roughly one percent of the median trading amount for benchmark WTI during trading hours.

HPC gives another example: for the week of March 6, 2026, the weekend re-pricing of crude oil was 15.8%, and the benchmark market remained closed throughout the period. If you hedge via on-chain crude oil perpetuals, a $10 million position loss could be reduced from about $1.58 million to about $62,000 (after accounting for all costs).