Published March 202671 pagesFrancesco · Noveleader
The Evolution of Commodities
State of Commodities and a Quantitative Analysis of the Growth of these Markets Onchain
“If onchain commodity trading follows the Globex pattern, we are in approximately 1995.”
▮ The numbers that matter
$7.4B
Tokenised spot commodities — 4x in one year
$1.4B+
Commodity perp OI on Hyperliquid
$143T
Annual notional moved by global commodity markets
$45B+
Ostium cumulative volume, >95% non-crypto OI
+227%
Tokenised gold volume YoY ($178B in 2025)
30x
Weekend oil-perp volume growth in three weeks
The Thesis
Commodities are the oldest asset class in history, yet they still trade on infrastructure with fixed hours, layered intermediaries, and gated access. Tokenised spot commodities grew 4x in a year while commodity perps on Hyperliquid passed $1.4B in open interest — and when bombs fell on Iran on a Saturday night, oil repriced onchain while every CME contract sat frozen until Monday. Onchain venues are still 100x behind on institutional depth, but they are maturing at a speed traditional infrastructure has never seen.
Covered in the report
HyperliquidTrade XYZOstiumCME GroupTether GoldPaxos GoldAsterBinanceJPMorgan Kinexys
Inside
- 01The Trillion Dollar Friction Machine
- 02State of Onchain Commodities
- 03Onchain Trading Pits: Hyperliquid & Ostium
- 04The CME: Status Quo Under Stress
- 05Comparative Analysis: xyz:CL vs CLJ6
- 06Quantitative Analysis: Overlapping Hours & Weekends
More on this topic: Trading, Perps & Derivatives