# The Evolution of Commodities

> State of Commodities and a Quantitative Analysis of the Growth of these Markets Onchain

- Source: https://castlelabs.io/research/reports/the-evolution-of-commodities
- Published: March 2026, 71 pages; data as of March 2026
- Authors: Francesco, Noveleader
- Publisher: Castle Labs (https://castlelabs.io)
- Full PDF (free, email required): https://docsend.com/v/sjv2g/the_evolution_of_commodities

## Thesis

Tokenised spot commodities grew from $1.9 billion to more than $7 billion in one year, while commodity perpetual open interest on Hyperliquid passed $1.4 billion. The report compares the CME crude-oil contract with Hyperliquid's xyz:CL market to measure how 24/7 onchain venues handle price discovery, liquidity and execution outside traditional market hours.

## Key findings

- Tokenised spot commodities reached $7.4 billion, with tokenised gold responsible for most of the category.
- Commodity perpetual open interest on Hyperliquid exceeded $1.4 billion as HIP-3 expanded access to metals, energy and equity indices.
- CME revealed liquidity was 109 times deeper within 5 basis points, while xyz:CL weekend volume rose from $31 million to more than $1 billion across the three-week study.

## Key numbers

- $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

## What Are Tokenised Commodities?

Tokenised commodities are tokens backed by, or tracking, a physical commodity such as gold, oil, soybeans or electricity. Spot tokens represent ownership of the underlying; commodity perps give leveraged exposure without expiry. Both trade around the clock and settle onchain.

In March 2026 spot tokenised commodities were worth $7.4 billion, over 27% of the $27.35 billion of tokenised real-world assets, up from $1.9 billion a year earlier. Gold is most of it: over $5.9 billion, more than 75% of the onchain spot commodity market.

**The largest tokenised spot commodities, March 2026**

| Commodity | Main tokens | Value onchain |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Gold | Tether Gold (XAUT), Paxos Gold (PAXG) | Over $5.9B |
| Electricity | JWMH on Ripple | Over $800M |
| Soybean oil | JSOY_OIL (JusToken, Polygon) | Over $380M |
| Soybeans | JSOY (JusToken, Polygon) | Over $300M |
| Diamonds | Tokenised diamonds on Ripple | Over $100M |
| Cotton and corn | JCOT, JCORN (JusToken) | $19M and $16M |

Source: Castle Labs, The Evolution of Commodities (March 2026), from RWA.xyz data

Tokenised gold traded over $178 billion in 2025, up 227% year on year and second only to the GLD ETF globally.

## Can You Trade Oil on Weekends? Hyperliquid vs CME

CME commodity markets run about 6,400 hours a year, roughly 73% of calendar hours, and close at weekends. Onchain venues run all 8,760 hours. When the US and Israel struck Iran on Saturday 28 February 2026, CME oil contracts stayed frozen until Sunday evening, while Hyperliquid's oil perp on TradeXYZ (xyz:CL) kept trading.

We tracked xyz:CL against CME's April WTI contract (CLJ6) across the next three weekends. Hyperliquid's price is held inside discovery bounds when the CME reference is closed, which capped price discovery in the first two weekends.

**Three weekends of onchain oil trading, February to March 2026**

| Weekend | CME Friday close to Monday open | Hyperliquid xyz:CL | xyz:CL volume | xyz:CL trades |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 28 Feb to 1 Mar (Iran strikes) | $67.29 to $75 (+1,146 bps) | Reached about $70.80, roughly 45% of the gap, capped by discovery bounds | $31.3M | 26,140 |
| 7 to 8 Mar | $91.27 to $98 (+737 bps) | Reached about $95.83, 68% of the move | $611.6M | 529,232 |
| 14 to 15 Mar | $99.31 to $100.93 (+163 bps) | Traded at $101.56 at the CME open, a slight overshoot | $1,072.1M | 706,634 |

Source: CME CLJ6 trades via Databento; Hyperliquid xyz:CL fills from Hyperliquid's public S3 archive and API

Weekend volume grew from $31 million to over $1 billion in three weeks, and the average weekend trade grew from $1,199 to over $1,500, a sign of hedging flow joining retail speculation.

## Hyperliquid vs Ostium for Commodity Trading

The two largest onchain commodity venues make opposite design choices. Hyperliquid builds native order books and keeps markets open 24/7; Ostium quotes from the traditional markets' own prices and pauses market orders when those markets close.

**How the two venues differ**

|  | Hyperliquid (HIP-3, mostly TradeXYZ) | Ostium |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Pricing | Onchain order book; Pyth reference with discovery bounds off-hours | Direct oracle pricing from Chainlink Data Streams and Stork |
| Weekend trading | Yes, 24/7 | Market orders pause when the underlying closes; limit and stop orders queue |
| Maximum margin multiple | Up to 25x on commodities | Up to 100x in some markets |
| Scale | HIP-3 processed over $109B; commodities are over 16% of platform volume | Over $45B cumulative volume; commodities over $125M of about $200M OI |

Source: Castle Labs, The Evolution of Commodities (March 2026)

## Data tables

**Onchain oil vs CME oil during overlapping hours**

| Metric | Hyperliquid xyz:CL | CME CLJ6 |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Executed depth within 2 bps | $152K | $19M (125x) |
| Median trade size | $543 | $90,450 |
| Slippage on a $10K order | 0.77 bps | 0 bps |
| Slippage on a $100K order | 4.33 bps | 0 bps |
| Slippage on a $1M order | 15.4 bps | 0.79 bps |

Source: CME CLJ6 trades via Databento; Hyperliquid xyz:CL fills from Hyperliquid's public S3 archive

**CME commodity volume, February 2026**

| Segment | Average daily contracts | Change year on year |
| --- | --- | --- |
| All products | 37.6M (record) | +14% |
| Energy | 3.2M | +12% |
| Crude oil | 1.1M | Over +35% |
| Metals | 1.5M | Over +88% |
| Agriculture | 2.3M | +11% |

Source: CME Group monthly volume, February 2026

## Charts

- Commodity market size by product (PDF page 8): The global commodity market moves about $143 trillion in notional value. Oil is the largest single market at about $3.5 trillion, ahead of gold at $1.5 trillion and natural gas at $1.2 trillion.
- Relative performance of commodities, 1975 to 2025 (PDF page 8): Indexed to 1975 prices, most commodities have rallied since their pandemic lows in March 2020.
- Top five tokenised spot commodities (PDF page 17): Paxos Gold and Tether Gold make up most of the market. Both trade around the clock, settle instantly and move across chains, which traditional gold markets cannot do.
- HIP-3 volume as a share of Hyperliquid volume (PDF page 27): HIP-3 markets have processed over $109 billion and now make up about 25% of Hyperliquid's volume. Commodity trading alone is over 16%.
- HIP-3 volume by deployer (PDF page 28): TradeXYZ runs over 85% of HIP-3 volume. In February, Hyperliquid did over $4.09 billion of silver volume in 24 hours, more than many traditional venues trade in a month.
- Ostium daily commodities volume (PDF page 32): Over 95% of Ostium's open interest is in non-crypto assets. Cumulative volume passed $45 billion, metals drove over $7 billion of it, and gold is the most traded market.
- Liquidity depth: Hyperliquid oil (xyz:CL) vs CME (CLJ6) (PDF page 54): Within 2 bps of mid, CME offers $19 million of executable depth against $152K on Hyperliquid, a 125x gap. Onchain depth is under 1% of CME's.
- Slippage by order size during CME trading hours (PDF page 56): A $100K order slips 4.33 bps on Hyperliquid and nothing on CME. At $1 million it is 15.4 bps against 0.79 bps, about 20x, so the venue is not yet built for institutional size.
- Weekend slippage on Hyperliquid oil, three weekends (PDF page 57): Across three weekends, simulated slippage fell 16% for $10K orders, 75% for $100K orders and 86.9% for $1 million orders as the market matured.
- Hyperliquid (xyz:CL) and CME (CLJ6) oil prices (PDF page 59): During CME hours the two prices track closely, though a discount opened and widened as oil rose, most likely from funding pressure on crowded longs. At weekends the price band limits how far Hyperliquid can move.
- Weekend oil volume on Hyperliquid (PDF page 64): Weekend volume on xyz:CL grew from $31.3 million to $1,072.1 million in three weekends, and the number of trades rose from 26,140 to 706,634.

## Questions

### How big is the tokenised commodities market?

Spot tokenised commodities were worth $7.4 billion in March 2026, over 27% of the $27.35 billion tokenised real-world asset market, up from $1.9 billion a year earlier. Gold accounts for over $5.9 billion of it. On top of spot tokens, commodity perps on Hyperliquid carried over $1.4 billion of open interest.

### What is the largest tokenised commodity?

Gold, through Tether Gold (XAUT) and Paxos Gold (PAXG), with over $5.9 billion onchain and more than 75% of the spot commodity market. Tokenised gold traded over $178 billion in 2025, up 227% year on year, second only to the GLD ETF globally.

### Can you trade oil on weekends?

Yes, onchain. Hyperliquid's HIP-3 oil perps, mostly through TradeXYZ, trade 24/7 while CME is shut from Friday evening to Sunday evening. On the weekend of 7 to 10 March 2026, after the Iran strikes, just under $3 billion of commodities traded on Hyperliquid, and oil perps became its largest HIP-3 market.

### How does Hyperliquid price commodities when CME is closed?

TradeXYZ sends three prices per update: a Pyth oracle reference, a mark price limited to a 1% move per update, and an external safety price that falls back to an average of recent mark prices when Pyth stops updating. Discovery bounds cap how far the price can move from the last external reference, funding rates push it back toward the index, and the price snaps back when Pyth resumes on Monday.

### Is onchain oil as liquid as CME?

Not yet. In our March 2026 study, CME offered $19 million of executed depth within 2 bps against $152,000 on Hyperliquid, and a $1 million order slipped 15.4 bps on Hyperliquid against 0.79 bps on CME. For small orders the gap barely matters: a $10,000 order slipped 0.77 bps on Hyperliquid, and the median Hyperliquid oil trade was $543.

### How much commodity volume does Hyperliquid handle?

HIP-3 markets had processed over $109 billion by March 2026, about 25% of Hyperliquid's volume, with commodities over 16% of the platform total. On 5 February 2026 silver perps alone did $4.09 billion in 24 hours. TradeXYZ handles over 85% of HIP-3 volume.

### Will onchain venues replace the CME?

Our view is no. Electronic trading took CME from pits to Globex over 29 years and made it bigger, not smaller. The likely outcome is that CME adopts 24/7 trading and onchain settlement while onchain venues win the users CME cannot serve: small retail trades, non-US access and DeFi composability.

## Method

Castle mapped tokenised spot and perpetual markets, then compared CME CLJ6 trades from Databento with Hyperliquid xyz:CL fills from 27 February to 16 March 2026. Depth and slippage use executed fills rather than resting order-book quotes.

## Sources

- [RWA.xyz commodity dashboard](https://app.rwa.xyz/commodities)
- [Hyperscreener HIP-3 markets](https://hyperscreener.asxn.xyz/hip3markets/overview)
- [Hyperliquid HIP-3 specification](https://hyperliquid.gitbook.io/hyperliquid-docs/hyperliquid-improvement-proposals-hips/hip-3-builder-deployed-perpetuals)
- [CME crude-oil contract data](https://www.cmegroup.com/markets/energy/crude-oil/light-sweet-crude.quotes.html)
- [Ostium protocol data](https://dune.com/ostium_app/stats)