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Onchain Options and Volatility

Castle Labs tracks onchain options from exchange design to the trade: order-book venues such as Derive, income products such as Rysk, perpetual options, binaries and the prediction markets that price like them. Our July 2026 report, The Renaissance of Onchain Options, measured market share, premium and the BTC volatility surface, and our interviews with Rysk, Derive, Panoptic and GammaSwap cover what still holds the market back.

Flagship Research

July 2026

The Renaissance of Onchain Options

Mapping the expansion of options as a trading instrument and the volatility that prices them

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The Rebirth of Onchain Options: An Ecosystem View

The Rebirth of Onchain Options: An Ecosystem View

Options traded over 4x the contracts of futures in 2024. How onchain options moved past DOVs to order books, AMMs, perpetual options and short-dated binaries.

Mapping Onchain Options: Exchanges, Binaries and Yield Products

Mapping Onchain Options: Exchanges, Binaries and Yield Products

Onchain options in three families: Derive and Paradex order books, binary markets on Polymarket, Kalshi and HIP-4, and option yield products from Rysk and Hegic.

Questions Covered

Which onchain options platform is the largest?

Derive. Over the 30 days to late June 2026 it did $1.142 billion of notional, 79.2% of onchain options notional, though market-maker rewards and token incentives support that volume. Rysk was second with $136.3 million and Aevo third with $45.1 million.

What are perpetual options and who offers them onchain?

Perpetual options replace fixed expiries with a streaming premium, paid for as long as the position stays open. Panoptic builds oracle-free perpetual options from AMM liquidity, and Paradex offered them before pausing them in 2026 to focus on dated options. Castle's 2026 options research found these designs still mostly commercially unproven.

Are prediction markets the same as binary options?

For financial outcomes, yes. A BTC up or down contract pays $1 or $0 at expiry, the same as a binary option, so its fair price comes from the options market. In June 2026 Polymarket's BTC ladder and the Block Scholes options surface disagreed by up to about 6 points at some strikes.

Latest Options Research

Showing 1-4 of 4 articles

Prediction markets as option-like instruments
·OptionsDeep Dives

Prediction markets as option-like instruments

Prediction markets work like binary options, down to 300-second expiries. How Polymarket, Kalshi and Hyperliquid binaries compare as option-like instruments.

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Options from a Builder’s Perspective
·OptionsMarkets

Options from a Builder’s Perspective

A Gap Analysis with Interviews from Rysk, Derive, Panoptic, and GammaSwap.

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Don’t Trade Cryptos, Trade Rates: A Boros Funding Rates Primer
·OptionsTrading

Don’t Trade Cryptos, Trade Rates: A Boros Funding Rates Primer

Castle Labs research on Boros, Pendle’s yield-trading platform for funding rates, covering Yield Units, hedging use cases, vaults, liquidity, and power-user strategies.

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Demystifying Options: A 0 to 1 Guide about DeFi Options
·OptionsDeFi

Demystifying Options: A 0 to 1 Guide about DeFi Options

A beginner's guide to DeFi options: calls, puts and the Greeks, plus how Aevo, Lyra, Premia, Rysk, Dopex, Panoptic and others compare by liquidity model.

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