Ventuals (formerly Shadow)
Defunct1 known investors
Ventuals ran perpetual-futures markets on private-company valuations and thematic stock indices on Hyperliquid; it sunset in June 2026.
Also known as Ventuals
Investors · 1
Company profile
researched Aug 2026Ventuals was a decentralized trading protocol that offered perpetual futures markets referencing the valuations of private, pre-IPO companies such as SpaceX, OpenAI and Anthropic, alongside thematic indices of public equities covering themes including nuclear, semiconductors, robotics and defence, plus commodities markets. The venue was built on Hyperliquid's perpetuals orderbook infrastructure using the HIP-3 builder-deployed perpetuals standard, and positioned itself as a single trading venue for exposure to frontier technology across private and public markets [0][1][2][6].
Contracts were linear valuation perps margined and settled in USDH, a US dollar-pegged stablecoin, with cash-settled PnL and no USDH/USD conversion, and supported long or short positions with up to 20x leverage (earlier testnet-era coverage described up to 10x) [0][5]. Rather than referencing share prices from actual transactions, pricing divided a company's total valuation by one billion, so a $35bn valuation implied a token price of $350 [4]. Pricing relied on an "optimistic oracle" in which participants could propose a valuation backed by staked collateral, with challenges resolved through a stake-and-vote dispute process; the oracle blended off-chain data feeds with an exponential moving average of the perp's own mark price [5][6][7]. The protocol also operated a points program, maker points, and vHYPE, a liquid staking construct backed by HYPE held in a Ventuals StakingVault on HyperEVM and HYPE delegated on HyperCore [0][2].
On June 15, 2026 Ventuals announced it was sunsetting, roughly nine months after launch. Reporting cited the company's own social media statement that the shutdown was not driven by losses but by an acquisition, with the team joining another project in the Hyperliquid ecosystem and users returned principal 1:1. Open positions were settled by freezing the trailing 24-hour average price, producing final marks of $1,341.80 for OpenAI and $1,618.90 for Anthropic [0][7].
Founding story
Ventuals was founded by siblings Alvin Hsia and Emily Hsia, who had previously built Shadow (Shadow.xyz), a data infrastructure platform for developers focused on efficient on-chain data extraction that raised a $9 million seed round led by Paradigm. Paradigm again backed the founders with Ventuals, which was described as incubated by Paradigm [5][6].
Business model
Ventuals operated as a HIP-3 perpetuals deployer on Hyperliquid, listing and running its own perp markets rather than building an exchange, and earning a share of trading fees generated on those markets [0][2][5].
Revenue came from trading fees paid by users on the Hyperliquid markets Ventuals deployed. Per DefiLlama's methodology, roughly half of fees accrued to the deployer as protocol revenue and the rest to Hyperliquid; cumulative fees reached $255,991 against cumulative revenue of $124,779 [2].
Traction
DefiLlama recorded $649.24m in cumulative perp volume on Hyperliquid L1, $255,991 in cumulative fees and $124,779 in cumulative revenue, with TVL of $1.13m at the time of the snapshot and quarterly gross protocol revenue of $63.35K in Q4 2025, $114.95K in Q1 2026 and $77.69K in Q2 2026, falling to $0 in Q3 2026. A separate analysis reported $367m in cumulative trading volume since inception in November, roughly $250m of which came in the preceding month, with the SpaceX, OpenAI and Anthropic perps accounting for 20.3% of cumulative volume and 57% of the $9.5m in total open interest, while the MAG7 index drove 43% of volume but 18.6% of open interest [2][3].
Latest developments
Ventuals announced its sunset on June 15, 2026. Its documentation site carries the sunset notice, and reporting states the team said it had been acquired and would join another project in the Hyperliquid ecosystem, with users made whole at 1:1 on principal. Positions were settled using the frozen trailing 24-hour average price, giving final marks of $1,341.80 for OpenAI and $1,618.90 for Anthropic. DefiLlama shows zero fees, revenue, perp volume and open interest in the most recent periods [0][2][7].
▸Full profile — market position, technology, go-to-market, history, risks & controversies
Market position
Ventuals was one of several projects attempting to open pre-IPO exposure to retail participants, alongside asset-backed tokenization models such as Jarsy and PreStocks, and it differed from traditional secondary platforms like Forge Global and EquityZen by trading valuation derivatives permissionlessly rather than actual shares. DefiLlama classified it under Hyperliquid HIP-3 deployers and ranked it first by TVL within its tracked Interface category, at 67.9% of that category's $1.67m. In pre-IPO perps on Hyperliquid it was ultimately overtaken by Trade.xyz, which was reported to hold more than 90% of open interest in Hyperliquid pre-IPO contracts and cumulative volume above $130bn [2][4][5][7].
The platform generated prices for assets with no reliable public price feed by creating them inside the protocol via an optimistic oracle, and gave permissionless access to private-company exposure without accreditation, paperwork or large minimum checks, since users traded derivatives on valuation rather than owning underlying shares [1][4][5].
Technology
Perpetual futures deployed under Hyperliquid's HIP-3 builder-deployed perpetuals standard on the Hyperliquid L1, using Hyperliquid's orderbook infrastructure for sub-second latency and high order throughput. Pricing used a proprietary optimistic oracle combining off-chain valuation data feeds with an exponential moving average of the perp's own mark price, with proposals and challenges backed by staked collateral and resolved by vote. Wallet onboarding was handled through Privy, allowing email or Google sign-in. Contracts, audits and a bug bounty were documented, and an API was published for developers [0][5][6][7].
Go-to-market
Ventuals launched with a free-to-join testnet at testnet.ventuals.com offering test USDC and signalling that top testnet contributors might benefit later, then moved to live markets. It used email/Google onboarding via Privy to lower friction, and ran referral, points, maker-points and vHYPE incentive programs [0][5].
Retail and crypto-native traders seeking long or short exposure to private-company valuations and technology themes without accreditation requirements, as well as institutional participants holding secondary positions in companies such as SpaceX, OpenAI or Anthropic who could use the perps as a hedge against valuation compression before an IPO [1][3][5][6].
History
Coverage in August 2025 described Ventuals as pre-launch, with the HIP-3 standard then running only on testnet. A testnet campaign ran at testnet.ventuals.com. One analysis dates inception of trading to November, and shutdown coverage says the platform launched and closed nine months later. On June 15, 2026 Ventuals announced it was sunsetting and published a sunset page and sunset guide [0][3][4][5][7].
Risks & controversies
Analysts flagged oracle dependency as a structural weakness: private-company valuation data is opaque and infrequently updated, and Ventuals' oracle derived roughly half of its reference from a moving average of the contract's own price, which critics said created a self-referencing loop in which buying pressure raised the oracle and the price ceiling. This reportedly left OpenAI and Anthropic contracts pinned at the ceiling with sell orders and liquidations hard to execute and intermittent trading in some markets. Pre-IPO trading was also described as carrying information asymmetry, company-failure and regulatory risk, including SEC restrictions and lock-up periods, and the underlying assets lacked near-term IPO dates that would anchor prices to a public print [4][6][7].
Compiled by commissioned research from 8 cited public sources — announcements, filings, and press listed under research sources below.
Key figures
latest reportedCompany-reported or press-reported figures, each dated to when it was claimed — not independently audited.
Timeline · 4
launches, deals, and filingsVentuals announced it was sunsetting roughly nine months after launch, publishing a sunset page and guide. Reporting cited the company's statement that it was acquired rather than closing due to losses, with the team joining another project in the Hyperliquid ecosystem and users returned principal 1:1; positions were settled at the frozen trailing 24-hour average price.
Ventuals added perps on indices of public companies organized by themes such as nuclear, semiconductors, robotics and defence, alongside commodities markets; the MAG7 index became the largest source of trading volume.
Ventuals began trading perpetual futures on private-company valuations built on Hyperliquid's HIP-3 standard; one analysis dates inception to November, and DefiLlama records first protocol revenue in Q4 2025.
Ventuals ran a free-to-join testnet at testnet.ventuals.com where users signed up with email or Google via Privy, received testnet USDC and traded leveraged long/short positions on assets such as OpenAI and SpaceX; the team hinted top testnet contributors might benefit later.
Dated company events from announcements, filings, and press; legal rows summarize public dockets and regulator releases.
▸Research sources · 8
primary sources listed
- Welcome to Ventuals | Ventualsdocs.ventuals.com · web
8 public sources were cited for this profile; the first-party ones are listed here.
Frequently asked questions
- What does Ventuals (formerly Shadow) do?
- Ventuals ran perpetual-futures markets on private-company valuations and thematic stock indices on Hyperliquid; it sunset in June 2026.
- Who are Ventuals (formerly Shadow)'s investors?
- Ventuals (formerly Shadow)'s investors include Paradigm.