Overview
Week three of testnet focused on building competitive infrastructure and refining the desktop trading experience. The first Hypercall trading competition launches on Monday at 4 pm EST, backed by a full leaderboard system with real-time rank tracking. Alongside that, the trading shell got a desktop-first redesign (invite only), options chain navigation was overhauled, and the portfolio margin engine was restructured for more transparent margin breakdowns.
Key Updates
Trading Competition & Leaderboard
The competition system is live and ready for this weekend's launch. Users can view ranked leaderboards sorted by profit, volume, or efficiency, with the top three highlighted. A preview card on the mobile home feed shows your current rank and gap to the next competitor, updating in real-time over WebSocket. Clicking any trader opens their profile with margin details, P&L metrics, open positions, and trade history.
Options Chain Improvements
The options chain now remembers your scroll position when navigating away and returning, with the mark price row automatically centering on load. Horizontal and vertical scroll locking prevents accidental drift during interactions. On the charting side, the price chart Y-axis now rounds to the nearest strike grid, making it easier to visually compare spot price with available strikes. Decimal-aware scaling adjusts rounding precision based on strike spacing.
One-Click Instrument Selection
Clicking a position or open order in your portfolio now jumps directly to that instrument in the options chain! No more manually searching for contracts you already hold. This small change meaningfully speeds up order management workflows.
Portfolio Margin Engine Refactor
The margin calculation was restructured into three visible components: scanning risk, option floor, and gamma overlay. Initial margin is now computed as max(scanning_risk, option_floor) + gamma_overlay, a more conservative formula that incorporates a floor and gamma contingency. All three values are exposed in the API and WebSocket portfolio updates, giving traders direct visibility into what drives their margin requirements. The scenario grid model was also redesigned from single-axis shocks to combined spot and volatility shocks with probability weighting, so tail scenarios are priced more realistically.
Insights Section
A new insights section launched on the docs site. So far, we've put out 3 different research pieces:
- The JPM Collar: Why One Options Trade Moved the Entire Market: We go over the infamous JPM collar trade and the impact it has on markets. The last time this happened, we got liberation day: the largest crash since COVID. We put this into context and talked about what might happen this time.
- Everyone Is Hedged. Now What?: We covered the how options traders are pricing uncertainty in the crypto markets following Trump's new tariffs and Trumps speech about the Strait of Hormuz closure.
- Is AI Cooked?: We did a deep dive into how volatility traders are pricing risk in different parts of the supply chain from the demand layer all the way down to the lithography machines and looked at the role credit is likely to play in any demand collapse.
All these articles feature extensive data and analysis from real options markets. Insights is a crucial part of Hypercall's positioning as a way to trade volatility on any asset on chain. We look forward to sharing more.
Polish & Fixes
- 3x increase in first page load for unauthenticated users
- Performance chart on the mobile landing page now displays timestamps in UTC with proper axis rounding
- Page footers trimmed by removing collapsible metrics drawers for a cleaner, more focused layout
- Trade button restored on asset pages (was accidentally hidden)
- Option instrument candles endpoint added to the API, enabling historical price and volatility charting for options
Looking Forward
The first trading competition kicks off this weekend. The team is also preparing RFQ infrastructure for market maker integration, continuing desktop UI refinements, and expanding the insights section with weekly publications.
RFQ, in particular, represents our single largest effort right now and is how all markets will launch on day 1.
