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Who is Trading on Trade.xyz?

Jaleel加六

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Over 30,000 wallets, all stemming from the same Polymarket account named 'Themino'

Original Title: "Who is actually trading on Trade.xyz?"

Original Author: @web3_pastel, Arrakis Finance

Translator: Jaleel Jia Liu, BlockBeats

Editor's Note:

Within the realm of Hyperliquid, one of the most prominent names in 2026 is Trade.xyz. It is the first product to emerge after the launch of HIP-3's "permissionless perpetual market deployment framework," bringing assets such as US stocks, crude oil, and silver from the traditional financial realm, which used to operate only during certain hours, to a 24/7 on-chain order book.

In just a few months, it has grown from a niche experiment with only the XYZ100 index to a chain-based trading venue handling oil, Tesla, silver, and other markets, with an average monthly trading volume exceeding $500 billion.

However, concurrently, there has been considerable discussion outside the web about its controversies: among those impressive wallet numbers, how many belong to real individuals versus those chasing unreleased tokens or algorithmically generated witches?

An Arrakis study has provided a quite intriguing result: indeed, there is a witch layer, with over 30,000 wallets traceable to the same Polymarket account "Themino"; yet, it is backed by people, not dollars. What truly drives the trading volume are several professional market makers, several order-eating bots from Bybit backgrounds, and a retail long tail highly overlapped with Polymarket.

Below is the full article:

Abstract

When we wrote the first article "Who is trading on HIP-3?" our attribution was statistical. We categorized based on each wallet's trading behavior over the past three months: wallets mainly placing orders were classified as market makers, addresses engaging in high-frequency order-taking as arbitrageurs, and orders with low fill rates and a builder tag were classified as retail. This method did reveal some interesting market structure characteristics, but the categorization is probabilistic, with around 70% of wallets still uncategorized.

This article replaces statistical inference with mechanized classification. Each order on @HyperliquidX comes with a set of deterministic tags signed and issued by the exchange: Time in Force (ALO, GTC, IOC, FrontendMarket), builder code, trade sign, holding time. We categorized each wallet into one of four categories using this order metadata: Retail, Liquidity Provider, Arbitrage Bot, and Airdrop Farm.

The second step is to identify the wallets behind these categories, extracting identity and transactional behavior data from @arkham and HyperTracker's API. The top 450 wallets accounted for 78% of the total trading volume. Within this set of wallets, we identified several accounts linked to @Polymarket, @jump_, @SeliniCapital, @wintermute_t, Abraxas Capital, among others.

Through this two-step classification process, we observed several patterns, which will be detailed below.

Trade.xyz Wallet Analysis

The observed period spans from March 10, 2026, to March 31, 2026, totaling 21 days. During this time, the four markets on @tradexyz (xyz:CL Crude Oil, xyz:SILVER Silver, xyz:TSLA Tesla, xyz:XYZ100) saw a total of 79,622 unique participating wallets and a total trading volume of $519.5 billion.

The 79,622 participating wallets broken down by trading volume. Despite accounting for less than 0.5% of the wallet total, Liquidity Providers handled 63% of every dollar traded.

Classified by wallet count (not trading volume). Airdrop Farm accounts alone amount to 35,091 wallets, nearly half of the identified wallets

The Airdrop Farm category appears as one of the largest categories by wallet count but the smallest by trading volume share. 35,091 wallets represent 44.07% of the total wallet count, yet generated only $400 million in trading volume during the entire window, accounting for just 0.77% of the $519.5 billion total volume on the trading venue. Nearly half of the active wallets on Trade.xyz contributed less than 1% of the total volume.

Upon market breakdown, another distinct pattern emerges.

Wallet Market Distribution. xyz:CL absorbed 99.3% of the airdrop farming accounts due to its optimal execution cost

Out of 35,091 airdrop farming accounts, 34,859 (99.3%) traded xyz:CL within this window, while the remaining 232 were spread across xyz:SILVER, xyz:TSLA, and xyz:XYZ100. This pattern aligns with the characteristics of airdrop farming accounts: each wallet engaged in repetitive small-scale bidirectional trades to inflate trading volume without taking on price risk. This strategy relies on tight execution costs and is highly sensitive to slippage. xyz:CL boasts the best depth among the four markets on Trade.xyz, naturally making it the preferred venue for such activities.

Another notable observation is the identity behind these addresses. On-chain tracking data to be presented below reveals that 34,553 of the farming account wallets are associated with a single Polymarket operator. This one entity alone represents 43.4% of all participating wallets on Trade.xyz during this window.

On the other end of the spectrum is market-making. 363 wallets, comprising 0.46% of total active addresses, drove $32.75 billion in volume during the window, 63% of every dollar on Trade.xyz. The remaining three categories fall in between. 522 SAT/HFT bots contributed $3.5 billion (6.7%). 38,307 wallets classified as retail contributed $8.7 billion (16.7%). 5,339 uncategorized wallets contributed $6.61 billion (12.7%).

The 12.7% volume in the uncategorized category cannot be qualitatively classified solely based on metadata. A reasonable speculation is that a significant portion comes from retail users placing limit orders via the Hyperliquid frontend or market and limit orders via the Trade.xyz frontend. Both these channels do not append explicit builder codes or dedicated TIF labels to orders, rendering these executions invisible under metadata-driven classification methodologies.

Weighted Average Order Type Distribution by Category. Market makers unsurprisingly have 98.5% placed as ALO orders, with arbitrage bots utilizing 100% IOC orders. The uncategorized category sees 71.5% as GTC, a hallmark of manual limit order placement by frontend users

The TIF provides support for the above speculation: 71.5% of orders in the uncategorized category are tagged with a GTC (Good Till Cancel) time validity label, which is commonly used when a frontend user places a static limit order.

「Themino」 Unveils Over 30,000 Wallets

Over the past few weeks, there has been much discussion in the market: Was the impressive user count on Trade.xyz driven by genuine human participation or by activity of airdrop farming accounts prior to the expected TGE? We do not intend to comment on the broader farming activity of the exchange, but after analyzing the transaction-level data of four Trade.xyz markets in March, a noteworthy pattern did emerge.

Analyst Jascha notes that 92.5% of XYZ addresses have never transacted on any other HIP-3 deployer

Among the 34,602 wallets categorized as airdrop farming accounts, 34,553, or 99.9%, can be traced back to a single entity named 「Themino」 on Polymarket.

「Themino」, a Polymarket entity on Arbitrum, spawned 70 distinct linear chains, covering 34,553 wallets

How was this operation carried out? Hyperliquid's L1 provides a primitive called internalTransfer, which allows the transfer of USDC between wallets with a fixed fee of $1 regardless of the amount. The operator of Themino utilized this primitive to sequentially move a seed deposit through tens of thousands of brand-new wallets. Each wallet would execute the same five-step action set in approximately 26 seconds:

1. Receive $X from the previous farming wallet via internalTransfer, with a $1 HL transfer fee deducted along the way.

2. Transfer $14 to the xyz sub-account.

3. Execute two IOC orders on xyz:CL, one buy and one sell, resulting in two trades and adding some trading volume.

4. Transfer around $13.99 back to the main account (the $0.01 difference is a reserve for execution slippage and transaction fees).

5. Deduct $X by $1 and transfer it to the next rug-pull wallet via internalTransfer.

The next wallet then repeats the same set of actions.

Through 34,510 internal transfers, Themino lost a total of $34,510 in protocol fees, a strategy that is in line with his trading history on Polymarket.

On Polymarket, Themino also bet on "Will the US strike Iran before February 28, 2026?" with a "No" outcome, losing about $80,000. The strike occurred on February 28.

What are the different types of Builders?

Hyperliquid will assign an identifier to orders routed through a third-party frontend, allowing these apps to charge custom frontend fees. This identifier is the builder code, the most direct indicator of which interface a wallet is using (if any). Among wallets that have traded on four markets, these builders can roughly be classified into three types.

Algorithmic Builders. These are designed for retail users to maximize trading volume on DEXs and earn points for potential airdrops. Before the end of 2025, scoring points on perpetual DEXs either meant wash trading or running nondirectional algorithmic bots against each other, which was costly for participants and detrimental for exchanges. Retail market-making bots like @tread_fi, @PlanemoTrading, and @origamitech_ have replaced wash trading with truly valuable market-making practices. Every order these products send is post-only, meaning wallets are adding liquidity to the order book rather than consuming it.

As CEO @davidyjeong of @tread_fi stated: "Before retail market-making solutions emerged, scoring points on perpetual DEXs meant wash trading to artificially boost trading volume at the cost of execution fees, slippage, and ban risks. We have solved this issue with a novel point-scoring strategy: robots only place maker orders on both sides. Users can score points at a lower cost, often profiting from the captured spread, with the side effect of the market gaining genuine top-of-the-book liquidity, which is precisely what the HIP-3 perpetual stock market needs for overnight and weekend liquidity that traditional market makers are reluctant to provide. This is a better way to score points and a key reason why the HIP-3 market has excellent execution today."

These liquidity bots' contribution to the market is most evident during periods when traditional market makers are absent. The CME's WTI futures close on Friday afternoon and reopen on Sunday evening, creating a similar "overnight and weekend" gap for perpetual stocks. During these periods, retail liquidity bots supported the order book on markets such as xyz:CL and xyz:TSLA.

It is important to note that in this analysis, we categorize wallets routed through these algorithmic products as airdrop farming accounts, but their trading behavior and market impact are structurally separate from witching activities.

Wallet-Embedded Builders are perpetual contract interfaces embedded within consumer-grade wallets. Since early 2026, this type of integration has become one of the largest sources of retail order flow on HIP-3. This group includes @phantom, @MetaMask, @Rabby_io, @rainbowdotme, and @OneKeyHQ. The median transaction volume per wallet ranges from $1,000 to $3,000, aligning with an order size of a retail cohort that values usability more than marginal builder fees.

Application Builders, on the other hand, are standalone perpetual front ends and integrated products: aimed at traders, offering specialized workflows, and serving users who find wallet plugins insufficient and need better order placement, charts, position management, and execution tools. This group has fewer wallets than wallet-embedded types, but higher transaction volumes per wallet, aligning with a higher-tier user cohort that values functionality depth over plug-and-play convenience. These products include @InsilicoTrading Terminal, @liquidtrading, @hypurrdash, @BasedOneX, @Dreamcash, @infinex, @pear_protocol, @defiapp, @pvp_dot_trade.

@InsilicoTrading Growth Lead @0xVKTR (the team behind Insilico Terminal) describes it this way: "At Insilico, we see the HIP-3 market as the next step in bringing real-world exposures native to the crypto track. Traders want more than just another front end. They want fast execution, clean market access, and the ability to seamlessly switch between crypto and macro assets, without leaving existing workflows. Trade.xyz is a prime example of this need. The order flow routed through Insilico proves that when the trading venue is deep, the product is useful, and the trading experience is tailored for serious participants, on-chain perpetuals have a real user base of high-tier users."

Who Is the Largest Market Maker on Trade.xyz?

The market-making landscape on Trade.xyz is highly concentrated. The top 5 market makers account for 50% of the total market making volume, the top 13 account for 80%, and the top 21 account for 90%. A few prominent market makers support the majority of the exchange's market-making activity.

Market-making volume distribution by wallet ranking. The top 5 market maker wallets represent 50% of total market flow, the top 13 represent 80%, and the top 21 represent 90%.

The second-largest market maker is one of the most intriguing wallets in the entire sample. The wallet address 0xc926ddba...98d3 has a trading volume of $43.9 billion, a fill rate of 0.52%, embodying the textbook maker profile. Arkham has identified this address as "Powell" on Polymarket. Surprisingly, one of the largest market makers on Trade.xyz is a Polymarket user who runs market making across multiple markets on HIP-3.

Other notable market-making entities:

Jump Crypto operates two wallets, totaling $31.5 billion, with funds coming from 0xf584...d621, a wallet clustered by Arkham as part of Jump's treasury, holding over $160 million in diversified inventory covering LINK, LIT, EIGEN, BNB, ETH, USDC, and USDT.

Selini Capital runs three wallets: two pure maker quotes (0x44a3e1...35dd, 0x76987c...4480) and one pure aggressive taker (0x427be6...d1d9), all through API. Selini totals $10.3 billion. It is labeled in Hyperliquid's own order flow, distinguishing Selini's market-making wallets from its HFT wallet, with the same market maker simultaneously providing liquidity on both sides of the book.

Wintermute runs a market-making wallet with $2.296 billion (0xecb63caa…2b00) in size, smaller than Jump or Selini. The funds are sourced from @okx.

Trade.xyz's top market makers ranked by trading volume. Powell, Jump Crypto, Selini Capital, and Wintermute occupy the part of the ledger with visible attribution

Apart from these well-known market-making desks, most of the liquidity comes from wallets with no entity attribution but clean fund sources: @krakenfx, @binance, @coinbase, @unitxyz bridging, or HL native funds. Their behavioral patterns fall under market-making, but the operators have never touched any service that Arkham could trace back to an identity with a label.

The median order-to-trade ratio for market makers is 19.4, meaning that for each trade, about 18 orders were placed, part of a bid-ask spread, and then canceled. Similarly, the top 5 market makers repeatedly appear on four xyz markets simultaneously, indicating these are cross-market-quoting desks rather than four separate businesses.

During the observation window, the market makers' liquidation rate was 19.2%, almost on par with retail traders at 20.4%. Market makers on Trade.xyz take directional exposure when their quotes are hit: when a sell order matches a bid order, the desk goes long; when a buy order hits an ask order, the desk goes short. During the volatile oil movement in March, the speed of inventory accumulation in the ledger outpaced the speed of market maker hedging, resulting in one-fifth of market makers experiencing at least one liquidation.

Statistical Arbitrage Taker Side / High-Frequency Trading Bots

SAT is the counterparty to market maker wallets. These wallets run over 90% IOC (Immediate or Cancel) order combinations, pure aggressive taker-side bots dedicated to hitting the quotes posted by market makers.

Top SAT/HFT bots ranked by trading volume. The first 4 wallets represent 89% of the SAT ledger, with funding concentrated on Bybit

Out of the $3.5 billion in the SAT ledger, the top 4 Sats accounted for $3.1 billion, with a concentration of 89%. Two of them are running at 100% IOC, meaning every order they place is "Immediate or Cancel," with no maker intent whatsoever.

Funding source clustering has identified @Bybit_Official as the primary SAT profile. The majority of the top SAT's trading volume can be traced back to wallets funded by Bybit, aligning with the profile of a single bot operator or a small bot operator circle.

Three of the SATs are associated with Polymarket accounts: loracles (trading volume $15.5 million, HL P&L +$25.7 million), Conduit ($5.3 million), ChadwickLongman ($3.7 million). Polymarket appears here for the same reason it dominates in the retail section below, as the prediction market crowd is the most common cross-platform identity on Trade.xyz.

During the window period, the SAT liquidation rate was 8.1%, about half of the LP and retail liquidation rate. This group is the most risk-averse on the ledger, hedging their positions externally and rarely triggering margin calls.

Retail Overlaps Extensively with Polymarket

We conducted a deep dive into the top 400 retail wallets, excluding algorithmic products mentioned earlier (Tread.fi, Planemo Trading, and the broader algorithm builder community), which transact via the Hyperliquid UI and wallet-embedded frontend routing orders.

The top 400 retail wallets by trading volume categorized by attribution. Polymarket identified wallets dominate in the known portion, contributing $1.63 billion in volume to this group.

Polymarket: Polymarket account identifiable through the Arkham on-chain labeling system.

@ensdomains/Social Identities: ENS name or other social graph identifier holders that cannot be traced back to Polymarket accounts.

CEX Deposit: Funds originated from a centralized exchange's anonymous wallet.

Bridge Deposit: Deposit from an anonymous wallet via a cross-chain bridge.

Others: Self-custody EOA, smart contract infrastructure, empty address activity.

Most notably, Polymarket dominates. Out of 400 top retail wallets, 94 wallets, representing 22% of the top retail trading volume ($1.63 billion), are attributed to identifiable Polymarket users. This is the largest identifiable single cohort within the retail bracket. Combining Polymarket Market Makers (Powell, $4.39 billion) and three Polymarket-related SATs ($24 million) brings Polymarket's total footprint on Trade.xyz to about $6 billion.

Among the top 15 retail wallets by trading volume, some Polymarket wallets included:

This overlap is not surprising. Polymarket and Trade.xyz provide exposure to real-world outcomes for native crypto users through two different market structures, prediction markets, and perpetual futures. Wallet-level data shows the same cohort of users transacting back and forth between two ledgers from the same EVM address.

ENS holders contributed an additional 26 retail wallets, totaling approximately $400 million. Notable wallets include caydenb.eth ($33 million), eggnoodle.eth ($33 million), ethmerg.eth ($19 million), baitf1sh.eth ($16 million), wanyekest69.eth ($6.8 million, cumulative P&L +$17.6 million).

Anonymous wallets split by funding source:

CEX Deposit retail wallets split by exchange source. Kraken leads by a significant margin in the unidentified CEX deposit cohort

Bridged retail wallets receiving bridging deposits from a source-bridged split. Hyperunit and deBridge dominate the bridging deposit cohort, with Stargate and the long tail making up the rest

@krakenfx dominates the CEX deposit cohort. Hyperunit and @debridge lead the bridging deposit cohort, with @StargateFinance and a long list of other bridges making up the remainder. In other words, the three primary personas truly driving the Trade.xyz order book are: Polymarket cross-chain traders, independent traders depositing on Kraken, and DeFi natives entering through Hyperunit or deBridge.

When the liquidity providers, SAT, and retail traders are recombined, we get a concise picture of the Trade.xyz participant base, already stripped of the witching layer to be discussed below.

The participant base post-witching layer extraction. A few professional liquidity providers quote to several bot squads, along with a long tail composed of Polymarket veterans and CEX deposit independent traders who place targeted bets through the Hyperliquid UI

A few professional liquidity providers quote to several bot squads, along with a long tail composed of Polymarket veterans and CEX deposit independent traders who place targeted bets through the Hyperliquid UI, forming the merged view of the Trade.xyz ledger.

Summary

Recent discussions around Trade.xyz have focused on one question: is participation genuine, or is this exchange actually dominated by the anticipated TGE-driven witching? The analysis provides a layered answer.

Like any pre-TGE DeFi market, Trade.xyz does indeed have a witching layer, with a typical example being an operator using a "baton-passing" rug-pulling approach, running tens of thousands of wallets. However, the witching layer is propped up by wallet count, not USD transaction volume.

We have not found any evidence of an independent high-volume wash trading operation built to inflate USD transaction volumes. The seemingly wash-traded portion in the data is mostly executions by retail market-making bots: wallets posting on both sides, adding depth to the order book's top, not consuming it.

The real trading volume comes from identifiable ledgers. A significant portion of the top retail wallets carry a Polymarket account, ENS records, or social graph identifiers, while the largest crypto liquidity providers (Jump Crypto, Selini Capital, Wintermute) have also left clear footprints, alongside the hedge fund Abraxas Capital. The high overlap between the retail cohort and Polymarket is quite unusual, considering the latter is a product built around the same speculative preferences.

The inflated wallet count is a predictable behavior before a token generation event (TGE), but this does not extend to the dollar trading volume nor to the identifiable cohorts carrying this volume.

A special thanks to HyperTracker and numerous contributors for their help with data availability.

For the full methodology, please visit our blog.

Authored by: @web3_pastel Design and Editing: @oxillustration, @mchammond Special thanks to @0xArchiveIO, @HyperTracker (provided by @Coinmarketman), and @stacy_muur for their contributions to this research. This article is for reference and educational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice. Arrakis has made reasonable efforts to verify the accuracy of the data in this article but does not guarantee that all information is accurate, complete, or timely.