On-chain Changxin Storage? How are “unlisted company stock prices” on Hyperliquid generated?

Editor: Wu Talks Blockchain

TL;DR:

● Not a stock: CXMT is a Pre-IPO perpetual contract deployed by Trade.xyz via HIP-3. It tracks the U.S. dollar expected value of one A-share lot of Changxin Technology, and does not provide stock ownership, IPO allocation, dividends, or voting rights.

● Order-book-driven pricing: Trade.xyz artificially sets a $5 initial reference price; thereafter, the actual trade price is mostly determined by buy/sell supply and demand from Hyperliquid’s on-chain order book. Because there is no tradable spot before listing, the contract price does not need to stay close to the IPO offer price of 8.66 yuan.

● Multiple mechanisms to control volatility: An internal oracle updates using 30-minute EWMA smoothing based on the order book’s impact price. The mark price combines the oracle, a 150-second EMA of price deviation, and order book bid/ask data to compute P&L and trigger liquidations.

● Price guardrails can move dynamically: CXMT’s single Discovery Bound for one tier is 20%, and it allows re-anchoring upward and downward 7 times each. Therefore, the price sequentially touched $6, $7.2, and $8.64, instead of always being restricted to within 20% of $5.

● Switch to external pricing after listing: After Changxin Technology lists and generates sufficient market data, the contract is expected to convert into a standard stock perpetual. The oracle will switch to using the A-share RMB price to convert into USD. The price spread before and after conversion could cause P&L jumps or even trigger liquidations.

Changxin Technology has not officially listed on the STAR Market, yet a “share price” that can be traded for 24 hours has already appeared on Hyperliquid.

On July 14, Trade.xyz launched Changxin Technology’s Pre-IPO perpetual contract on Hyperliquid via the HIP-3 framework. The code is xyz:CXMT. The contract uses $5 as the initial reference price, supports up to 5x leverage, and is settled in USDC.

After the contract went live, the price successively touched $6, $7.2, and $8.64. As of 02:13 UTC on July 16, Hyperliquid’s on-chain data shows CXMT’s mark price at about $7.37, with about $50.56 million in 24-hour trading volume and an open position notional value of about $23.07 million.

Meanwhile, Changxin Technology has already set its A-share offer price at 8.66 yuan per share, with an offering valuation of 579.18 billion yuan, and it is expected to list on July 27. Using an exchange rate of about 6.77 yuan per USD, the $7.37 contract price on Hyperliquid corresponds to about 49.9 yuan, which is about 5.76 times the offer price. Based on an estimated 66.88 billion shares after the offering, this implies an equity value of about 3.34 trillion yuan. Reuters reported that some investors’ expectations for Changxin’s post-listing valuation cluster around 3 trillion to 5 trillion yuan.

But this $7.37 is not Changxin Technology’s real stock price, nor an implied valuation that Trade.xyz reads from some primary-market database. It is a derived product price jointly generated by the order book, the internal oracle, the mark price, the funding rate, and the price guardrails.

This is a contract about future stock prices

According to Trade.xyz’s official definition, Pre-IPO Perpetual, abbreviated as IPOP, is a cash-settled linear perpetual contract used for trading venues to reflect market expectations of the publicly traded equity value of a company after it goes public.

Specifically, the CXMT contract tracks the U.S. dollar value of one ordinary A-share of Changxin Technology, not the company’s total market cap. After listing, the oracle will convert Changxin’s RMB stock price into USD using the exchange rate at that time.

Holding the CXMT contract does not mean holding Changxin’s stock. Traders do not receive IPO allocations, dividends, or voting rights, nor can they convert the contract into real shares after listing. Longs and shorts are only trading their views on the future publicly traded market price.

Therefore, what’s traded on Hyperliquid is not “how much Changxin is worth right now,” but “what the traders participating in this contract think one share of Changxin might be worth after it lists.”

Hyperliquid provides the trading system; Trade.xyz sets the market rules

CXMT is not directly launched by Hyperliquid’s core team; it is deployed by Trade.xyz via HIP-3.

HIP-3 allows third-party developers to build their own perpetual contract markets on HyperCore. HyperCore handles the on-chain order book, matching, margin, liquidations, and settlement. The deployer defines the trading asset, oracle method, leverage cap, and risk parameters, and performs conversion or settlement when necessary.

In other words, this system has two layers of division of labor:

The mechanism layer mainly responsible party determines the limit order placement and matching so that the initial reference price and contract parameters define where the market begins and how it can run. The internal oracle and part of the mark price inputs are provided by Trade.xyz. The Trade.xyz Relayer converts order book information into the funding rate and a liquidation reference price. HyperCore manages position risk using the mark price.

So, while it uses a fully on-chain order book to execute trades and settlement, the pricing method and oracle updates still depend on Trade.xyz’s market design and the Relayer.

The first $5 is not market-discovered

Any price discovery needs a starting point.

Based on the CXMT contract parameters, Trade.xyz sets the initial reference price at $5. The official describes this price as a “discretionary reference price,” meaning a reference value chosen by the platform itself. It also explicitly states that it is not a prediction of the IPO offer price, the listing opening price, or the post-listing share price.

The official also did not disclose what specific financing round, what valuation model, or what institution’s quote the $5 is based on.

Therefore, CXMT’s pricing is not formed freely from scratch. Instead, Trade.xyz first sets the coordinate origin at $5, and then the order book begins trading around this origin.

That is the first step to understanding the entire mechanism: the initial price comes from the deployer, and later prices mainly come from traders.

The actual trade price is determined by the order book

After the market goes live, traders and market makers can submit buy and sell orders in HyperCore’s central limit order book. The system matches orders using price-time priority.

If the buyer is willing to buy at a higher price while the seller is not willing to sell at the current price, the trade price rises; otherwise, it falls. Before Changxin lists, there is no external market that can continuously provide real spot pricing, so there is also no external oracle forcing the CXMT contract to track the IPO offer price of 8.66 yuan.

This is clearly different from ordinary crypto perpetual contracts. With BTC perps, if the contract deviates from the BTC prices on multiple spot exchanges, arbitrageurs can buy and sell spot and contracts simultaneously to drive prices toward convergence. Before CXMT lists, there is no freely tradable spot and no real stock that can be delivered to the contract, so traders cannot perform the same risk-free arbitrage.

As a result, CXMT’s trade price can remain above or below the offer price for a long time. It reflects the order book participants’ expectations rather than a price that can be validated through spot arbitrage.

Why did the price stop at 6, 7.2, and 8.64 in sequence?

CXMT sets a 20% Discovery Bound, which is the price discovery range.

When the initial reference price is $5, the mark price can only move between $4 and $6. When persistent buy demand pushes the internal oracle close to the upper limit, the system can re-set $6 as the new reference price. Then the next tier range becomes $4.8 to $7.2.

If the price keeps rising, the reference price can move again to $7.2, and the new upper limit becomes $8.64.

This process can be expressed as:

First-tier upper limit: 5 × 1.2 = $6

Second-tier upper limit: 6 × 1.2 = $7.2

Third-tier upper limit: 7.2 × 1.2 = $8.64

CXMT allows re-anchoring up and down up to 7 times each. Therefore, 20% is only the instantaneous range relative to the current reference price at any given moment; it does not mean the price is forever limited to within 20% of the initial reference price.

This also explains the obvious step-like structure in CXMT’s early trading: $6, $7.2, and $8.64 are not three naturally formed technical resistance levels; they are price guardrails computed directly from the contract parameters.

This design can reduce the risk of being instantly pushed up or crashed through by a single trade when a new market launches, but it also affects price formation. When the market hits the upper limit, the chart does not necessarily show natural supply-demand equilibrium—it may just mean the price temporarily collided with the system’s boundary.

The oracle is not the latest trade price; it is a smoothed order-book price

Since CXMT has no external stock price to reference, it uses Trade.xyz’s internal oracle.

According to Trade.xyz’s oracle documentation, the system first computes the order book’s impact bid price and impact ask price—i.e., the average price when executing on the buy and sell sides for a specified notional amount.

It does not directly take the best bid, best ask, or the latest trade. Instead, it observes whether the order book as a whole is above or below the current oracle:

If the executable bid prices in the order book are overall higher than the oracle, the internal oracle gradually moves upward;

If the executable ask prices are overall lower than the oracle, the internal oracle gradually moves downward;

If the current oracle remains between the bid and ask books, the adjustment amount may be zero.

Then the system applies an EWMA smoothing with a time constant of 30 minutes to smooth this change.

This means the trade price can rise quickly, but the oracle will not jump by the same amount immediately. Only when higher bids and asks persist will the oracle gradually catch up to the market. Compared with directly using the latest trade price, this method is less likely to be pushed by a single small abnormal trade.

However, this also means the oracle is not an independent “fair value” set outside the market; it is a lagged and smoothed version of the order-book price.

Mark Price determines liquidation, but it is not the trade price

In addition to the trade price and the oracle, the system also has a Mark Price used to compute unrealized P&L, margin, and forced liquidation—i.e., the mark price.

According to Trade.xyz’s documentation, Mark Price is the median of the following three inputs:

The internal oracle price;

The oracle plus a 150-second EMA of the perpetual mid-price deviation relative to the oracle;

The median of the best bid, best ask, and the latest trade price.

Taking the median of three reduces the chance that a single anomalous input will directly trigger liquidation. The Relayer’s single update is also capped within ±0.5% of the current price to slow down sudden jumps.

Therefore, in the CXMT market there are several different “prices”:

Price — mainly used as the trade price, the actual buy/sell price that traders execute. Also used as an input to the oracle for the funding rate reference and as an input to Mark Price.

Oracle Price — used as an input reference for the funding rate and for calculating Mark Price.

Mark Price — used to compute unrealized P&L, margin, and liquidation.

IPO offer price — the real stock offer price; at present it does not directly constrain the on-chain contract.

What people commonly say in daily conversation—“CXMT went to $8”—usually refers to the order-book trade price or the mark price shown on the interface. During volatile periods, the two are not necessarily identical.

Funding rates provide “damping,” not a real stock anchor

Ordinary perpetual contracts rely on the funding rate to pull the contract price toward the spot price. But before CXMT lists, there is no spot. The funding rate can only measure the difference between the contract price and the internal oracle.

Trade.xyz sets the funding rate multiplier for IPOP to 0.005, while ordinary XYZ stock perps use a multiplier of 0.5. That means the funding rate strength of a Pre-IPO contract is only about 1% of a normal XYZ contract.

Funding rates are still paid hourly between longs and shorts, but their effect is greatly weakened. This is mainly because the internal oracle itself comes from the same order book. If the funding rate were too high, during the long wait for the IPO, one-sided positions could accumulate high carrying costs.

A low funding rate lets traders express their view on the listing price for a longer time. The trade-off is that the price lacks a strong external anchor. Funding rates can only suppress short-term deviations between the contract price and the internal oracle; they cannot determine whether Changxin should be worth 500 billion yuan or 3 trillion yuan.

After listing, external stock prices take over

After Changxin Technology begins normal trading on the STAR Market and generates enough external market data, CXMT is expected to convert into a standard stock perpetual contract.

At that time, the oracle will be based on Changxin’s A-share price and converted using the RMB-to-USD exchange rate at that time. The funding rate multiplier will also be restored from 0.005 back to 0.5, the standard value used for ordinary XYZ stock perps.

This conversion could be the real test for the contract.

If the real stock price after listing is close to the on-chain price, the internal oracle and external oracle can connect more smoothly. If there is a significant difference, the Mark Price may jump at conversion, causing changes in position P&L and potentially triggering liquidations.

Trade.xyz has set the expected listing date for CXMT as July 27, with the grace period latest until September 25. If listing is delayed for a long time or cancelled, the contract will default to settlement using a full-period TWAP from launch to settlement. But in cases such as mergers and acquisitions, major adverse events, or other special situations, Trade.xyz also retains the flexibility to use other settlement methods.

Does this “price discovery” actually have meaning?

Trade.xyz previously launched a Cerebras Pre-IPO contract, which provides a relatively successful example. Talos data shows that Cerebras’s Hyperliquid contract VWAP during the last hour before Nasdaq open was about $354.54, while the actual opening price was $350—a difference of about 1.3%. However, its IPO offer price was only $185. This suggests the contract is closer to predicting the open price of the public market rather than the offer price determined by underwriters.

But a single case is not enough to prove that this mechanism can stably and accurately price all companies before they go public.

The CXMT market has several limitations in particular.

First, before listing there is no direct arbitrage between spot and the contract; mispricing could persist. Second, on-chain participants are not the entire capital market—prices may be influenced by a small number of large accounts, crypto traders’ risk preferences, and liquidity structure. Third, the discovery range is artificially shaped to create short-term price paths; step-like breakouts are not purely the result of natural supply and demand. Finally, Trade.xyz is responsible not only for the initial price and contract parameters, but also for calculating and submitting oracle inputs; deployer risk cannot be ignored.

Therefore, the CXMT price on Hyperliquid is better understood as an expectation indicator that is public, continuous, and includes real funding costs—not a determined price after Changxin lists.

Conclusion

Hyperliquid did not calculate a pre-listing company’s share price out of thin air.

More accurately, Trade.xyz first sets an initial reference price of $5 and a set of market rules. Traders then express real buy and sell willingness via the on-chain order book. The internal oracle smooths the order book’s impact price into a funding-rate reference, Mark Price handles margin and liquidation, and Discovery Bound limits how fast the price can move in the short term. After the real stock is listed, the external A-share price then takes over the oracle.

So, the pre-listing “share price” on Hyperliquid can be summarized as:

A human-set starting point + order book supply and demand + internal oracle smoothing + funding rate damping + price-interval guardrails.

It is not Changxin Technology’s real stock price, and it is not a simple exchange of the IPO offer price. Instead, it is a collective bet by specific market participants, using real money, about the future publicly traded market price.