Perpetual Futures Weekly Data Report - Week of August 24-30, 2026

All figures carry a stated UTC snapshot. Week-on-week changes are given as both an absolute move and a percentage, because one alone hides either scale or small-base distortion. Where a figure could not be verified it is printed as not disclosed.

1. Headline readings

2. Open interest: leverage is on, carry is not

Six of the eight largest perpetuals closed the week above a +2 open interest z-score. That is the highest concentration of the measure this desk has recorded in the series. Yet the cost of holding those positions stayed at or near each asset's own average.

The Solana line is the one to watch. Open interest rose 10.2% in a week to $2.51bn while spot fell 4.01%. Open interest building into a falling price means positions are being added against the move, which changes how the book behaves if support fails. The Zcash reading, at the 99th percentile of its own history on $1.15bn, is a similar pattern in a smaller book.

3. Funding: two conventions, one market

Perpetuals settle funding on different clocks, and the clock changes the headline number. Hyperliquid settles hourly, so its 0.0013% per hour on bitcoin annualises to roughly 11.4%. Venues that settle every eight hours produce figures on a different basis: bitcoin's 0.00906% per eight hours annualises to about 9.9%. The two are much closer than they first appear - which is the point. Comparing raw rates across venues without converting is the most common error in this market.

Across the Hyperliquid tracked cohort, open interest stood at $9.49bn and the open-interest-weighted average funding rate was 12.24% annualised. That aggregate is dominated by the large-cap cluster all printing the same 0.0013% per hour, which is why it sits close to the single-asset readings despite the extreme outliers.

4. Liquidations: longs paid for a flat week

In the 24 hours to 31 August, $438m was liquidated across 109,075 traders, split $298m long against $140m short - roughly 68% of the damage on the long side. Ether accounted for $138m and bitcoin $95.6m. The largest single liquidation was $6.1292m on ETHUSDT at Aster.

Over the prior two weeks the totals were far larger: $9.7bn in total, of which $6.55bn was short and $3.16bn long. Shorts absorbed roughly 67% of two-week liquidation damage, which is the mirror image of the 24-hour split. The market squeezed shorts in the back half of August and is now testing longs.

5. Venue share: the on-chain category

The ten venues above account for roughly 80% of the category's $533.63bn in 30-day volume and about 92% of its $22.44bn in open interest. The volume-to-open-interest column is the most informative line in the table. Hyperliquid turns its book over about 15 times a month; ApeX Protocol turns its own over 291 times. Both are real venues, but one holds committed capital and the other mostly cycles it - and that difference shows up as slippage when you try to exit size.

6. Collateral and volatility

Stablecoin market capitalisation, which is the effective ceiling on perp margin, held at $289.6bn with USDT at $183.3bn and USDC at $73.5bn - together about 89% of the total. The base was flat on the week, so the deleveraging in open interest was positional rather than a funding constraint.

7. What actually happened this week

Three things, in order of importance.

• Leverage built while carry normalised. Open interest reached +2 z-scores across six of eight large perps while funding printed its own average. The market added position without paying for it.
• The alt complex deleveraged. XRP -11.8% and Dogecoin -13.5% of open interest, TRUMP flipping to a crowded short, resolved the one-sided positioning flagged the previous week.
• Turnover grew as commitment shrank. Category 30-day volume held near $533.63bn while open interest fell -12.74%, and Hyperliquid's fee revenue still rose 23% month on month.

8. Fastest risers, steepest fallers, and anomalies

• Fastest riser: Solana perp open interest, +10.2% of book in one week, into a falling spot price.
• Steepest faller: Dogecoin open interest, -13.5%, alongside an 8.1% price decline. XRP close behind at -11.8%.
• Anomaly: NEAR funding at 24.31% annualised, the only perp above $150m of open interest beyond two standard deviations.
• Anomaly: cross-venue funding spread on SKR of 4,387.7 percentage points annualised. Not an arbitrage - a thin-book signal.
• Non-anomaly worth recording: no perpetual above $100m of open interest printed a liquidation z-score above 2 during the week. The leverage build did not produce forced exits.

9. Against the prior four weeks

The four-week context is what separates this week from a normal consolidation. Open interest is elevated by z-score across the large-cap cohort, funding is unremarkable, realised volatility has fallen sharply while twenty-day windows still hold the August rally, and the collateral base is flat. The combination - high commitment, cheap carry, low front-end volatility, stable collateral - is a market positioned for a move it is not paying to hold. It is not a warning of a specific outcome; it is a description of where the sensitivity sits.

The one number that would change the desk's reading is open interest rebuilding while funding climbs. As of the weekly close, open interest was still contracting in bitcoin-denominated terms - 331,100 BTC on 21 August to 318,600 BTC on 31 August, a 3.8% decline, with a further 2,850 BTC leaving open positions in the latest 24 hours. That is a deleveraging tape with a long-side rebuild inside it, and the two are fighting each other.

Sources

• Perp DEX category and venue data — DefiLlama, 31 August 2026. Source
• Liquidations and futures aggregates — CoinGlass, 31 August 2026, 23:23 UTC. Source
• Per-market funding and open interest — Hyperliquid public API, 1 September 2026, 14:02 UTC. Source
• Bitcoin funding and coin-denominated open interest — CryptoQuant, 1 September 2026. Source
• Stablecoin and price data — CoinGecko, 1 September 2026. Source
• Volatility and z-score readings — TradingRiot Market Digest, 1 September 2026. Source
• Swap and security-based swap definitions — SEC public filings, 27 August 2026. Source
• Cross-venue funding dispersion — Perps.com briefing, 1 September 2026. Source
• Hyperliquid-Payward talks — Bloomberg, reported by crypto.news, 31 August 2026. Source

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