Nick Forster | Derive

cofounder and CEO @DeriveXYZ

[Nick Forster | Derive @itseneff]

The vision for Derive - which a lot of people get wrong - is not just onchain Deribit.

We’re building the infinite payoff factory: any payoff, on any asset, 24/7.

Tailored yield generation, hedging, and speculation at institutional scale that can wrap around any high quality asset, be repackaged, and distributed wherever it’s needed across the Internet Financial System.

We’ve positioned Derive intentionally. Options venues take years of expertise, liquidity building, and grinding BD to reach competitive depth. That work is all coming together now.

Teams can integrate with Derive, add their own layer on top, and deliver differentiated financial products to their users, without spending years doing the most difficult parts.

This is why 20+ teams are already building on Derive. As more high quality assets come onchain at scale, we are readying our infrastructure for a world where that number to grow into the thousands.

[Nick Forster | Derive @itseneff]

What a difference a year makes

Last June Derive did $400m notional for the entire month
It's June 3, and we've already done $325m, with incentives down 90-95% and TVL all time highs

Year of options

[Nick Forster | Derive @itseneff]

🤔

[Nick Forster | Derive @itseneff]

There is NO better feeling than having your speculative deep OTM options go ITM - and having 50-100x leverage to the upside with capped downside

None

[Derive.xyz @DeriveXYZ]

Another one.

A Derive trader turned their ~$34k portfolio into ~$736k in a single trade buying $HYPE calls.

...And they're back at it, positioning for more upside now with call spreads. Godspeed.

[Nick Forster | Derive @itseneff]

You can create any financial payoff structure out of calls and puts.

This was the core thesis Derive was founded with, and maintains today.

More people are realizing this - options are the most programmable derivative, and onchain finance is the most programmable environment for capital.

[vitalik.eth @VitalikButerin]

Building index-tracking assets on top of options instead of debt

https://t.co/gFNEvCbHct

What if the use options as the base of defi, instead of CDPs and liquidations? So instead of extreme price movements creating a sharp and global "you get liquidated" effect, instead your exposure to the index diverges quadratically from your preferred exposure in a smoother way?

A key benefit is getting rid of the need for instant oracles, and instead making everything work on top of "slow oracles" (ie. the type that prediction markets use)

This design has a significant downside - the need to do regular rebalancing - and an open question of whether and how this rebalancing can be made slippage-resistant enough. But it's worth considering and trying IMO. I would feel much safer holding algostables inside something like this, than in something that depends on an oracle that has to give real-time answers (and therefore could be tricked into giving wrong real-time answers with no time for human recourse).

[Derive.xyz @DeriveXYZ]

That’s not a typo.

One trader bought ~$6k of $HYPE calls on Derive and walked away with ~$124k in profit 20 days later. A 1,815% return!

This wasn’t even the biggest HYPE win this week... more to follow.

[Nick Forster | Derive @itseneff]

@CptRandlelwa so it remains

[Nick Forster | Derive @itseneff]

Closing out May with our biggest month ever in $HYPE options, and another $2B month for Derive overall.

Exchange volumes have consolidated after March's breakout, and our market share keeps climbing against a quiet market backdrop.

New traders and liquidity providers keep flooding in. The flywheel is starting to spin, bring on June.

[Nick Forster | Derive @itseneff]

DRV now on Coinbase

[Derive.xyz @DeriveXYZ]

Derive (DRV) is now available on Coinbase.

DRV-USD spot trading is available on https://t.co/t5IQLG1Q0o, the Coinbase app, Coinbase Advanced and @CoinbaseMarkets Exchange, subject to Coinbase eligibility requirements and supported regions.

Base Contract address:
0x9d0E8f5b25384C7310CB8C6aE32C8fbeb645d083

[Derive.xyz @DeriveXYZ]

Derive (DRV) is now available on Coinbase.

DRV-USD spot trading is available on https://t.co/t5IQLG1Q0o, the Coinbase app, Coinbase Advanced and @CoinbaseMarkets Exchange, subject to Coinbase eligibility requirements and supported regions.

Base Contract address:
0x9d0E8f5b25384C7310CB8C6aE32C8fbeb645d083

[Nick Forster | Derive @itseneff]

@OndoFinance @cmsholdings Rest in peace Nathan - a true pioneer 🙏

[Muir @muir_eth]

Huge funding rate arb opportunities from the options flow

[Nick Forster | Derive @itseneff]

@degeneratoor yes

[Nick Forster | Derive @itseneff]

A successful options market requires more than volatility, it requires an asset whose holder base has three qualities:

Duration
Long term, high conviction holders thinking in months and years - not flipping every 1-2 weeks.

Nuance
Traders with views on distribution, not just direction.
“I don’t think $HYPE trades below $40 in the next 3 weeks, and I’m willing to sell that downside for yield.”

Natural hedgers
Businesses and ecosystems with real exposure to the asset’s performance.

$HYPE is the first crypto native asset in a long time where the holder base actually fits this profile. That’s why it has been the most successful options launch since $ETH.

As crypto consolidates around higher quality assets, and RWAs/tokenized equities bring more real world exposure - onchain options infrastructure becomes vastly more powerful.

Not just for speculation - for yield, hedging, and the next generation of onchain financial products.

[Derive.xyz @DeriveXYZ]

Today was our largest HYPE trading day, with almost $70M in HYPE options volume.

Since launching in Dec 2025, we’ve seen:
• $1.63B total notional traded
• $720M in HYPE options volume
• $27M of HYPE & kHYPE used as collateral

In under 6 months, HYPE is challenging ETH for Derive’s second-largest market.

[Carlos @0xcarlosg]

The day isn’t over, but @DeriveXYZ has already hit a new all-time high in $HYPE options volume at $53M, roughly 50% above the prior ATH.

Today’s tape has been defined by a sharp increase in trade size, led by two massive June 26 prints:
- 250k HYPE Jun. 26 $60 call buy
- 249.5k HYPE Jun. 26 $32 put buy
Each represented roughly $12M of underlying notional.

Beyond those outright positions, several of the next-largest trades were put-call packages, suggesting flow was not just directional, but also driven by traders buying convexity through more structured long-vol positioning.

[Nick Forster | Derive @itseneff]

@johnjjj1997 @dcfgod which boards are you looking at? occasionally on a price move MMers pull quotes briefly, but generally should be there (and in the RFQ, too)

[Nick Forster | Derive @itseneff]

Derive is the liquidity and risk layer for anyone who wants to manufacture financial payoffs onchain.

The risk engine supports portfolio or isolated margin across:
- Options
- Perps
- Spot
- Borrow/lend

Our endgame is a liquidity layer for derivatives where anybody can craft:

- Structured products for yield generation at institutional scale
- Precise, powerful hedging tools
- Tailored speculation (retail facing UI with short dated options for 100-1000x leverage, a LEAP trading interface for long term 2-3x leverage on high conviction names)
- Agentic finance (no human in the loop strategy implementation - agents will be able to grok options much more easily than most humans!)

It's been 5 years of building to get to this point, but the endgame is near.

[Nick Forster | Derive @itseneff]

@lempireAI tell me more

[Nick Forster | Derive @itseneff]

@liquidated_hl @DeriveXYZ Soon

[Nick Forster | Derive @itseneff]

Hearing that Derive's $HYPE options markets are the reference point for most of the OTC options activity globally.

Charts are uponly since launch - and with $HYPE breaking out of range/decoupling from the majors - I'm expecting a lot more trading activity and volatility to come.

Options are pricing a ~10% chance of $70 HYPE by end of June 👀

[Carlos @0xcarlosg]

Over the past 7 days, the largest $HYPE option trades on Derive have been overwhelmingly skewed toward short-dated call buying.

The two largest prints were both May 16 $44 call buys for 100k HYPE each on May 14, the day of the Coinbase/USDC announcement.

Since then, the tape has remained call-led, with large positions across May 19, May 22, May 29, and June 5 expiries.

There have been some downside expressions, including a June 26 $40 put on May 19, but the largest trades still point to active positioning for near-term upside.