Ventuals to Compensate Users After SpaceX Perp Plunge

Decentralized derivatives platform Ventuals said it will compensate affected users within 48 hours after a pre-IPO SpaceX perpetual contract on Hyperliquid dropped roughly 45% in a 30-minute span, triggering liquidations across hundreds of accounts.

On Thursday afternoon the SPACEX-USDH contract fell from $2,277 to $1,254 before partially recovering to about $2,174, according to data from Hyperliquid. The rapid swing led to 484 liquidations and erased about $1.74 million in notional value over the prior 24 hours.

Ventuals attributed the cascade to incorrect data returned by an off-chain provider used in its oracle pricing system. The faulty feed moved both the oracle price and mark price sharply, which in turn forced automated liquidations on open positions.

In a post on X, Ventuals said it will make payments to affected accounts within 48 hours but did not specify amounts per user. The company added that it has taken steps to prevent the same issue from occurring on other pre-IPO markets and is reviewing the impact to determine appropriate redress. “We have taken immediate steps to prevent this from happening again on any of the pre-IPO markets, and are evaluating the impact it had on affected users for appropriate compensation,” the post read.

The SPACEX-USDH instrument is a crypto-denominated perpetual swap that tracks a speculative valuation of SpaceX ahead of a potential public offering. Traders in the contract do not hold the underlying shares, receive no physical equity and have no corporate voting rights. SpaceX has been reported as targeting an initial public offering in June.

Ventuals' website shows other pre-IPO perpetual contracts available on the platform, including an Anthropic contract with about $7.80 million in open interest and an OpenAI contract with about $3.34 million in open interest. The company did not provide a timeline for publishing a full post-mortem of the oracle failure.

Hyperliquid's on-chain and platform data remained the primary source for the liquidation and price movement figures in the most recent updates. Ventuals said it has implemented immediate measures and continues its review of system safeguards and user impacts.