LayerV | On-chain options

Yield is DeFi’s strongest product. But the next phase of yield will not be built only on incentives, leverage demand, or crowded trades. It will be built on deeper financial markets. Volatility is one of them. Every market has uncertainty. Options turn that uncertainty into a price, a hedge, a risk transfer, and a yield source.

While tokenised stock market cap has grown by +590% since the start of 2026, onchain options development is telling a different story. Options have historically been perceived as complex instruments, often used by sophisticated traders or institutions seeking tailored risk management tools. Crypto options are already established on centralised exchanges, concentrated in a few crypto-native assets, and remain nascent onchain despite the rise of tokenised stocks, commodities and money market funds. Options markets are in fact among the more demanding to develop, for several reasons: 1. Market makers need deep and liquid spot or futures markets to quote efficiently and hedge their exposure, particularly their portfolios’ delta. 2. Past limitations of AMM-based options DEXs and blockchain execution, combined to extreme volatility of crypto assets during their early phases, made execution costly. 3. The complexity of options has historically limited retail participation, making it harder for onchain venues to attract organic trading flow. In traditional finance, options give investors greater control over the risks they take. Across equities, indices, currencies and commodities, they allow investors to protect a holding for a chosen period, earn premiums in exchange for accepting obligations, construct trades with defined downside or manage volatility. Tokenisation brings those financial needs onchain. As more assets become part of actively managed portfolios, deep onchain options markets will become increasingly important for efficient risk transfer. At LayerV, we are taking a product-led approach to turn existing demand for yield, leverage and hedging into organic options flow that institutional participants can trade against in our hybrid orderbook and RFQ system. Abstracting complexity and attracting retail participation are the wedge to scaling institutional adoption onchain. Data from @tokenterminal

Options led global exchange-traded derivatives in 2025, accounting for 74% of futures and options contracts. Onchain, it's a different story. Over the past 30 days, perps did $633.8B in volume, while options did just $4.26B. Two major barriers are fragmented liquidity and complexity. Traders still have to figure out strikes, expiries, and strategies before placing a trade. At LayerV, we’re working to change that, with the goal of becoming the largest and most liquid onchain options venue.

Bitcoin options suggest downside caution, with comparable contracts on Deribit pricing protection against a fall more richly than upside exposure. At the time of the snapshot, with $BTC trading at around $83,050, put expiring on 30 October shows 34.98% implied volatility, versus 32.41% for an $85,000 call with the same expiry. Implied volatility expresses the volatility embedded in an option's price, helping us compare how richly different options are priced. The comparison needs some care. We keep the expiry identical so both contracts cover the same period, and choose options close to 25 delta: their values have similar sensitivity to Bitcoin's price, in opposite directions. The put benefits from a fall, while the call benefits from a rise, all else equal. We use different strikes because we want to compare demand for protection below the current market price, with upside exposure above it. At the same strike and expiry, put and call IVs should generally align under consistent pricing assumptions, so that comparison would reveal little about how the market prices the two directions. This relative pricing difference is volatility skew. Here, the put's IV was 2.57 percentage points higher than the call's. That premium is consistent with demand for downside insurance against a potential drop, without necessarily implying that traders expect Bitcoin to fall.

On-chain options volume grew from around $2.18B in August to $4.83B in September. Deeper perp liquidity and lower hedging costs are making it easier for market makers to manage risk and provide competitive pricing. For traders, options open up more ways to trade. You can take a view on volatility, collect premiums by selling options, or hedge existing positions instead of only betting on price direction. Follow us for more on options.

Being right on direction is only half the trade. Entry matters. Timing matters. If you’re paying funding, how long you hold matters too.

Options. SImple Upgrade.

Options are incredibly powerful, but they have traditionally remained the domain of sophisticated investors and professional trading desks. The next generation of traders needs a more approachable entry point, one that makes options feel intuitive. We’ve worked hard to repackage options into intuitive products that unlock liquidation-free leverage and generate yield on crypto and RWAs, without the usual complexity. Coming Q4. @elliotrades, happy to show you options through the LayerV lens. Your next quest might be easier than it looks, no PhD in Greeks required 🫡

How does this $1.20 option turn into $285 so quickly? @litocoen was betting ETH would get above $2,050 before expiry. At first, that looked unlikely, so the option was cheap. Then ETH moved above $2,050. Now the bet was working. And the higher ETH went, the more the option was worth. On the other side, someone sold that option and got paid upfront, taking the risk if ETH kept going higher. That’s the trade: one side pays for the upside, the other gets paid to take the risk. Short-dated options can give you a lot of upside from a small upfront cost, but you have very little time to be right. Layer V is building for both sides of that trade, so buyers can take that view and sellers can get paid for taking the other side.

Options in one sentence: Someone pays to be right. Someone gets paid for taking the other side.

Thank you to the @arbitrum team for the support throughout the Mentorship Program. Congratulations to the other winners: @CarbonTerminal, @capa_fi and @0xT3tris Looking forward to our rollout on Arbitrum in Q4. Options are only getting started.

DeFi timeline so far: • AMM-based spot liquidity • Permissionless lending and credit • Perpetual futures • Tokenized yield and fixed-rate markets • Tokenized Treasuries and private credit • Tokenized equities One major market is still missing at scale: liquid, composable #options. @layerv_official is just finishing the checklist ✅

the three stages of crypto: . . . welcome to stage 3

Delighted to have these chads help us get ready for launch.

call = i think it goes up put = i think it goes down premium = the price you pay (or receive) for that opinion everything else is just timing and size

Options.