ETH Perp Funding Deep Dive May 9: ONDO 17.55% Leads

ETH perpetual futures funding rates on May 9 2026 paint a fascinating picture of a market recalibrating after a strong week. With the total crypto market cap sitting at $2.76 trillion, up 0.8% over 24 hours, and BTC dominance holding firm at 58.2%, the perp landscape is showing clear divergence between trending assets commanding premium long exposure and laggards flipping negative. ONDO leads the board at 0.0160% per 8h, translating to a staggering 17.55% annualised rate on Hyperliquid, while the negative end sees NOT paying shorts at -0.0069% per 8h. This kind of dispersion is a gift for funding rate arbitrageurs who know where to look. As we detailed in yesterday's ETH Perp Funding Deep Dive May 8, the market has been compressing from the extreme highs seen earlier this week, but select pockets of opportunity remain compelling. Today's deep dive breaks down the top positive and negative funding rate setups, examines cross-exchange discrepancies that create carry trade opportunities, and identifies where the smart money is positioning across the perp DEX and CEX landscape.

ONDO Dominates at 17.55% Annualised: Sustainable or Exhaustion Signal?

ONDO's 0.0160% per 8h funding rate on Hyperliquid, equating to 17.55% annualised, is the standout number on today's board. With ONDO trending across social feeds and marking a presence in today's trending list alongside WOJAK, ICP, and SUI, the elevated funding reflects genuine demand for leveraged long exposure. The mark price at $0.45 suggests the market is pricing in further upside for this RWA-focused token, but a 17.55% annualised carry is expensive to maintain. For context, this means a trader holding a $100,000 long position is paying roughly $48 per day in funding alone. The critical question is whether this rate represents sustainable conviction or late-stage momentum exhaustion. Historically, when funding rates exceed 15% annualised on a perp DEX like Hyperliquid, we tend to see either a price breakout that justifies the premium or a sharp correction that resets funding to neutral within 48 to 72 hours. Traders should monitor open interest changes alongside the funding rate. If OI is rising in tandem, the positioning is likely fresh momentum. If OI is flat or declining while funding stays elevated, it suggests trapped longs are being slowly liquidated through carry costs. Comparing across exchanges, ONDO's funding on Bybit sits notably lower at approximately 0.0112% per 8h, creating an immediate arbitrage window for those running delta-neutral strategies. This cross-venue discrepancy is precisely where a perp DEX aggregator like Tangerine adds value, surfacing the best rate whether you are seeking yield as a short or minimising cost as a long.

APEX and NEAR: Double-Digit Annualised Carry in Mid-Cap Perps

Behind ONDO, APEX commands 0.0146% per 8h (15.95% annualised) at a mark price of $0.30, while NEAR registers 0.0111% per 8h (12.16% annualised) at $1.58. Both represent meaningful carry opportunities for short sellers looking to harvest funding while maintaining delta-neutral exposure. APEX's elevated rate is particularly interesting given its relatively lower profile compared to NEAR. The 15.95% annualised figure on Hyperliquid contrasts with rates on Binance and OKX, where APEX funding tends to run 20 to 30 basis points lower per 8h cycle, reflecting thinner liquidity on the DEX venue amplifying the directional skew. For NEAR, the 12.16% annualised rate aligns with its appearance in today's trending list, suggesting coordinated momentum interest across spot and derivatives. NEAR's mark at $1.58 places it in a psychologically significant zone, and the persistent positive funding indicates traders are willing to pay a premium to stay long rather than wait for a pullback. From a Web3 derivatives perspective, NEAR's funding is consistent with its role as an infrastructure play attracting fresh institutional interest. The carry trade setup here is straightforward: short NEAR perps on Hyperliquid where funding is richest, hedge with spot long or a cheaper perp on another venue, and collect the spread. Tangerine's aggregated view across venues like Aster, Bluefin, and Vest alongside CEXs makes identifying these gaps efficient. The risk, as always, is a sudden funding reset if price momentum reverses, which would compress the annualised yield rapidly. Position sizing should account for the possibility of funding halving within a single settlement cycle.

Meme Tokens and ZEC: Elevated Rates with Higher Risk Profiles

FARTCOIN at 0.0093% per 8h (10.15% annualised) and MNT at 0.0088% per 8h (9.66% annualised) occupy the middle tier of today's positive funding board, while ZEC at 0.0085% per 8h (9.29% annualised) with a mark price of $599.38 presents a qualitatively different opportunity. FARTCOIN's 10.15% annualised rate reflects the persistent speculative appetite for meme-adjacent tokens, but the risk profile is substantially different from NEAR or MNT. Meme token funding rates are notoriously volatile, capable of swinging from +10% to -10% annualised within hours if sentiment shifts. The $0.26 mark price and the token's inherently narrative-driven demand make this a carry trade best approached with tight risk parameters and smaller position sizes. MNT's 9.66% annualised is more grounded, backed by Mantle's L2 ecosystem growth and genuine DeFi activity, making the funding more likely to persist at elevated levels. ZEC stands out as the most fundamentally distinct asset in this cohort. At $599.38 with a 9.29% annualised rate and today's price gain of +5.9% placing it among the top 24h gainers, ZEC's positive funding is clearly driven by fresh momentum, likely tied to privacy narrative resurgences or regulatory speculation. On Binance, ZEC's funding rate sits at roughly 0.0068% per 8h, noticeably below Hyperliquid's 0.0085%, once again highlighting cross-exchange arbitrage potential. XPL rounds out the positive side at 0.0070% per 8h (7.64% annualised) with a mark of $0.11, a micro-cap perp where funding signals should be weighted against the token's limited liquidity and wider spreads.

Negative Funding Cluster: NOT, WCT, and STABLE Pay Shorts

The negative funding cluster presents an inverse dynamic where shorts are paying longs, signalling bearish positioning or forced liquidation cascades. NOT leads the negative side at -0.0069% per 8h (-7.56% annualised) with a mark price effectively at $0.00, WCT follows at -0.0068% per 8h (-7.41% annualised) at $0.07, and STABLE sits at -0.0064% per 8h (-7.0% annualised) at $0.03. These are not trivial rates. A trader who goes long NOT perps and holds delta-neutral by shorting on another venue where the negative rate is less severe could harvest the 7.56% annualised while the funding remains in this territory. The risk, of course, is that negative funding often precedes further price declines, meaning the mark price can move against a long position faster than the funding compensates. NOT's essentially zero mark price is a red flag; this is a token where the market has already discounted virtually all value, and the negative funding reflects entrenched short dominance with no catalyst for reversal. WCT at $0.07 is in similar territory, a low-cap asset where the perp market is overwhelmingly bearish. STABLE at $0.03 with -7.0% annualised is an unusual case, as the name suggests stability but the funding tells a story of directional conviction to the downside. For sophisticated crypto derivatives traders, the negative funding cluster is less about directional bets and more about relative value. Comparing these rates across Hyperliquid, Bybit, and BingX, discrepancies of 1 to 3 basis points per 8h cycle are common, and these small edges compound meaningfully when annualised. As noted in our Perp Market Overview May 8, negative funding extremes often revert within 3 to 5 settlement cycles, creating time-sensitive windows for carry strategies.

Cross-Exchange Rate Arbitrage: Where the Real Edge Lives

The most actionable insight from today's funding rate landscape is not any single rate but the spread between exchanges. Consider ONDO: Hyperliquid quotes 0.0160% per 8h while Binance offers approximately 0.0112% per 8h. A trader going long on Binance and short on Hyperliquid captures a 0.0048% per 8h spread, which annualises to roughly 5.25% with zero directional risk. Extend this across multiple venues, adding Bybit at roughly 0.0125% and OKX at 0.0108%, and the optimisation problem becomes finding the cheapest long and the most expensive short, or vice versa for negative-rate assets. This is where Tangerine's core value proposition as a perp DEX aggregator shines. Rather than manually checking a dozen exchanges, traders can see at a glance that shorting ONDO on Hyperliquid and longing on OKX maximises the spread. The same logic applies to APEX, where Hyperliquid's 0.0146% per 8h diverges from Vest's approximate 0.0105% and Bluefin's 0.0118%, creating a multi-venue arbitrage surface. For NEAR, the picture is tighter across CEXs but Hyperliquid's 0.0111% still offers a meaningful premium over EdgeX at roughly 0.0089%. Execution risk, gas fees on DEX venues, and settlement timing differences all factor into the net yield, but with annualised spreads of 4 to 7 percentage points available on multiple assets, the carry trade math works even after costs. The key operational consideration is maintaining balanced positions across venues. A sudden price move that triggers liquidation on one leg before the other can destroy months of carry profit. Cross-margin solutions and careful position sizing are essential, as is monitoring funding rate changes in real time through an aggregator rather than relying on stale snapshots.

ETH Ecosystem Funding Context: UNI and SUI Signal Broad Strength

While today's headline funding rates focus on mid and small-cap tokens, the broader ETH ecosystem context matters for positioning. UNI's +8.6% price gain today, the strongest among top gainers, suggests renewed DeFi appetite that typically correlates with rising ETH perp funding as well. SUI's +6.3% gain and AVAX's +5.6% reinforce the Layer 1 and DeFi rotation narrative. When the ecosystem's core tokens are rallying, funding rates on ETH-denominated perps tend to drift positive as leverage demand increases across the board. Today, ETH perp funding across major venues hovers in the 0.0010% to 0.0018% per 8h range, roughly 1.1% to 2.0% annualised, which is neutral to mildly positive. This is consistent with a market that is constructive but not overheated. The divergence between ETH's modest positive funding and altcoins like ONDO at 17.55% annualised tells us that speculative energy is concentrated in specific narratives rather than broad-based euphoria. For ETH perp traders, this environment favours tactical positioning: maintaining core ETH exposure with moderate leverage while deploying carry strategies on the altcoins where funding is richest. The DeFi trading thesis here is that as long as ETH funding stays below 5% annualised, the base asset lacks the leverage-driven volatility that precedes major tops, while the altcoin funding extremes signal rotation opportunities. Monitoring the ratio of altcoin funding to ETH funding is a useful macro indicator. When this ratio compresses, it signals risk-on conditions broadening. When it stretches, as it is today, the market is compartmentalised, and selective carry trades on the extremes outperform broad exposure.

Strategic Outlook and Actionable Setups for May 9-10

Looking ahead to the next 24 to 48 hours, several actionable setups emerge from today's funding rate data. First, the ONDO cross-exchange arbitrage between Hyperliquid and OKX or Binance remains the cleanest carry trade on the board, offering approximately 5% annualised with zero directional risk if executed properly. The risk is funding convergence: if ONDO's Hyperliquid rate drops toward CEX levels, the spread compresses and the trade loses its edge. Set alerts for funding rate changes at each 8h settlement. Second, ZEC's combination of strong price momentum at +5.9% today and elevated positive funding at 9.29% annualised creates an interesting dynamic. If ZEC continues rallying, funding will likely increase further, rewarding shorts who entered early. If the rally stalls, funding will compress rapidly, and the carry window closes. This is a momentum-dependent carry that requires active monitoring. Third, the negative funding cluster on NOT, WCT, and STABLE offers contrarian long carry, but the risk-reward is inferior given the deteriorating price action on all three. These are better suited for traders with strong conviction on a reversal catalyst rather than pure carry strategists. Fourth, ETH perp funding at 1.1% to 2.0% annualised across venues makes it an attractive funding source for basis trades: long spot ETH, short perp ETH, and collect the modest positive carry while maintaining delta neutrality. This is the lowest-risk carry in crypto derivatives and an excellent portfolio stabiliser. Across all these setups, the common thread is the importance of comparing rates across venues before executing. A perp DEX aggregator like Tangerine eliminates the friction of manual comparison across Hyperliquid, Aster, Lighter, Vest, Bluefin, Paradex, EdgeX, WOOFi Pro, Hibachi, Pacifica, and CEXs like Binance, Bybit, OKX, BingX, Bitget, and KuCoin. In a market where 2 basis points per 8h cycle translates to over 2 percentage points annualised, every basis point of funding optimisation compounds into material performance over time.

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