The Season of Perp DEXs
Why Perp DEXs Are Eating Crypto Right Now
Setting the Scene
If you’ve spent even a few minutes on Crypto Twitter lately, you’ve probably noticed: it’s perps season. Perpetual futures DEXs are dominating the conversation, pulling in record volumes and showering users with points, rebates, and airdrops. Hyperliquid kicked the doors open with its $3B airdrop and near-CEX speed, and now every new entrant is scrambling to replicate the playbook. For traders, it’s a feast of incentives; for builders, it’s a chance to win liquidity and mindshare in the most lucrative corner of DeFi.
MaelstromFund put it bluntly in their recent article: the top handful of perp DEXs now account for roughly half of all on-chain derivatives activity. That kind of concentration creates a gravitational pull, once liquidity and traders pile into a venue, the moat gets deeper and harder to cross. It’s why the race feels so frantic: each new DEX has to offer something radical (zero fees, faster engines, or crazy incentives) to pry users away from the incumbents.
Hyperliquid: The Benchmark
Hyperliquid remains the clear leader. Its custom Layer-1 and HyperCore engine deliver sub-second execution, while its fee model makes trading practically free. Makers actually earn rebates, takers pay just 5bps. On top of that, 99% of fees get recycled into buying $HYPE, creating a direct flywheel between volume and token value.
The numbers speak for themselves: Hyperliquid cleared more than $300B in 30-day volume, with open interest hovering in the mid-teens of billions. It’s already handling slippage on $10M+ orders with ease, something rivals struggle with. Even after its points program ended, both TVL and volume kept climbing — proof that liquidity depth and user stickiness can outlast pure incentives.
Lighter: The Zero-Fee Challenger
If Hyperliquid is the established heavyweight, Lighter is the hungry contender. Built by ex-HFT traders on a zk-rollup, it promises cryptographic fairness and no fees whatsoever for traders. That’s not a gimmick: maker and taker fees are literally set at 0%, with LP incentives doing the heavy lifting.
Lighter’s growth has been fast. Its monthly volume has already crossed $140B, putting it second only to Hyperliquid. Liquidity at large order sizes is thinner, but for most retail and mid-size trades the fills are tight. The question is whether Lighter can keep scaling once the invite-only beta expands and whether its zk-engine can withstand the pressure of sustained institutional-grade flow.
Where Avantis & SunPerp Enter
Avantis has quickly become one of the most compelling Perp DEXs, not just for its volumes but because it blends real-world assets (RWAs) like FX, commodities, and equities into the trading mix on Base, a rarity in DeFi today. In the past 30 days it has processed ~$6.9B in perps (with ~$520M in 24h), yet its TVL remains modest at ~$22M, showing high turnover on limited collateral. With a market cap of ~$600M against a ~$2.1B FDV, and heavyweight backers like Pantera, Founders Fund, Galaxy, and the Base Ecosystem Fund, Avantis is well positioned but the challenge will be whether its incentive-driven growth and high leverage options can evolve into sticky, sustainable liquidity once the farming and airdrop season cools.
What this means:
Strengths
RWAs give Avantis a unique edge: instead of just crypto longs/shorts, you also get exposure to indices, commodities, FX. That broadens the appeal.
Incentive structure is strong: zero or very low fees for traders, plus good yield for LPs. This draws both yield-seekers and speculators.
Weaknesses
TVL is still low relative to volume: this means liquidity might not be stable under stress (large drawdowns, big orders). Slippage could hurt.
High FDV relative to circulating cap means expectations are baked in. If growth or volumes pause, there could be sharp downside.
Airdrop & rewards cycles tend to cause sell-pressure once rewards are claimed.
SunPerp is Tron’s entry. Justin Sun announced SunPerp in a Space, positioning it as the first native perp DEX on Tron with one of lowest fees DEX, ultra-low friction and a strategy to convert TRON’s massive USDT volume into trading volume. SunPerp is still in early days but it already has ~3,000 users without marketing or paid growth.
Also, it’s committed to spending 100% of protocol revenue on $SUN token buybacks to support holders.
Buybacks = good story, but need to see real revenue numbers. If revenue is low (because fees are minimal) then buybacks might be symbolic rather than strong value capture.
SunPerp is more speculative now. It might shine in the short term as users migrate for low fees and low friction. But sustaining that advantage is harder (once others match fees or when costs of scaling hit)
Aster and Bullet: Hype Machines in Waiting
Aster’s launch felt like watching fireworks: BNB Chain based & backed by key ecosystem actors like Crime Boy of Crypto - CZ himself.
On its very first TGE day it logged ~$371 million in trading volume, picked up ~330,000 new wallet addresses, and saw its TVL spike to ~$1.005 billion. The $ASTER token itself popped ~1,650% on debut, riding both hype and real traction.
But metrics beyond day one tell a more nuanced story. While the TVL has since tapered back from the $2B+ peaks into the hundreds of millions, the daily volumes remain high. DefiLlama shows 24-h volumes in the hundreds of millions ($400-$500M+ in many snapshots).
Open interest for Aster is rising but still lags compared to heavyweights: Aster’s futures open interest is somewhere in the ~$840-$900M range in some periods, which is very strong for a recent launch but still well behind Hyperliquid’s numbers.
On Solana, Bullet is building what might be the fastest perp DEX yet. Still in testnet, it claims ~2ms latency - orders of magnitude faster than Hyperliquid’s few-hundred milliseconds. Backed by Zeta Markets, it aims to combine perps, spot, and lending into a single Solana-native experience.
Bullet is also doing a testnet “Trading Cup” and airdrop-guide style campaigns so that early traders/participants move in before mainnet. It’s not live with all features yet, so risk is real but the potential for traders who care about fine latency and low slippage is big.
The Numbers That Matter
Here’s where the race stands today:
Risks and Realities
Incentives explain much of this growth. Traders are farming points, market makers are juicing volume and treasuries are paying out big. If users show up only for an airdrop and leave once rewards dry up, volumes will collapse just as fast as they rose.
Liquidity risk is another key issue. For smaller venues, $10M+ orders can distort the book and expose slippage. Funding rate spikes, Aster saw a 117% annualized long premium on day two. Highlight how fragile new perps can be when hot money floods in. And of course, regulatory spotlight looms: the bigger these DEXs get, the more visible they become.
Where the War Goes Next
The takeaway is simple: we’re in an arms race. Hyperliquid set the standard; Lighter, Aster, and Bullet are all trying to out-innovate with fees, speed, or incentives. For users, it means a golden season of giveaways and near-free trading. For builders, it means finding the balance between growth hacking and sustainable economics.
I’d expect consolidation. A few winners will capture sticky liquidity and grow into true “DeFi exchanges of record,” while dozens of smaller perps fade or merge. The markers of success will be simple: deep orderbooks at size, sustainable yields for LPs and communities that stick around after the airdrops.
Final Word
Right now, trading on perps is a bit like club-hopping: everyone is handing out free drinks at the door, and the music’s loudest at Hyperliquid. But when the party winds down, the only clubs that survive will be the ones with a real business model.
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