The mature model and limitations of traditional financial platforms

In traditional finance, platforms like Robinhood, IG, and Plus 500 have brought leveraged trading, options derivatives, and multi-asset investing to the mainstream investor. Their strengths lie in their excellent user experience, strong regulatory compliance, and clear product design, allowing both retail and some professional investors to easily access markets like stocks, forex, and commodities. The market performance of these traditional platforms demonstrates their maturity: IG Group, founded in 1974, holds eight Tier 1 regulatory licenses and offers over 19,537 tradable instruments; Plus 500, founded in 2008 and publicly listed on the London Stock Exchange, offers over 2,800 leveraged CFD instruments. These platforms have earned the trust of millions of users through their comprehensive regulatory compliance systems and user-friendly interfaces.

However, these platforms still face deep structural limitations: centralization risks manifest as single points of failure and platform collapse, leaving user funds completely dependent on the platform's solvency; lack of transparency manifests itself in order book operations, price discovery mechanisms, and risk management strategies that are not transparent to users; fund custody restrictions require users to deposit funds in accounts controlled by the platform, removing direct control over their assets; regional regulatory barriers prevent global users from having equal access to financial services, with users in different regions facing differentiated product restrictions; and high compliance costs are ultimately passed on to users in the form of higher transaction fees and stricter entry barriers. Furthermore, traditional platforms' clearing mechanisms often exhibit time lags, potentially leading to liquidity crises under extreme market conditions.

More importantly, RWAs are eroding traditional financial sectors and platforms: RWAs are poised for a golden opportunity in the development of on-chain finance. Despite a clearer regulatory environment and improving infrastructure, the entire RWA market remains primarily in the "tokenization" phase, with very limited services and asset types available to market participants. Traditional financial infrastructure faces structural barriers, including leverage restrictions, limited asset availability, high fees, and slow settlement and liquidity. These challenges create significant potential for innovative solutions in Web 3 on-chain leveraged trading.

The Innovative Advantages and Challenges of Web 3 Margin Trading

From another perspective, attempting to build a similar leveraged trading platform in the Web 3 world presents different advantages and challenges. First, on-chain financial systems can use smart contracts to automate matching and clearing, reducing human intervention and opacity. Second, user funds are fully self-custodied, and transaction settlement is entirely on-chain, reducing reliance on platform trust. However, Web 3 platforms must address issues such as insufficient liquidity, regulatory compliance, and price oracle risks before they can truly support large-scale transactions. DeFi transaction data for 2025 shows a significant growth trend: decentralized exchanges achieved an average weekly trading volume of $18.6 billion in the second quarter of 2025, a 33% year-on-year increase. Uniswap led the way with $6.7 billion in weekly trading volume and over 6.3 million active traders. Curve Finance, leveraging its advantages in stablecoin trading, achieved a stable weekly trading volume of $1.5 billion. GMX, focusing on perpetual contracts, contributed $1.1 billion in weekly trading volume on Arbitrum and Avalanche.

Liquidity staking protocols account for 27% of DeFi's total locked value, making it the largest DeFi category. Lido alone manages $34.8 billion in TVL. This demonstrates that the DeFi ecosystem already has the infrastructure to support large-scale leveraged trading. Cross-chain DeFi activity grew 52% in 2025. Thanks to the maturity of Layer-2 solutions, Optimism's TVL increased from $2.3 billion to $5.6 billion in 2024, while Base, Coinbase's Layer-2, reached $2.2 billion in TVL. The landscape of mainstream Web 3 leveraged trading platforms has begun to take shape: dYdX leads with its professional trading experience and coverage of over 200 markets; Hyperliquid, an emerging platform, holds over 80% of the decentralized perpetual contract market; GMX has established a strong position in the Arbitrum ecosystem with its unique multi-asset liquidity pool model; Drift offers leveraged trading in over 40 markets within the Solana ecosystem; and platforms like ApeX Pro and MUX Protocol have also found their niche in their respective sectors. In terms of technical architecture, Web 3 platforms have unique advantages over traditional platforms: transparency - all transaction data and smart contract code can be publicly verified; self-custody - users do not need to entrust their funds to a third party; composability - can be seamlessly integrated with other DeFi protocols; global accessibility - without geographical restrictions, any user with a wallet can participate.

Analysis of mainstream Web 3 leveraged trading platforms

1. dYdX: Professional-grade decentralized exchange

dYdX offers over 200 markets with up to 50x leverage, and has surpassed $200 billion in cumulative trading volume. The platform upgraded to version 4 in 2024, introducing the Cosmos-based dYdX Chain, featuring a fully decentralized on-chain order book and matching engine. Its tiered fee structure, with no fees for users with less than $100,000 in 30-day trading volume, has effectively attracted a large number of professional traders.

2. GMX: Multi-asset liquidity pool innovator

With over $235 billion in cumulative trading volume and over 669,000 users, GMX is one of the largest decentralized exchanges on Arbitrum and Avalanche. Its unique GLP multi-asset liquidity pool model allows users to directly trade major cryptocurrencies such as BTC, ETH, and AVAX with up to 100x leverage. GMX's innovation lies in its revenue-sharing mechanism, which distributes the majority of trading fees to token stakers, providing GMX token holders with an annualized return of up to 12%.

3. Hyperliquid: Emerging Market Leader

Hyperliquid has become a leader in decentralized perpetual swap trading, commanding over 80% market share. The platform offers 50x leverage on over 150 crypto assets, with sub-second trade execution speeds, demonstrating the technological potential of a new generation of decentralized exchanges.

4. Avantis: Pioneer in Multi-Asset Synthetic Trading

Avantis represents a significant expansion of Web 3 leveraged trading platforms into traditional financial assets. The platform supports synthetic leverage trading across cryptocurrencies, forex, and commodities, offering up to 500x leverage. Users can use USDC as unified collateral to trade assets such as Japanese Yen, gold, and Bitcoin. Its unique loss rebate mechanism and positive slippage design provide traders with risk mitigation tools not available on traditional DEXs. Since its launch on the Base mainnet in February 2024, the platform has attracted over 2,000 traders and processed $100 million in trading volume.

Avantis segmented the needs of RWA market participants, identified different risk appetites, and proposed three targeted growth strategies. For risk-averse users, it launched an LP pool offering stable returns (currently approximately 15% APY, significantly higher than US Treasuries). For risk-loving users, it developed an RWA perpetual trading engine supporting leveraged trading, leveraging synthetic RWA to create an optimized liquidity environment. For users lacking access to global asset investments, it established an on-chain US stock futures market as a new entry point.

Multi-asset synthetic leverage trading: technological breakthroughs and market opportunities

Therefore, a truly valuable innovation direction is to combine the proven experience of traditional leveraged trading platforms with the transparency and capital efficiency of Web 3. For example, by supporting leveraged trading of BTC, ETH, foreign exchange, gold, and other assets through on-chain protocols, crypto-native investors can not only participate in the crypto market but also connect with real-world assets, gaining access to more diverse investment opportunities.

The technical architecture for synthetic asset trading is becoming a key path to addressing this demand. Using oracle technology, decentralized trading platforms can reflect the prices of traditional financial assets such as foreign exchange, commodities, and stock indices in on-chain contracts. Users simply hold cryptocurrency as margin to gain leveraged exposure to these assets. This model avoids the complex process of asset tokenization while maintaining the decentralized nature of trading.

Take Avantis, for example. The platform supports synthetic trading of assets such as the Japanese yen, euro, gold, and oil through a price feed system powered by Chainlink and Python Network. Users can use USDC as unified collateral to express their investment views on global macro assets on a single platform. This design reduces user learning costs and improves capital efficiency.

Innovation in risk management mechanisms is also a key feature of multi-asset leveraged trading platforms. Unlike traditional forced liquidation models, newer platforms are employing dynamic adjustments, partial liquidations, and incentive hedging. For example, when a trader's actions help balance the platform's overall risk exposure, the system will award transaction fee rebates or better execution prices. This design protects liquidity providers while creating additional arbitrage opportunities for traders.

Improved capital efficiency is another key advantage of the multi-asset trading model. Traditionally, trading different asset classes requires opening accounts on multiple platforms, locking up funds in a fragmented manner. However, the synthetic asset model allows users to leverage multiple assets using the same collateral, significantly improving capital utilization. Liquidity providers also benefit from a more diversified income stream from trading fees.

From a technological perspective, multi-asset synthetic leverage trading represents a key direction for the integration of DeFi and traditional finance. With the maturity of oracle technology, the popularization of Layer 2 scaling solutions, and the improvement of regulatory frameworks, this model is expected to gain wider adoption in the coming years.

Precision sniping: market trends and new opportunities for gold mining

In 2025, decentralized exchanges averaged $18.6 billion in weekly trading volume, with perpetual contract DEXs like GMX contributing $1.1 billion of this volume. This demonstrates that Web 3 leveraged trading platforms are gaining significant market share. Technical breakthroughs include: Layer 2 scaling solutions—Optimism's TVL more than doubled from $2.3 billion in 2024 to $5.6 billion in 2025; and cross-chain interoperability—cross-chain DeFi activity grew 52% in 2025, driven by Layer 2 solutions and blockchain bridges. Regarding user experience optimization, mobile DeFi wallet usage grew 45% in 2025, accounting for 58% of total users; new user registrations increased 29%, driven by gas-free transactions and improved user experience. This demonstrates that Web 3 platforms are narrowing the user experience gap with traditional platforms.

As countries improve their regulatory frameworks for digital assets, Web 3 leveraged trading platforms face a clearer path to compliance. Active DeFi usage now spans over 110 countries, with Generation Z (18-25 years old) accounting for 38% of first-time DeFi wallet users, demonstrating strong growth potential.

Breaking boundaries and reshaping value: the underlying logic of integrated development

Web 3 leveraged trading platforms are at a critical juncture in their development. By learning from the successful experiences of traditional financial platforms while leveraging the unique advantages of decentralized technology, this sector is poised for breakthrough development. The exploration of innovative models such as multi-asset synthetic leveraged trading demonstrates the feasibility of combining the proven experience of traditional leveraged trading platforms with the transparency and capital efficiency of Web 3. As the technology matures, user experience improves, and the regulatory environment becomes clearer, Web 3 leveraged trading platforms are expected to gain a larger market share in the coming years. According to Grand View Research, the DeFi market is projected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of approximately 53.7% between 2025 and 2030, reaching a market size exceeding $231 billion by 2030. This provides ample room for the development of Web 3 leveraged trading platforms.

Ultimately, successful Web 3 leveraged trading platforms will be those that maintain the core advantages of decentralization while offering a user experience comparable to or even superior to traditional platforms. Whether it's multi-asset synthetic trading, innovative risk management mechanisms, or improved user interface design, these technological innovations and product optimizations pave the way for the maturity of Web 3 financial infrastructure. The fusion of Yi Platform's proven experience and Web 3's transparency and capital efficiency is a viable path. As the technology matures, the user experience continues to improve, and the regulatory environment becomes increasingly clear, Web 3 leveraged trading platforms are expected to gain a larger market share in the coming years.