Author | @poopmandefi

Compiled by Odaily Planet Daily ( @OdailyChina )

Translator | Dingdang ( @XiaMiPP )

Editor's Note: Among the many narratives in the crypto market, perpetual swap DEXs are undoubtedly the most profitable sector recently. Aster (ASTER) saw a peak increase of nearly 6,000% after its TGE, and Avantis (AVNT) recorded a high of 155% after listing on Binance Alpha. Just today, the perpetual swap DEX sector saw a general surge. The performance of these projects not only demonstrates the market's interest in this sector but also demonstrates investors' sensitivity to "new narratives." While Hyperliquid appears to remain firmly at the top, the success of Aster and Avantis demonstrates that differentiated positioning and innovative mechanisms can still create breakthroughs for newcomers.

This article will focus on several of the most promising newcomers, PerpDEX, and analyze their models, competitive advantages, and airdrop strategies, attempting to answer a core question: Can the perpetual contract DEX track give birth to the next Aster?

1. Motivation for participation

Everyone loves leverage. It can bring adrenaline rush and amplify capital efficiency in a bull market.

Before Hyperliquid came along, there had already been attempts at on-chain perpetual swap exchanges (PerpDEX), with dYdX and GMX being the most prominent examples. That was the first time people truly saw the potential of PerpDEX.

Today, Hyperliquid has become a dominant force in the market. Its perpetual contract trading volume accounts for 5.3% of all CEX perpetual contracts, equivalent to 27% of Bybit's volume and 11% of Binance's. There are many factors behind this success, which I will elaborate on later.

While many believe Hyperliquid has a monopoly on PerpDEX, I remain convinced that challengers are always around. History has proven time and again: from Apple's battle with Samsung to Xiaomi's breakthrough, as long as a company can find a differentiated advantage in a specific market segment, it has the potential to become a strong competitor.

Therefore, the arrival of the "PerpDEX Airdrop Season" is almost inevitable. Why?

First, Hyperliquid's airdrop itself was one of the largest ever. They distributed 31% of their tokens to users, giving them a starting market capitalization of approximately $3 billion. Nearly all early backers profited handsomely, and this "wealth effect" was one of the key reasons Hyperliquid quickly captured user attention.

Today, the vast majority of users and liquidity providers hold similar expectations for the emerging PerpDEX. To attract attention and maintain engagement, new projects often resort to more aggressive or ingenious airdrop strategies. Regardless of the format, this signifies that we have entered a new "PerpDEX airdrop season."

However, it's important to note that this discussion isn't about the airdrop itself, but rather focuses on PerpDEX, which I believe has the most potential. Hopefully, after reading this, you'll have a clearer idea of which PerpDEX to choose.

2. Internal comparison

First put a table summary:

Sources: Perpetual Pulse, Hyperliquid data, Deflama, @andyandhii , @hansolar 21 , @ruiixyz

Next, I will expand on the following key points:

Hyperliquid :

• Based on L1 , using CLOB (centralized order book) model
• Liquidity depth that is extremely friendly to large investors
• 99% Revenue Buyback
• Speedbump mechanism makes the competition environment for market makers more fair
• Supports 180+ trading pairs and provides pre-market trading mechanism
• HyperEVM and Buildercode are experiencing strong growth
• HIP-3 and USDH stablecoin are seen as key catalysts

Lighter:

• Based on L2, also using CLOB
• Zero transaction fees
• Provide higher LP returns
• Backed by a 16z and Lightspeed, led by former Citadel high-frequency traders
• The marketing strategy focuses on node tasks and creating momentum
• Customized ZK circuit and designed exit protection mechanism

EdgeX:

• Based on L2 StarkEx, also using CLOB
• Provide the smallest price difference for ordinary users
• Native mobile experience (especially in line with Asian user preferences)
• Strong earnings performance, less reliance on mining, and lower volume/open interest ratios
• There is support from professional market makers and the team is experienced

3. Hyperliquid

Hyperliquid is currently the world's most successful perpetual contract decentralized exchange (PerpDEX).

It is best known for its two-layer architecture: Hypercore and HyperEVM .

Currently, Hyperliquid holds over 78% of the PerpDEX market share. There are several key reasons behind this:

3.1. Optimal Depth + Speed Bump Mechanism to Protect Large Investors

Reference @andyandhii

For traders, depth and spread are crucial. Smaller spreads and deeper liquidity mean better quotes and smaller slippage.

Taking the BTC trading pair as an example, @andyandhii used 1 hour of data from Lighter, EdgeX and Hyperliquid Websocket for comparison in a test.

The results show that Hyperliquid maintains depth even when handling large orders exceeding $16 million, and its performance is comparable to EdgeX's for orders of $6 million. This clearly demonstrates that Hyperliquid is indeed the best place for large traders to trade.

One of the reasons Hyperliquid boasts deeper liquidity is the "priority order cancellation" mechanism implemented during its blockchain construction. By introducing a 210 millisecond delay on taker orders, the system protects late-arriving market makers from being "front-loaded" by competitors due to latency disadvantages. This incentivizes more market makers to stay on the platform and continue providing liquidity.

Although there is still controversy about the "whales being front-runners", I believe that this transparency actually brings more openness and even strengthens the network effect under the effect of traders such as James Wyne.

3.2. Strong Revenue Repurchase + Healthy Volume/OI Ratio

Hyperliquid's perpetual contract daily trading volume has long remained between US$8 billion and US$10 billion , with a total open interest (OI) of more than US$15 billion , almost 15 times that of the second largest PerpDEX in the market.

The Volume/OI ratio is often used to identify wash trading activity. Hyperliquid's ratio is around 0.55, which is considered very healthy and indicates a strong organic nature of the trading activity.

Thanks to strong trading volume and OI, the protocol also generates substantial revenue. However, Hyperliquid does not keep these fees for itself. Instead, it uses 99% of the maker/taker fee revenue for HYPE buybacks. Furthermore, the platform does not charge liquidation fees.

On average, Hyperliquid repurchases $2–3 million of HYPE daily, depending on trading volume. To date, the agreement has repurchased approximately $1.8 billion , of which $630 million has been spent on repurchases, generating a net profit of approximately $1.17 billion.

This large-scale repurchase, which is highly tied to fundamentals, quickly became Hyperliquid's core means of building a moat.

3.3. Over 180 trading pairs + Pre-Market listing

Over the past three months, Hyperliquid has added 11 new trading pairs, bringing the total number of trading pairs on the platform to over 180. In comparison, Binance has only added approximately 60 new pairs during the same period (including Alpha listings).

Pre-market trading has clearly become a key battleground for early-stage trading volume, and Hyperliquid has invested heavily in this area. Recent launches of pre-market markets like XPL, Pump, and WLFI have each generated millions of dollars in trading volume, OI, and funding fee revenue for the platform.

Of course, pre-market trading carries its own risks. If someone buys up all available liquidity on-chain or on Hyperliquid, then leverages it to trigger liquidations, this could lead to low-cost, high-impact manipulation. Therefore, risk management for illiquid trading pairs is particularly important.

Growth Engines: HyperEVM, Buildercode, USDH, and HIP-3

In addition to Hypercore, another major advantage of Hyperliquid is its ever-expanding ecosystem .

HyperEVM : Equivalent to the leverage of HYPE. All dApps within the ecosystem are linked to HYPE to varying degrees, thereby increasing their utility. Currently, HyperEVM's TVL has reached $2.6 billion, and the ecosystem already has nearly 100 projects.

Buildercode: Developers can share transaction fees by building applications on Hyperliquid. Currently, developers like @phantom , @BasedOneX , and @pvp_dot_trade have joined the platform, generating over $23 million in cumulative revenue to date. This mechanism effectively incentivizes developers and further amplifies Hyperliquid's liquidity and network effects.

USDH: It will be launched from the native market and become another source of income for HYPE.

HIP-3: The largest potential catalyst. It allows anyone to bid on the market and deploy new assets by staking $1 million in slashable HYPE.

This will further expand Hyperliquid's asset coverage, drive more trading volume and repurchases, and form a flywheel effect of buying pressure-trading volume-revenue , thereby amplifying the effectiveness of HYPE.

Hyperliquid Highlights Summary

• First-mover advantage
• One of the largest airdrops in DeFi history (31% distributed to holders)
• The core place for HYPE transactions
• Deepest liquidity support for BTC transactions exceeding $15 million
• PerpDEX has the most trading pairs and the fastest pre-market listing mechanism
• The ever-expanding HyperEVM + Buildercode ecosystem
• HIP-3 becomes a key catalyst for market expansion and revenue growth
• 99% of revenue is used for buybacks

4. Lighter

4.1. Strong capital support

Lighter received early investment from institutions such as a16z, Lightspeed, and Coatue in 2023. Initially positioned as a spot DEX, the project later transitioned to a perpetual contract DEX. The team is led by former Citadel high-frequency trader @vnovakovski .

4.2. Zero Fee Strategy

In order to grab market share from Hyperliquid, Lighter launched a model with no transaction fees for both maker and taker orders .

This has become one of its most powerful features: it attracts a large number of traders and market makers to migrate, thereby increasing the platform's trading volume. In theory, this is beneficial to both traders and market makers (but not necessarily to the platform itself).

Under regular trading conditions, the platform performs well, but in terms of liquidity depth for large transactions, it is still slightly inferior to Hyperliquid.

However, there is some controversy surrounding this model:

• Due to the completely zero transaction fees, the volume/OI ratio is as high as ~3.5 , which is about 7 times that of Hyperliquid, which may mean that there is a high proportion of wash trading.
• To address this issue, Lighter introduced a self-transaction protection mechanism in the hope of suppressing witch attacks.

4.3. Custom ZK Circuits and “Exit Guarantees”

As a zk-rollup-based protocol, Lighter naturally inherits the security of Ethereum.

On this basis, the team also built a set of proprietary zero-knowledge circuits (ZK circuits) and introduced a data structure called the order book tree. This design can efficiently verify the integrity of matching and clearing without sacrificing execution speed.

To reduce transaction latency, Lighter adopts a "pre-commitment + batch proof" model: the Sequencer first signs the transaction and publishes the result to a public data source, allowing users to quickly obtain "quasi-finality." The system then generates zero-knowledge proofs (ZK proofs) in batches. This way, transaction execution is not delayed by waiting for proofs, as execution relies on the Sequencer's pre-commitments.

In addition, Lighter has designed an independent security circuit: when a user can prove that a certain proof is inconsistent with a previous pre-commitment, they can trigger an "exit" and safely withdraw their funds back to L1. This exit guarantee mechanism provides users with additional financial security.

4.4. Points Program and Market Popularity

Recently, discussions surrounding Lighter points have continued to heat up on crypto Twitter.

Screenshots show that points are trading at approximately $33 per point in the OTC market, with cumulative trading volume reaching $363,000 . Since the total supply of points has not yet been disclosed, it's difficult to determine a reasonable token valuation. However, we can refer to Hyperliquid's path: at that time, Hyperliquid airdropped 30% of its tokens to the community, resulting in a valuation of approximately $3 billion at launch. If Lighter adopts a similar distribution strategy, its overall valuation will likely be in the $3 billion range.

While the final valuation of the airdrop remains highly uncertain, one thing is certain: speculative trading of points has become one of the important drivers of Lighter’s trading volume and open interest (OI).

Summary of Lighter's highlights

• Zero transaction fees
• Provide the highest LLP returns
• Endorsed by institutions such as a 16 z and Lightspeed
• Self-developed ZK circuit to achieve verifiable and fast transaction matching
• OTC points trading drives market enthusiasm

5. EdgeX

5.1. Smaller spreads and more suitable depth for ordinary traders

If Hyperliquid is the home of whales, then EdgeX shows better depth in trading volumes below $6 million (taking BTC as an example) - and this just covers the actual range of the vast majority of ordinary traders.

For retail investors, such liquidity not only means being able to get better prices when placing orders, but also allows them to further participate in mining or income activities on EdgeX, balancing trading experience with additional returns.

5.2. High Revenue + Points Program (No Native Token Yet)

Despite not having a native token, EdgeX has become the second-largest PerpDEX by revenue according to Deflama , generating approximately $18–20 million in revenue over the past 30 days (roughly 5% of Hyperliquid’s).

These revenues come from maker fees (0.015%), taker fees (0.038%), and liquidation fees , and have shown steady growth over the past three months.

EdgeX's points program is still ongoing, and its volume/OI ratio is about 2.3 , indicating that there is a certain degree of wash trading, but it is not serious.

5.3. Perpetual Contracts and Forced Withdrawals Based on StarkEX

EdgeX uses StarkEX perpetual contracts to achieve trustless settlement and censorship-resistant features (such as forced withdrawals).

Because it runs on Layer 2, users’ transactions are first executed off-chain, then submitted to StarkEx to generate proof, and finally settled on Ethereum. This ensures both the integrity and verifiability of transactions.

Users can also initiate a forced withdrawal if EdgeX fails to process their withdrawal request within a grace period (usually 1–2 weeks).

First, users can register their Stark Key to an L1 address and then submit a withdrawal request directly to Ethereum. If the request is ignored, the user can directly exit through Merkle proof.

Finally, it’s important to emphasize that EdgeX never holds custody of user funds . Funds are always held in Ethereum contracts, and only the user’s signature can move them.

5.4. Mobile-first experience

In the Asian market, mobile experience is one of the most requested features.

Currently, most traders access Hyperliquid or Lighter through OKX Wallet or Phantom, but EdgeX has simplified this process and launched a native mobile application (now available on the App Store), allowing users to trade conveniently anytime, anywhere.

The following is the application interface:

5.5. Teams Supported by Amber

EdgeX was incubated by Amber Group, a well-known market maker in Asia. Its team members include former professionals from Goldman Sachs and Jump Trading.

According to the official website, core contributors include @EdgeX_KF and @EdgeX_TraderX, and @ZoomerOracle is also its partner.

EdgeX Highlights Summary

• High revenue
• Tighter spreads and better depth in deals under $6 million
• Hatched by Amber
• Strong influence in the Asian market
• Based on StarkEx, supports forced withdrawal
• Native mobile trading experience
• Normal volume/OI ratio (not severely manipulated)

in conclusion

Perpetual contract DEX has become one of the fastest growing sectors in the crypto market.

As mentioned earlier, Hyperliquid, leveraging its first-mover advantage and continuous innovation, has already surpassed most emerging competitors by two steps and continues to expand its competitive advantage. Through Buildercode, rapid listing of new trading pairs, deep liquidity, an expanding ecosystem, and partnerships with fintech companies, HYPE has gradually built a highly integrated system, enabling users to perform nearly all operations on a single platform.

For emerging perpetual contract DEXs to truly break through, they must make their products attractive enough to all types of traders. This often means finding new breakthroughs outside of Hyperliquid's "track."

Tighter spreads, zero fees, a smoother mobile experience, additional returns on margin, better accessibility, and even monetization incentives such as points programs are all potential reasons to attract users to join and stay for a long time.

But like any project, the real test will begin after the TGE. Only then can we see whether its stickiness can withstand the test of the market through the performance of OI, transaction volume and protocol revenue.

Airdrops are a double-edged sword: a poorly executed one can be a fatal blow, while a successful (often non-overmined) airdrop can bring real user traction at lightning speed and kick-start the positive cycle that only a real product can drive.

The market will always leave a place for the "strongest second place".

And all this could happen very soon.