Perp DEX regains market attention: What are the leading projects doing this year?

Original article by: Changan I Biteye Content Team

This week, Hyperliquid has once again become the market focus.

The price of HYPE surged over 40% within a week, reaching an all-time high. Simultaneously, other Perp DEX projects such as Aster, Lighter, and edgeX also saw varying degrees of increase, bringing the entire sector back into the market spotlight.

Over the past year, the Perp DEX landscape has undergone significant changes. They are no longer just on-chain alternatives to CEX derivatives, nor are they solely competing through trading mining, points, or fee structures. Instead, they are continuously expanding into areas such as stablecoins, RWA, prediction markets, proprietary chains, revenue buybacks, and yield-bearing collateral.

In this article, we will chronologically review the changes in several representative Perp DEXs over the past year, examine their recent achievements, and explore their respective strategic directions.

1️⃣ Hyperliquid: From Trading Platform to On-Chain Financial Infrastructure

Over the past year, Hyperliquid's transformation has not just been about expanding trading volume, but rather a significant broadening of its product boundaries. It has evolved from a trading platform centered on perpetual swaps to one that simultaneously extends into stablecoins, prediction markets, and an open platform for deploying contracts.

September 2025: USDH Competes for Hyperliquid Settlement Asset Status

In September 2025, Hyperliquid advanced its native stablecoin, USDH. Compared to a typical project issuing a stablecoin, USDH is unique in that it competes for the entry point of dollar liquidity within Hyperliquid itself.

October 2025: HIP-3 Transitions from Official Token Listing to Builder-Created Markets

In October 2025, Hyperliquid introduced HIP-3. Previously, the Hyperliquid team primarily decided which assets to list for perpetual contracts. After HIP-3, external Builders can also deploy their own Perp markets on Hyperliquid.

Now, HIP-3 markets are beginning to cover asset classes such as traditional finance, commodities, and equities.

• WTI Crude Oil has a 24-hour volume of approximately $877 million, with open interest around $209 million;
• Brent Crude Oil has a 24-hour volume of approximately $368 million, with OI around $323 million.

To put this in perspective, the 24-hour trading volume of the top HIP-3 markets is approaching the level of mid-tier mainstream assets ranked between 10th and 20th on Binance's volume排行榜.

May 2026: HIP-4 Launches, Hyperliquid Introduces Native Prediction Markets

In February 2026, Hyperliquid proposed HIP-4, introducing outcome contracts. This was followed by development on the testnet, and in early May, the first live outcome markets appeared.

HIP-4 differs from traditional perpetual swaps as users trade on which price range the underlying asset will ultimately fall into.

Currently, HIP-4 has launched two BTC price prediction markets, including "Will BTC be above a certain price at a specific time?" and "Which price range will BTC fall into?"

The key difference from Polymarket is that HIP-4 is not a standalone product but is directly embedded within Hyperliquid's account system and matching engine. Users do not need to switch funds; they can participate in the prediction market using the same trading account.

Based on current data, HIP-4 is still in its early stages. The top market has a 24-hour volume of approximately $32,900 and open interest of about $34,900.

For comparison, a single BTC daily price prediction market on Polymarket sees a daily volume of around $433,700. In contrast, Hyperliquid's current top HIP-4 market is at roughly $32,900, which is about 1/13th of Polymarket's volume, indicating it is still very early.

May 2026: Coinbase and Circle Enter the Fray, USDC Re-Emerges as Protocol-Aligned Stablecoin

Also in May 2026, Hyperliquid's stablecoin strategy saw a new development.

Coinbase has announced plans to act as a capital deployer to activate AQAv2 on USDC. Circle will serve as the technical deployer, responsible for CCTP and native cross-chain infrastructure. Both Coinbase and Circle have committed to staking HYPE to activate AQAv2. As part of the transition arrangement, Native Markets has agreed to grant Coinbase the right to purchase USDH brand assets.

This means the center of gravity for protocol-aligned stablecoins within the Hyperliquid ecosystem is shifting from USDH to USDC.

With Coinbase as a capital deployer sharing the majority of reserve yield income with the protocol, USDC will become the stablecoin that better aligns with Hyperliquid's revenue distribution logic.

In future network upgrades, the HIP-4 outcome markets will also use USDC as the quote asset.

2️⃣ Aster: From Volume Explosion to Building Its Own Trading Ecosystem

Compared to Hyperliquid's year-long expansion of protocol boundaries, Aster's growth path is more direct: first, scale up trading volume, then gradually expand products and infrastructure.

December 2025: Shield Mode Goes Live

Aster released its 2026 H1 Roadmap and began progressively rolling out Shield Mode, TWAP strategy orders, and expanding into RWA perpetual markets for stocks, forex, and commodities.

March 2026: Aster Chain Mainnet Phase 1 Launches, Aster Transitions from Perp DEX to Proprietary L1

Focusing on privacy transactions, it uses ZK proofs and privacy addresses to conceal some transaction information, while emphasizing low latency, high throughput, and a zero-gas experience.

Aster aims not just to be a Perp DEX deployed on multiple chains, but to integrate matching, privacy, RWA assets, trading incentives, and governance into its own on-chain system.

May 2026: Continuous Listing of Global Hot Assets and Permissionless Listing Vote

Aster continues to expand tradable assets. It is incorporating more stock, Pre-IPO, commodity, and forex markets into its trading system, such as the SpaceX Pre-IPO perpetual contract.

Simultaneously, Aster launched the Permissionless Listing Vote. This mechanism effectively opens up part of the listing power to the community: eligible validators or ASTER stakers can propose new trading pairs, and the community votes on whether to list them.

This is somewhat similar to Hyperliquid's HIP-3, shifting from "the platform decides which assets to list" to "external participants jointly drive new markets."

Based on current data, some traditional finance-related markets are beginning to show trading activity. For example,

• Crude Oil (CLU) has a 24-hour volume of approximately $8.37 million,
• Silver (XAG) about $7.48 million, Gold (XAU) about $3.30 million;
• In the Pre-IPO market, the SpaceX contract has a 24-hour volume of approximately $1.50 million.

3️⃣ StandX: Turning Perp Margin into Yield-Bearing Assets

Most Perp DEXs compete solely on matching, leverage, and trading fees. StandX's approach is more interesting: it attempts to turn idle or sunk capital during the trading process back into yield-generating assets.

January 2026, StandX launched Maker Points.

It rewards not completed trades, but liquidity provision via orders. Users earn Maker Points simply by submitting limit orders, even if they haven't been filled. Once an order is filled, they further earn Trading Points.

In other words, StandX first turns passive liquidity in the order book into an incentivized asset.

March-April StandX successively introduced SIP-1 to SIP-4

The product direction became clearer: building a more capital-efficient Perp trading layer centered around DUSD, position yields, and large trade execution.

• SIP-1 is Block Trade, extracting large derivative trades from the regular order book for on-chain matching and StandX settlement, reducing the impact of large orders on the book.
• SIP-2 is Position Yield, allowing eligible perpetual positions to participate in yield distribution.
• SIP-3 further enhances the native yield of DUSD, directing a portion of StandX Perps trading fees to the DUSD yield pool.
• The latest SIP-4 extends Block Trade to TP/SL scenarios. It's not just adding a take-profit/stop-loss button, but making TP/SL a position-linked execution right, allowing users more flexible trade arrangements around future exit prices, protection prices, and reservation fees.

Viewed together, StandX's product narrative is quite comprehensive: DUSD solves margin yield, Maker Points incentivizes order book liquidity, Position Yield improves position capital efficiency, while Block Trade and TP/SL serve larger, more professional trading needs.

This makes StandX less like a pure Perp DEX and more like a trading system built around "yield-bearing margin." Its differentiation isn't offering higher leverage, but minimizing idle capital for users before, during, and after holding positions.

4️⃣ Lighter: Since 2026, Shifting from Airdrop Expectations to Revenue Buybacks, RWA, and ZK Security Narratives

January 2026: Initiated LIT Buyback, Tying Protocol Revenue to the Token

In January 2026, Lighter launched its LIT buyback program. Unlike many projects keeping revenue in the treasury, Lighter declared it would use fees generated by the DEX and future products to buy back LIT on-chain.

Early reports indicated that at the program's launch, the protocol treasury had approximately $1.35 million in USDC available for market buybacks, with multiple buybacks executed subsequently.

February 2026: Upgraded LLP, Introduced Separate Liquidity Strategies for RWA

In February 2026, Lighter revamped its Liquidity Provider infrastructure, introducing independent strategies for different market types, including crypto perps, forex, and RWA markets. This was done to manage risk, liquidation, and ADL separately for different assets, rather than having all markets share a single liquidity pool.

This step paved the way for subsequent RWA expansion. Since markets for commodities, stocks, and forex have different volatility, trading hours, and liquidity structures compared to crypto assets, using a single pool for all risks would make scaling difficult.

April 2026: Launched Liquidity Partner Program, Focusing on RWA Depth

In April 2026, Lighter launched the Liquidity Partner Program to reward participants providing deep liquidity for RWA markets. The program is open to everyone, with rewards distributed via random snapshots of the order book. The weekly reward amount is announced in advance by the team.

The program offers approximately $250,000 in weekly rewards, primarily covering crude oil, precious metals, and stock markets like NVDA and Tesla.

5️⃣ edgeX: Since 2026, Transitioning from Pre-TGE Incentives to EDGE Chain and TradFi Perps

February 2026: Circle Ventures Investment, Focusing on Native USDC Integration

In February 2026, Circle Ventures invested in edgeX.

With Circle Ventures on board, edgeX can subsequently focus on USDC for margin, settlement, cross-chain, and institutional liquidity access, smoothing its path for TradFi Perps.

March 2026: EDGE TGE, Tokenomics Officially Launched

In March 2026, edgeX first announced the EDGE airdrop terms and opened pre-market trading. It subsequently confirmed the EDGE TGE for March 31st.

April-May 2026: TradFi Perps Expansion, edgeX Adds Stock and Commodity Markets

Post-TGE, edgeX continued expanding TradFi Perps. The platform added numerous stock, commodity, and broad market assets, including NVDA, TSLA, AAPL, Gold, Silver, and Crude Oil.

This mirrors the moves by Hyperliquid's HIP-3 and Aster's RWA expansion, extending Perp DEXs from crypto asset trading to trading traditional financial assets.

Based on current trading data, some TradFi markets are beginning to develop liquidity. For example:

• Gold (XAUUSDC) has a 24-hour volume of approximately $9.49 million
• Crude Oil (BZUSDC) about $5.89 million

May 2026: Contract V2 Beta Launches, edgeX Shifts from Single Perp DEX to EDGE Stack

In May 2026, edgeX opened the V2 Beta for its contracts platform.

Simply put, V1 was edgeX's early trading system, primarily used to get contract trading operational. V2 is the next-generation system, designed to allow the platform to support more markets, faster matching, and more complex trading products.

This upgrade now supports contracts, spot trading, prediction markets, as well as trading traditional financial assets like stocks, ETFs, Gold, and Crude Oil.

Currently, V2 is still in Beta, but the platform already showcases many new markets, such as perpetual contracts for stocks and commodities.

Final Thoughts

Looking back over the past year, the changes in Perp DEXs are quite clear: they are no longer content with being just on-chain derivatives exchanges.

Their chosen paths differ, but the underlying judgment is similar: Perp DEXs cannot remain confined to the crypto derivatives market.

Since the beginning of this year, the US stock market has performed strongly, with tech stocks, AI-related assets, and traditional financial markets continuously attracting capital. For on-chain trading platforms, user demand extends beyond just trading BTC, ETH, and altcoins. Users want to trade crypto assets, US stocks, indices, gold, crude oil, and even Pre-IPO assets from a single account.

Therefore, Perp DEXs are competing not just for the crypto derivatives market, but for the larger demand for global asset trading. This is why, over the past year, several leading Perp DEXs have been pushing into TradFi assets.

The surge in HYPE prices merely thrust Perp DEXs back into the market's spotlight. The truly deeper change is this: the competition among Perp DEXs has shifted from being an alternative to CEXs to a race for "who can capture more global asset trading demand."