Most Promising Perpetual DEXs in 2025: A Comparative Analysis

1. Context and Introduction

Perpetual futures are now the center of crypto trading, and that center has shifted to decentralized exchanges. What was a niche in 2023-perpetual DEXs at roughly 2.7% of global derivatives volume-has become core infrastructure, accounting for about 26% of crypto derivatives by mid‑2025. By October 2025, monthly decentralized perps volume exceeded 1.7 trillion dollars, with daily peaks near 97 billion.

This is not just “DeFi catching up” to centralized exchanges (CEXs). It reflects a structural change driven by clearer regulation in major jurisdictions, high‑performance custom chains and ZK technology, and specialized on‑chain venues tuned to different trader profiles.

Hyperliquid remains the anchor platform, with an estimated 56–73% share of the perps DEX market, around 9.1 billion dollars in open interest, and roughly 15.6 billion dollars in daily volume. But 2025 has also brought a wave of serious challengers:

• Aster, launched in September 2025, with one of the fastest adoption curves in DeFi history and daily volumes in the 2.3–3.7 billion dollar range within weeks.
• Lighter, a ZK‑powered, zero‑fee perps DEX whose reported volumes rival or exceed Hyperliquid’s, alongside significant skepticism about measurement quality.
• EdgeX, built for institutions, known for robust infrastructure and zero downtime during major stress events.
• Drift, the leading Solana‑native perps venue, leveraging Solana’s performance upgrades and its own v3 architecture to deliver 10x improvements and lock in ecosystem dominance.
• Paradex, focused on long‑tail assets and breadth of listed markets.
• GRVT, with a reputation for institutional‑grade reliability and risk management.
• GMX and ApeX/ApeX Omni, representing alternative designs (AMM‑based and multi‑chain unified infra, respectively).

This article pulls together available research to assess the most promising perpetual DEXs heading into 2025 and beyond. It looks at fundamentals, on‑chain and market metrics, competitive positioning, and risk, then sketches a scenario framework (bull, base, bear) for how the sector could evolve-without making price calls.

Where data is missing or contested-such as Lighter’s volumes or detailed financials for some venues-those gaps are flagged rather than filled with assumptions.

2. Market Structure: From Niche to Systemic

The jump from ~2.7% to roughly 26% of global crypto derivatives volume in about two years is the defining macro shift for perpetual DEXs. By October 2025, monthly decentralized perps volume had passed 1.7 trillion dollars, with daily spikes to around 97 billion in September. This is now a parallel derivatives stack directly competing with the largest centralized futures venues.

Several forces are driving this change:

1. Regulation has normalized, not banned
   In early‑to‑mid 2025, U.S. policy moved from pure enforcement toward structured rule‑making and innovation programs. Legislative pushes like the CLARITY Act and GENIUS Act, the Presidential Working Group’s July 2025 report, and the SEC’s “Project Crypto” in August all signaled that DeFi infrastructure-including derivatives-would not be regulated out of existence.

   The result: the “regulatory discount” on DEXs shrank. On‑chain derivatives started to look like a legitimate venue for hedging, leverage, and basis trades, not a legal minefield.

2. Tech gap with CEXs has narrowed sharply
   DEXs long trailed CEXs on matching performance, latency, and reliability. That gap compressed in 2025. Hyperliquid’s custom Layer‑1 (HyperCore) claims around 200,000 orders per second and roughly 0.2‑second finality, putting execution in CEX territory.

   ZK‑based platforms like Lighter showed that high‑performance order books and privacy can run without a custom chain, while Solana‑native venues like Drift benefited from upgrades such as Firedancer and Jito’s Block Assembly Market (BAM), pushing Solana closer to traditional exchange latency.

3. Incentives shifted from single‑protocol to ecosystem‑level
   Token programs evolved beyond blunt volume airdrops. Hyperliquid’s ecosystem-over 100 applications across lending, staking, yield strategies, and mobile-layered multi‑protocol point systems and rewards that increase switching costs.

   Aster’s launch combined cross‑chain onboarding, a CEX‑style interface, and yield‑bearing collateral with tightly tuned incentives, bootstrapping both liquidity and loyalty at speed.

4. Institutional adoption and fee pressure
   Professional traders and institutions increasingly use DEXs to access leverage and hedging without centralized counterparty risk. EdgeX, backed by major market makers, undercut Hyperliquid’s 0.015% / 0.045% fee schedule for high‑volume users with roughly 0.012% maker / 0.038% taker fees, while delivering zero downtime during extreme moves.

   Institutional capital cares more about uptime, risk controls, and fee economics than airdrops, which is why venues like GRVT and EdgeX gained traction without retail‑oriented hype cycles.

5. Multi‑chain capital, fragmented liquidity
   By 2025, meaningful liquidity lives across Ethereum L2s, Solana, BNB Chain, Arbitrum, and others. Traders want unified margin and cross‑chain access, not isolated positions.

   ApeX Omni, Aster’s no‑bridge cross‑chain deposit model, and Lighter’s EVM + Solana footprint all target this reality. Hyperliquid’s custom chain offers performance but sits outside native liquidity on other chains, a trade‑off that becomes more visible as multi‑chain trading infra matures.

3. Core Design Choices: Order Book vs AMM vs Hybrid

Perpetual DEXs in 2025 fall into three broad architectures:

• CLOB on custom or high‑performance chains
  Hyperliquid, EdgeX, GRVT, Aster, Lighter, dYdX v4.

• AMM‑based or GLP‑style pools
  GMX and its derivatives.

• Hybrid and long‑tail specialists
  Paradex, Drift’s Solana‑native design, ApeX/ApeX Omni.

The leading venues largely favor CLOB architectures because they:

• Match the workflow of professional traders.
• Enable tight spreads and deep books for majors.
• Allow granular order types, margin, and risk controls.

AMM‑style models like GMX still matter-especially for passive LPs and some long‑tail assets-but no longer define the cutting edge. The strongest platforms tend to pair:

• High‑performance matching engines on custom L1s or performant L1/L2s.
• Sophisticated risk engines and liquidation systems.
• Hooks into lending, staking, and structured products that tie perps into broader DeFi flows.

4. Key Platforms: Fundamentals and Positioning

The following sections summarize the major perpetual DEXs covered in the research, with a focus on strategy and positioning rather than exhaustive feature lists.

4.1 Hyperliquid: Dominant but Exposed

Hyperliquid is the incumbent leader. It combines:

• A custom high‑performance chain (HyperCore) with ~200,000 orders per second and ~0.2‑second finality.
• Roughly 56–73% share of decentralized perps volume.
• About 9.1 billion dollars in open interest and ~15.6 billion dollars in daily volume.
• Over 2.7 trillion dollars in cumulative perps volume.
• A growing ecosystem on HyperEVM, whose TVL reportedly rose from about 458 million to 1.81 billion dollars in 2025, with Kinetiq alone over 850 million.

Strengths: deep liquidity, tight spreads, and strong network effects from its ecosystem and incentives. Hyperliquid has also pushed out:

• HIP‑3 – a permissionless market‑creation framework for long‑tail perps and third‑party listings.
• USDH – a native stablecoin launched in late September 2025, with projected 5.5 billion dollars in assets under management, meant to deepen internal liquidity and reduce reliance on external stables.

The October 2025 crash, which triggered about 19.35 billion dollars in global liquidations, exposed some cracks. Hyperliquid reportedly suffered performance degradation during the event. It was not a complete failure, but it compared poorly with GRVT and EdgeX, which reported zero downtime and no socialized losses.

Hyperliquid now has to defend market share and prove that its infra is as resilient under stress as that of newer, institution‑focused competitors.

4.2 Aster: The Fast‑Growth Challenger

Aster went live on 17 September 2025 and immediately became one of the most watched perps DEXs. Within its first week it reportedly:

• Onboarded around 330,000 wallets.
• Posted first‑day volume of roughly 3.71 billion dollars.
• Reached daily volumes in the 2.3–3.7 billion dollar range within weeks.

Few DeFi launches have matched that speed. Aster leans on:

• CEX‑like UX for traders migrating off centralized venues.
• Cross‑chain onboarding, letting users deposit from multiple chains without conventional bridge friction.
• Yield‑bearing collateral, so margin capital earns yield while in use.
• Aggressive incentives, tuned for both retail and semi‑pro traders via points, rewards, and liquidity programs.

Much of Aster’s early growth appears to have come at Hyperliquid’s expense, a reminder that liquidity moats erode fast when a challenger offers similar execution and an easier on‑ramp.

The open questions: how its risk engine behaves in a major stress event, and how sustainable its incentive spend is once the initial growth phase passes.

4.3 Lighter: Zero‑Fee ZK Perps with Question Marks

Lighter takes a different tack: a zero‑fee, ZK‑powered CLOB with privacy and scalability baked in. Reported metrics include:

• Daily trading volumes at times above 7 billion dollars.
• Days when its volumes rival or beat Hyperliquid’s.

These figures are contested. TVL appears low relative to reported volume, and there are ongoing concerns about wash trading or inflated activity via bots.

That said, the design pitch is strong:

• ZK‑based settlement and privacy.
• CEX‑like execution without a custom L1.
• No trading fees, with alternative monetization paths (e.g., MEV capture or future token value) implied rather than fully detailed.

Until its volume quality and economics are clearer, Lighter sits in a gray zone-technically impressive and potentially disruptive, but not yet widely trusted.

4.4 EdgeX: Institutional Infrastructure First

EdgeX targets the institutional end of the market. Launched in late 2024, by 2025 it had:

• Roughly 5–15% of decentralized perps market share.
• Zero downtime during the October 2025 liquidation event.
• No socialized losses, with liquidity providers remaining profitable.

Its edge comes from:

• Institutional‑grade infra-matching and risk systems built for professional use.
• Fee advantage-around 0.012% maker / 0.038% taker, undercutting Hyperliquid’s 0.015% / 0.045% for large accounts.
• Backing from major market‑making firms, supporting depth and signaling quality to institutions.

EdgeX is not trying to win the retail narrative. It is positioning as a “prime venue” for large orders, basis trades, and structured strategies. That is a big enough slice of the market even if it never matches Hyperliquid’s headline volumes.

4.5 Drift: Solana’s Native Perps Champion

Drift is the leading Solana‑native perps DEX. In 2025 it:

• Launched Drift v3, with roughly 10x performance gains over previous versions.
• Rode Solana infra upgrades like Firedancer and Jito BAM, which pulled Solana’s trading stack closer to traditional exchange latency.

Drift’s real strength is ecosystem fit:

• It is deeply integrated into Solana DeFi, NFTs, and consumer dApps.
• It is the default perps venue for users whose capital and activity are centered on Solana.

Its absolute volume and open interest trail Hyperliquid and Aster, but it is well‑defended as the “home venue” for Solana users who value native UX, speed, and composability.

4.6 Paradex: Long‑Tail Asset Specialist

Paradex differentiates on breadth of markets rather than raw size. It reportedly lists:

• Around 591 perpetual markets, vs. roughly 190–200 for nearest competitors.

This appeals to:

• Traders who want smaller or more exotic assets.
• Market makers willing to quote these pairs for higher spreads.

Paradex complements large‑cap‑heavy venues like Hyperliquid and EdgeX. As permissionless listing tools such as Hyperliquid’s HIP‑3 spread, the gap may narrow, but today Paradex is a natural stop for long‑tail exposure.

4.7 GRVT: Reliability as a Core Asset

GRVT (Gravity) has built its reputation on reliability and risk discipline. During the October 2025 liquidation event:

• GRVT reported zero downtime.
• It avoided socialized losses and kept LPs profitable.

For funds and professional traders, that performance under stress is a major signal. GRVT’s brand is about being a safe, predictable venue for large positions rather than an incentives‑driven retail magnet.

4.8 dYdX, GMX, ApeX and Others

• dYdX: Once the dominant perps DEX, with historical market share near 80%, it now sits around 5–10%. The move to its own app‑chain (dYdX v4) improved sovereignty but did not stop share loss to Hyperliquid and newer platforms.
• GMX: The flagship AMM‑style perps protocol built around GLP‑type liquidity. Still relevant, but no longer the design frontier for perps.
• ApeX / ApeX Omni: Aiming to be multi‑chain infrastructure with a unified interface across chains, fitting the broader multi‑chain narrative and appealing to users who want cross‑chain exposure in a single venue.

5. Comparative Metrics and Positioning

The table below combines key qualitative and quantitative points from the research. Where numbers are missing, relative language (“high”, “mid‑tier”) is used. All values are approximate and directional.

Table 1 – Snapshot of Leading Perpetual DEXs (2025)

6. The October 2025 Stress Test

The October 2025 liquidation event-around 19.35 billion dollars in global liquidations-was the most informative real‑world test so far for perps DEX infrastructure. It showed which platforms could keep execution, risk systems, and user confidence intact during violent moves.

Main takeaways:

• GRVT and EdgeX reported zero downtime and avoided socialized losses. LPs stayed profitable, and liquidations worked as intended. For institutions, this is the benchmark.
• Hyperliquid suffered performance degradation. It stayed online, but the issues were visible and compared unfavorably to GRVT and EdgeX.
• Venues with less transparent infra or younger risk engines escaped some direct scrutiny, but the broader lesson landed: how a DEX behaves under stress is now a core competitive factor.

The event pushed further segmentation:

• Institutions and large funds gravitate toward venues like EdgeX and GRVT that proved resilient.
• Retail and speculative users still chase incentives and airdrops, but with a clearer sense that infra risk is real.

7. Ecosystem Effects and Composability

By 2025, leading perps DEXs are no longer standalone trading terminals. They anchor broader ecosystems and plug into multiple DeFi primitives.

7.1 Hyperliquid’s Ecosystem

Hyperliquid’s stack includes:

• HyperEVM, an EVM‑compatible environment whose TVL reportedly grew from about 458 million to 1.81 billion dollars in 2025.
• Kinetiq, contributing over 850 million dollars of that TVL.
• Integrations with protocols like Pendle and Unit for yield, plus mobile gateways and lending via HyperLend.

This setup:

• Extends user engagement beyond trading.
• Enables cross‑protocol point systems and airdrop synergies.
• Raises switching costs for users participating across multiple Hyperliquid‑aligned protocols.

7.2 Aster: Cross‑Chain and Yield‑Bearing Collateral

Aster’s ecosystem thesis is different:

• Cross‑chain onboarding pulls assets from Ethereum L2s, Solana, BNB Chain, and more with minimal friction.
• Yield‑bearing collateral reflects a broader trend toward restaking and composable yield: margin capital shouldn’t sit idle.

Where Hyperliquid’s moat is depth on a custom chain, Aster’s is breadth across chains plus capital efficiency.

7.3 Drift and Solana Native Integration

Drift benefits from being tightly embedded in Solana:

• Native integration with Solana lending markets, liquid staking tokens, and consumer apps.
• Automatic upside from Solana’s infra improvements, without needing a dedicated chain.

For many Solana users, Drift is the default perps venue even if they also use Hyperliquid or Aster elsewhere.

8. Competitive Dynamics: Who Competes with Whom?

The perps DEX market is segmented along a few clear lines:

• Trader profile: retail vs. pro vs. institutional.
• Chain preference: Solana‑first vs. EVM‑centric vs. custom L1.
• Asset mix: majors vs. long‑tail.
• Risk appetite: conservative (infra and risk first) vs. aggressive (max incentives, experimental tech).

That creates overlapping competitive clusters:

1. Hyperliquid vs. Aster vs. Lighter vs. dYdX
   The main CLOB venues fighting for broad market share across majors and mid‑caps. Hyperliquid leads, Aster is the fastest‑growing challenger, Lighter is the zero‑fee ZK wild card, and dYdX is the legacy player defending relevance.

2. EdgeX vs. GRVT
   The institutional cluster. Both prioritize reliability, risk controls, and fees over retail hype, competing for fund, market‑maker, and prime broker relationships.

3. Drift vs. cross‑chain venues
   Drift owns Solana perps. Aster, ApeX Omni, and similar platforms try to abstract chains away and provide cross‑chain perps access. Solana‑centric users are likely to stick with Drift; multi‑chain portfolios may lean toward cross‑chain venues.

4. Paradex vs. permissionless listing frameworks
   Paradex’s long‑tail positioning competes with permissionless market creation like Hyperliquid’s HIP‑3. Over time the battle may shift from raw count of markets to who offers better curation, risk controls, and incentives for thinly traded assets.

5. GMX and AMM‑style perps vs. CLOBs
   AMM perps like GMX remain attractive to passive LPs and some DeFi natives. But for high‑frequency, large, or latency‑sensitive strategies, CLOBs are taking the lead. GMX now competes as much with yield and structured‑product platforms as with pure perps venues.

9. Risks and Negative Scenarios

Perps DEXs are far more mature than earlier DeFi cycles, but still carry meaningful risk across several dimensions.

9.1 Infrastructure and Execution

• Stress performance: The October 2025 event showed that even leaders can wobble. A future crisis with widespread order failures, stuck liquidations, or oracle issues could deeply damage trust.
• Custom chain risk: Platforms like Hyperliquid and dYdX that run custom chains must maintain chain security, validator incentives, and liveness themselves. A consensus bug or chain‑level exploit would be severe.
• Complex new tech: Heavy reliance on ZK systems (as with Lighter) introduces potential bugs or proving failures that are hard to anticipate.

9.2 Economics and Incentives

• Overextended rewards: Aggressive airdrops and yield can pull in mercenary capital that exits when rewards fall. If Aster, Lighter, or others can’t shift from incentive‑driven to organic usage, volumes could drop sharply.
• Zero‑fee uncertainty: Lighter’s no‑fee model raises questions about long‑term revenue. Future fee introductions or heavy dependence on token value could unsettle users.
• LP and socialized loss risk: If LPs lose money systematically or face socialized losses during shocks, liquidity can disappear quickly.

9.3 Regulation and Legal

• Policy reversals: The friendlier 2025 U.S. stance is not guaranteed to last. Political shifts or scandals could re‑ignite hostility toward DeFi derivatives.
• KYC and custody rules: Strict requirements on derivatives venues could force heavy geo‑blocking or compliance pivots, shrinking the addressable market.
• Token classification: If perps DEX tokens are labeled securities or derivatives, listings and institutional access could be constrained.

9.4 Market Structure and Liquidity

• Fragmentation: More venues and chains can mean thinner books and higher slippage outside the top platforms.
• Reflexive crashes: Perps amplify leverage. If many DEXs share user bases and collateral types, cascading liquidations could propagate across venues and chains simultaneously.

9.5 Data Integrity and Transparency

• Inflated volumes: Doubts around Lighter’s stats highlight the risk of wash trading and vanity metrics across the sector.
• Opaque risk engines: Without clear disclosure of liquidation logic, risk parameters, and oracle design, it is hard to assess how a platform will behave when volatility spikes.

10. Scenario Analysis: Bull, Base, and Bear

Given the number of moving parts, scenarios are more useful than point forecasts. The table below sketches how the perps DEX landscape might evolve over the next 12–24 months, without assigning probabilities or prices.

Table 2 – Scenario Overview for Perpetual DEXs (2025–2027)

10.1 Bull Case

In the bull case, regulation continues to normalize. The U.S. and other major markets refine rules around DeFi derivatives without imposing impossible requirements. Institutional adoption of on‑chain hedging and leverage accelerates.

Custom L1s like HyperCore, app‑chains like dYdX v4, and ZK venues like Lighter stabilize. Multi‑chain UX improves to near‑seamless cross‑margining. No chain halts or large‑scale exploits occur that permanently dent trust.

In that world:

• Perps DEXs could plausibly reach 30–40%+ of global derivatives volume.
• Hyperliquid deepens its moat with HIP‑3, USDH, and ecosystem growth.
• Aster cements itself as the leading cross‑chain venue for retail and pros.
• EdgeX and GRVT become default endpoints for institutional perps flow.
• Drift fully exploits Solana’s infra and consumer‑app momentum.
• Lighter‑type ZK venues work if they can prove volume quality and sustainable economics.

The main risk is excess leverage. Once perps DEXs become systemic, a major deleveraging could trigger intense regulatory backlash.

10.2 Base Case

In the base case, regulation stays mixed but stable. Some jurisdictions are supportive, others restrictive, but there is no broad coordinated crackdown. Crypto markets cycle through risk‑on/risk‑off, with gradual net adoption.

Infra keeps improving but is not flawless; incidents happen but are contained. Incentive programs become more targeted and less extravagant as protocols prioritize sustainability.

In this environment:

• Perps DEXs hold a mid‑20s% share of global derivatives volume.
• Hyperliquid remains largest but less dominant as Aster, EdgeX, and others build durable share.
• Drift stays the Solana perps hub; Paradex and GMX maintain specialized roles.
• Lighter either tweaks its model (e.g., fees) or remains high‑volume but controversial.

Key risks are margin compression as fee competition intensifies and slower token appreciation, which may disappoint investors anchored to prior cycles.

10.3 Bear Case

In the bear case, one or more major shocks hit:

• Regulatory clampdowns on DeFi derivatives in the U.S. or EU.
• A catastrophic infra failure on a leading venue-chain halt, large exploit, or systemic liquidation breakdown.
• A prolonged macro risk‑off period crushing crypto volumes.

Under those conditions:

• Perps DEX volumes contract sharply; share could fall back toward low‑teens percentages.
• Liquidity fragments; many smaller or newer platforms see volumes collapse.
• Only the strongest venues-likely GRVT, EdgeX, and possibly Hyperliquid if it avoids being the epicenter-retain significant institutional flow.
• Retail capital either exits or retreats to spot markets.

The main threat is long‑term reputational damage to on‑chain derivatives if the failure is severe enough, delaying recovery for years.

11. What the Data Does Not Show Yet

Public data covers high‑level metrics and narratives well, but leaves gaps where deeper analysis would matter most:

• Granular financials: Comparable data on fee revenue, net LP returns, and protocol profitability is sparse, making economic sustainability hard to judge across venues.
• Transparent risk engines: There is no standard for disclosing liquidation rules, oracle design, and stress‑test results. Documentation quality is uneven.
• Volume quality: Discrepancies between TVL and reported volume, as in Lighter’s case, underscore the need for independent audits of trading flow and wash‑trade detection.
• User behavior over time: Cohort retention, cross‑platform migration, and user lifetime value are mostly anecdotal. These will be central to assessing who really has a moat.

Serious strategic or investment decisions would require protocol‑level data beyond what current dashboards and marketing releases provide.

12. Conclusion

By 2025, perpetual DEXs have moved from experiment to parallel infrastructure. Their share of global derivatives volume has climbed from about 2.7% to roughly 26%, with monthly volumes above 1.7 trillion dollars and daily peaks near 97 billion. This is now a systemically relevant segment of the crypto market.

Hyperliquid is still the central node, with unmatched liquidity and a rapidly growing ecosystem. But the current cycle has shown that no single platform is untouchable. Aster’s explosive debut, Lighter’s zero‑fee ZK model, EdgeX and GRVT’s institutional‑grade resilience, Drift’s Solana‑native dominance, and Paradex’s long‑tail focus all point toward a multi‑polar market structured around trader type, chain preference, and risk appetite.

The October 2025 stress test reinforced a simple hierarchy: incentives and UX attract users, but performance and risk management under pressure determine who keeps them. Platforms that combine robust infra, sustainable economics, and credible ecosystems are best placed to survive bull, base, and bear paths. Those leaning purely on aggressive rewards, opaque metrics, or unproven tech face real downside if conditions turn.

The most promising perpetual DEXs are not just the ones posting the biggest volumes today, but those building infrastructure and ecosystems that can withstand both euphoria and stress and keep compounding across multiple market cycles.