I’ve covered onchain perp DEXs long enough to remember when performance was still the major bottleneck and teams made an explicit tradeoff, using AMMs to stay onchain, but accept poor execution, wide spreads, and fragile liquidity. That compromise defined the category for years.
That tradeoff ended with Hyperliquid.
By pioneering a fully onchain central limit order book (CLOB), @HyperliquidX removed the structural constraint that held Perp DEXs back. Execution quality improved, latency dropped and liquidity stopped fragmenting. Today, CLOB-based designs account for over 80% of total DEX volume, which, frankly, marks the end of the AMM-first era for perps.
What’s changed is not just speed, but credibility. This new generation of perp DEXs is now good enough to host strategies that previously lived exclusively on CEXs. Execution is predictable. Slippage is manageable. Market depth is real. For the first time, onchain perps are approaching the standards of global trading venues.
Different protocols have taken different architectural routes: custom appchains, offchain matching with onchain settlement, optimized validators, but they all converge on the same destination: fast, cheap, and efficient onchain perps. It will be interesting to see which stack proves most durable under stress.
Among them, Hyperliquid still stands out. It has crossed $1B in annualized revenue, onboarded roughly 935,000 users, and captured around 19% of the perp market. More notably, it did this without VC funding. No token incentives masking weak fundamentals. Just deep liquidity, a strong fee engine, and a community-driven model built for longevity.
That combination may end up being Hyperliquid’s real edge.
I’d argue Hyperliquid needs little introduction.
As of August 2025, it was labelled as the most profitable DeFi protocol, with dominant fee capture and execution quality. For now, the throne looks secure. But markets rarely stand still, and leadership in perps is never permanent.
I’m seeing subtle slippage in market share and relative fee capture as competitors deploy aggressive incentives and points programs. This has pulled marginal flow away from Hyperliquid, at least temporarily. So clearly, incentives still matter.
The real test comes post-TGE. When rewards fade, it will be interesting to see whether users stick with newer venues or migrate back to deeper liquidity and cleaner execution. This piece maps that battlefield, ranking the most credible threats to Hyperliquid’s position as the leading perp DEX.
Landscape Overview
The foundations for onchain perps at scale are finally here. What once required bespoke engineering is now mostly plug-and-play. Centralized sequencers offer CEX-like speed, modular DA handles throughput, and external oracles and ZK systems close the stack.
So the bottleneck has shifted. Teams are launching with sharply different trade-offs: zero-fee versus low-fee, modular versus monolithic, and contrasting liquidity and risk designs. In this section, I map that landscape and assess who can realistically challenge Hyperliquid on performance, liquidity, and long-term durability.
Top-Tier Volume Rivals
@Paradex - The Zero-Fee Private Exchange:
Paradex operates as a high-performance DEX on Starknet's first dedicated appchain. Incubated by Paradigm and powered by STARK technology with the Cairo programming language, Paradex delivers CEX-level liquidity and speed while upholding DeFi principles of self-custody, transparency, and capital efficiency.
Where Paradex truly differentiates is its Zero Fee Perps (ZFP) model. Live since September 2025, the exchange removes maker-taker fees entirely.
Instead, revenue flows through Retail Price Improvement, 0.5 bps on retail fills from professional market makers and 2 bps on API takers. It’s essentially a TradFi-style payment-for-order-flow model, but executed onchain with open competition. The upside is clear: no “distribution tax” like on CEXs, where fees are often recycled into KOL incentives.
As of the time of writing, here are some key metrics for Paradex:
Taken together, these numbers mark Paradex’s shift from an early contender to a serious challenger. Its Open Interest now clears peers like GRVT and Extended. More importantly, rising users and TVL suggest durable demand, not reflexive leverage chasing. That distinction matters, and it’s likely to persist.
@grvt_io - The Privacy‑Preserving, Institution‑Friendly Exchange
GRVT is a deliberate break from the legacy perp DEX playbook. Instead of iterating on AMMs, the team rebuilt the stack from first principles, targeting privacy and institutional readiness.
The exchange combines a ZK-Validium L2 for private, low-cost settlement with an offchain CLOB for millisecond matching. This hybrid design supports pro-grade perps, futures, and managed strategies, while preserving DeFi fundamentals like self-custody and onchain verifiability.
GRVT’s roadmap spans spot, options, structured strategies, and even RWAs, all under a single account model. What stands out is the 10% annualized yield on active trading equity, including margin and unrealized P&L, rare in DeFi.
Liquidity providers earn rebates at every tier, effectively democratizing market making rather than concentrating it among a few whales. Retail traders also benefit from systematically better execution than bots or HFTs (High Frequency Trading), which, if it holds, would be a first for onchain markets
In 2025, GRVT’s TVL expanded more than 6× while perp volume jumped ~6,300% to $1.6B, pushing it into the global top-10 perps DEXs. The Series A and GLP launches were clear inflection points.
@variational_io:
Variational can be viewed as a clean attempt to rebuild perps and derivatives around true P2P settlement. It automates bilateral trading and clearing for perps, futures, and options, while Omni, its retail app, runs with zero trading and gas fees. The edge is the Omni Liquidity Provider, a single counterparty sourcing liquidity across CEXs and onchain venues. That aggregation enables tight spreads, captures spread revenue, and (over time) routes value back to the protocol and vault depositors.
Variational ranks among the top 6 perp DEXs by volume, with explosive growth driven by zero-fee trading and points farming hype.
The platform also has the 5th-largest OI right now compared to other Perp DEXs, and on January 3rd, crossed $100B in lifetime trading volume and $750M in open interest for the first time.
@extendedapp:
Built by a team of former Revolut executives, Extended (previously known as X10) launched as a high-performance perp DEX originally on StarkEx before making the full transition to Starknet mainnet in August 2025.
Extended employs a hybrid order book model: order matching, risk engine, and sequencing happen offchain for sub-10 ms latency, while final settlement and validation occur trustlessly on Starknet. Traders enjoy up to 100× leverage across 70+ markets, including major crypto pairs plus selected TradFi synthetics (EUR/USD, gold/XAU, S&P 500, Brent oil)
As of January 2026, Extended consistently ranks among the top 10 perp DEXs by volume and recently reached $150M+ in TVL and $100B+, an all-time trading volume on Starknet
@nadoHQ:
Nado is a centralized‑limit order book DEX built on the Ink blockchain, an L2 solution backed by @Kraken. Nado is built by core contributors from the Kraken team; no public VC financing is disclosed, but the Kraken heritage gives it strong institutional-grade credibility.
Nado has already outperformed many public protocols while still in closed alpha, with $1.2 B in daily perp volume and ranked in the top 10 Perp DEX.
As of the time of writing, it has an impressive market performance: TVL of $52.42M, 30D Perp Volume of $13.3B, and Open Interest of $144.87M.
@pacifica_fi
Pacifica is a Solana-based Perp DEX, launched mainnet in June 2025 and is currently leading Solana Perp DEXs. It operates a hybrid feature of an offchain matching engine that handles order matching for speed and onchain settlement, offering up to 50x leverage on trades.
While currently building on Solana, the team has expressed ambitions to eventually launch its own sovereign L1.
The platform currently ranks among the top 10 exchanges by volume despite still being in closed beta. Pacifica became the top Solana perp DEX, surpassing @JupiterExchange and leading on the daily, weekly, and monthly trading volume. However, while its trading volume is high, its open interest accounts for less than 20% of Solana's total. A clear indication that much of the platform's activity is attributed to airdrop farming.
Pacifica experienced a meteoric rise in trading activity throughout the latter half of 2025: the platform saw a surge in unique addresses from 260 to over 30,000 in January 2026, though deposits are primarily skewed toward smaller retail amounts.
Mid-Tier Volume Competitors:
Perp DEXs generally process hundreds of millions to a few billion in daily or weekly volume. Placing them below the current market leaders but firmly on the competitive map. These projects are newer, still in developmental stages, or underfarmed.
@etherealdex
Ethereal is a spot and perp DEX built on the Ethena L3 (with Arbitrum tech). The protocol uses USDe as the primary margin collateral, enabling yield-bearing collateralization tightly integrated with the Ethena ecosystem. The key mechanics is a CEX-like low-latency execution on an L3 environment with full self-custody, supporting spot and perpetual trading. Early access is focused on USDe trading, which has driven strong community adoption, boosted by ENA governance ties and potential token rewards for holders.
Launched in mainnet alpha in October 2025, the protocol has achieved strong market traction:
Cumulative volume: $5.02B
Open interest: $206.411M
TVL: $74.64M
@StandX_Official
StandX is a perpetual futures decentralized exchange operating on BNB Chain and Solana. Developed by former members of the Binance Futures team, the protocol uses a proprietary yield-bearing stablecoin, DUSD, as the primary margin asset, allowing collateral to earn yield while deployed for trading.
This allows users to earn passive yield (approximately 3.25%–3.5% APY) on their trading collateral.
The protocol has processed the following metrics:
24h volume: $786.13M
TVL: $98.93
@OstiumLabs
Ostium is a perpetuals trading protocol live on Arbitrum, offering onchain exposure to real-world assets and crypto through perpetual contracts. The protocol focuses on RWA perpetuals and uses a pool-based liquidity model rather than a CLOB, reducing liquidity fragmentation across markets.
Traditional asset markets are accessed via an RFQ execution model, enabling tight spreads and deep liquidity without tokenization. All trading is self-custodial and executed onchain.
As of 2026, the protocol commands:
TVL: $78.99M
Cumulative volume: $34.47B
Open interest: $241.14M
@VestExchange
Vest Exchange is a multi-chain perp DEX originally rooted in Arbitrum, operating across Ethereum, Polygon, OP Mainnet, and zkSync Era. It differentiates through its zkRisk engine, which enables real-time pricing and risk management for both crypto and non-crypto perpetuals, including equities and indices.
Vest prioritizes capital efficiency and solvency protection. Its zkRisk engine uses Expected Value at Risk (EVaR) to dynamically adjust premia and funding rates, combined with AMM buffers for LP protection. This design enables CLOB-like execution without open interest caps, near-instant settlement via ZK proofs, and built-in MEV resistance.
Cumulative perpetual volume: $6.27B
30-day trading volume: $1.52B
@AxiomExchange
Axiom is a Solana-based trading platform that functions as an advanced frontend aggregator, rather than a standalone DEX. It integrates Hyperliquid perpetuals (up to 50x leverage), alongside memecoin trading and yield opportunities.
Designed for power users, Axiom offers features such as turbo mode and a pulse engine for faster execution. The platform incentivizes activity through a SOL cashback program, with tiered rewards ranging from “Wood” to “Champion” based on trading volume.
Weekly perpetuals volume: $147.39M
Cumulative volume: $14.43B
@hibachi_xyz
Hibachi is a trading-optimized zk rollup designed as a provable exchange, focused on high-throughput execution with cryptographic verification.
The protocol combines offchain matching with Succinct’s SP1 prover to generate zero-knowledge proofs that verify the fairness of its offchain operations.
Since its launch in June 2025, Hibachi has achieved:
Cumulative volume: $9.46B
Open Interest: $4.75M
@cascade_xyz
Cascade is a pre-mainnet trading platform positioned as a neo-brokerage offering perpetuals across crypto, U.S. equities, and private assets through unified margin accounts.
The platform aims to offer 24/7 perpetuals trading across crypto, U.S. equities, and private assets through unified margin accounts accepting both fiat and stablecoins.
The protocol secured $15M in undisclosed funding in December 2025 from heavyweight backers including Coinbase Ventures, Polychain Capital, Variant, and Archetype Ventures
@risextrade
RISEx is a perpetual futures decentralized exchange operating on Rise Chain, a high-performance Ethereum Layer 2. The protocol uses fully onchain order books on a low-latency L2, prioritizing synchronous composability over hybrid or offchain execution models.
RISEx runs entirely onchain with native order books, enabling composable DeFi interactions at the execution layer. It is deployed on Rise Chain, which boasts of sub-3ms latency and 100k TPS capacity.
@Backpack
Backpack Exchange is a centralized crypto trading platform offering perpetual futures, operating as a regulated global exchange with onchain transparency mechanisms. The exchange differentiates itself by combining regulatory compliance with native proof-of-reserves. The aim is to provide transparent asset verification without sacrificing trading performance.
While classified more as CEX than pure DEX, Backpack’s major milestones is the 2024 acquisition of FTX EU and its EU MiFID II license.
By acquiring the European arm of the defunct exchange, Backpack is well positioned as one of the first fully regulated venues in Europe to offer crypto derivatives, starting with perpetual futures.
Backpack Exchange has reached:
Cumulative volume: $392.03B
Open Interest: currently sits at $308.77M.
@BullpenFi
Bullpen is an onchain trading terminal that aggregates perpetuals, spot markets, and prediction markets into a unified, mobile-first interface. The platform focuses on aggregation and execution abstraction, allowing users to trade across multiple protocols from a single interface without managing separate venues. Bullpen routes trades to underlying protocols, including perpetuals on Hyperliquid, spot markets on Solana, and prediction markets via Polymarket.
The interface processed:
Cumulative volume: $1.46B
Revenue: $432k from underlying protocol fees (primarily Hyperliquid builder codes).
@01Exchange
01 Exchange is a decentralized perp DEX powered by the N1 blockchain (high-performance NordVM engine).
It offers CEX-level speed, low latency, and rich order book features with full onchain transparency.
While it was an early participant in the sector, its testnet has been discontinued in preparation for the mainnet launch.
@DecibelTrade
DecibelTrade is an emerging Perp DEX being developed on the Aptos network. It is part of the "Global Trading Engine" vision for Aptos, aiming to bring more market transparency onchain.
Currently in the public testnet phase, users can mint test assets, trade, and earn XP via volume/rankings.
Who Will Win
Hyperliquid has set the pace by building its own high-performance Layer 1, complete with fast execution and deep liquidity, features that have become its moat. In 2025, that advantage translated directly into record monthly volumes and fee generation.
At present, I don’t see a true head-to-head competitor, but Paradex is worth flagging. Its ZK-based L2 feels less like a pure perps DEX and more like a diversified financial institution. Zero-fee execution is a sharp distribution wedge.
Still, this race won’t be decided by tech alone. It will be won by whoever best combines high-performance execution, real liquidity depth, and a CEX-grade user experience, and currently, the Lindy effect of success favors Hyperliquid.
