What are Perp Dexs and why is it one of the hottest topics on the cryptocurrency market?

Decentralized derivative instruments exchanges revolutionize trade with the financial lever. Aster, Avantis and the war for dominance in the Perpetual Dex sector are topics that shake the cryptocurrency market in recent days.

What exactly are Perp Dexs?

Perpetual decentralized exchanges These are decentralized exchanges enabling trade in contracts that are derivatives that allow you to speculate about the prices of assets without their physical possession. Cryptocurrency Perpetual Futures, or “Perps”, are derivative contracts that allow traders to speculate on assets prices without having a given cryptocurrency. Unlike traditional Futures contracts, which expire at certain dates, perpetual futures have no expiry date.

Never before decentralized exchanges offering perpetual contracts were so popular.

Key features of perp dexs:

No kyc and full control over funds. They look and act like centralized crypto exchanges, but they work on blockchain and do not require account creation or identity verification. Users can simply connect their crypto portfolio to start trading.

High financial levers. Most PerP DEX offers levers from 20x to even 500x, which allows trade with small capital, but at significantly increased risk.

Funding rate mechanism. The swaps on Perpetual stock exchanges are unique to crypto and reflect traditional term contracts with several significant corrections. They do not have a date of expiry and are approaching the price of the spot market through the Funding mechanism – long positions pay to short positions or vice versa.

Hyperliquid – the current king among the perp dexes

Until recently, Hyperliquid was the undisputed market leader of the Perp Dex. Built on its own blockchain Layer-1 using the Hyperbft consensus mechanism, Hyperliquid processes up to 200,000 transactions per second with a finalization below a second.

The platform achieved impressive results – a volume of USD 200 billion in September 2025 and USD 2.7 trillion throughout history. However, the last weeks have brought new challenges:

Decreases in the price of the token hype: With a 30% decrease in the last 7 days, Hyperliquid (Hype) achieves worse results than the global cryptocurrency market. The token that has reached a peak at around USD 59 is currently trading around USD 41.

Whale sales pressure: A sudden 10% decrease in the price of Hyperliquid (Hype) occurred in connection with speculations regarding the sales by Arthur Hayes by an item worth 800 thousand. USD. Similar movements of other great players cause anxiety in the community.

Upcoming unlocking of tokens: October 2025 is to bring a significant unlocking of Hype tokens, which can introduce additional supply to the market and put inheritance pressure at the price.

Aster – a new star from BNB Chain counterattacks

Aster is probably the biggest surprise of the Perp Dex market in 2025. He recently overtook Hyperliquid in a daily trade volume. The promise of another Airdrop tokens attracts traders.

Why did the aster gain popularity so quickly?

Support Cz (Changpeng Zhao): The key moment in the ASTER price trajectory was the speech of the founder of Binance Changpeng Zhao on the social platform X, where he congratulated the project with the words “Well Done! Good Start. Keep Building!” This support of one of the most influential forms of crypto has been interpreted as a strong signal of trust.

Impressive financial results: At the peak of the Aster, Hyperliquid outdated in daily revenues (10m vs 3m USD) and volume (13.5b vs 9.6b USD). Until September 2025, ASTER reached TVL about USD 600 million and daily volumes in hundreds of billions, ranging among the leading Perp Dex on BNB Chain.

Successful Airdrop and Stage 2: Aster token Generation Event (TGE) was officially planned for September 17, 2025, with 704 million Aster tokens distributed to authorized users who participated in the Season 1 Aster award program. Currently, Stage 2 of the Genesis program with improved point mechanisms is underway.

Unique technological solutions: The basic innovation of the Aster lies in the “Trade & Earn” model, which allows users to use assets making profit as a security for perpetual trade. The platform also offers ASBNB (Liquid Staking BNB) and USDF (Yield-Bearing Stablecoin).

Avantis-a BASE revolution with a 500-fold lever

Avantis is the third big player who brings a breath of fresh air to the perp dex market. Since the launch of Avantis at Mainnet, it has become the largest exchange of derivative instruments on Base and the largest Dex in the field of Rwa and Market Making trade.

What distinguishes Avantis?

Extreme lever: Avantis is a decentralized Perpetuals exchange on a BASE network, allowing users to trade both cryptocurrencies and real -world assets, such as Forex and goods, with a lever to 500x.

RWA assets trade: Avantis to Perp Dex, which enables users to trade cryptocurrencies, forex, goods and indexes using stablelein protection. The protocol abstracts from individual books of orders and instead builds a “universal layer of lever”, where you can liberate any asset with reliable price service.

Zero-doe model: Avantis introduced the first DEFI in the world Zero-Fee Perpetuals (ZFP). In this model, users pay transaction fees only if they achieve profits.

Strong institutional support: Avantis is built on and supported by Base and other investors, such as Panther Capital and Galaxy Digital.

Impressive Avantis results:

  • The protocol processed over USD 18 billion in accumulated trade volume and made over 2 million transactions for over 38,500 traders. With 23 million USD TVL in over 25,000 LP and over 80 markets
  • Avnt token after listing on the main stock exchanges, including binance, increased by 80% to USD 1.56


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War for dominance – who will win?

The current landscape of the Perp Dex market can be best described as a “three -sided war” between Hyperliquid, Aster and Avantis. Each platform has its own unique advantages:

Hyperliquid – experience and technology

  • Advantages: Proven technology, 6.48 billion USD TVL, no VC, managed by the community
  • Challenges: Falling hype price, competition, upcoming unlocking of tokens

Aster – Momentum and ecosystem support Binance smart chain

  • Advantages: CZ and Binance support, rapid growth, innovative model “Trade & Earn”
  • Challenges: Relatively new project, dependence on BNB Chain

Avantis – Innovation and RWA

  • Advantages: 500x lever, RWA trade, zero fees, strong VC support
  • Challenges: A smaller ecosystem than competitors, greater risk with extreme levers

DEX trend and market perspectives

The height trajectory of Perp Dex remains amazing. The total TOP 10 volume of decentralized Perpetuals exchanges reached record amounts in 2025, representing an impressive year -on -year growth.

The Perp Dex sector is gaining popularity for several key reasons:

1. growing interest in DEFI: Users are increasingly preferring decentralized solutions due to greater control over means and no KYC need.

2. Technological innovations: A rapid increase in the popularity of Perp DEXs is the subsection of a larger narrative of Layer 2. Second layers and vertical scaling facilitated the performance necessary for the explosion of Perp Dexs, which increased in values ​​and popularity.

3. High income: The best perpetual dexy generate millions of USD daily revenues, which attracts both users and investors.

4. Access to new assets: Platforms such as Avantis enable trade in traditional assets in a decentralized way.

Risks and challenges for DEX

Despite the huge potential, the Perp Dex sector is not free from risk:

High financial levers: 500 times levers can lead to rapid liquidation and total capital loss.

Risk of smart contracts: All Perp Dexs are based on smart contracts that may conclude errors or be the target of hacker attacks.

Regulatory uncertainty: The growing interest of regulators may affect the future of this sector.

Variability of native tokens: As Hype’s example shows, Dex platform tokens can be very variable.

Summary-the future belongs to the Perp Dex

The Perp Dex market in 2025 is probably one of the most dynamically developing sectors in the crypto space. The war between Hyperliquid, Aster and Avantis shows how quickly a competitive landscape can change.

Hyperliquid, despite the current challenges, remains a technical leader with the highest fluidity. Aster impresses with the growth rate and support of the Binance ecosystem. Avantis introduces innovations in RWA trade with extreme levers.

For investors and traders, it is important to track the development of all three platforms, because they will probably coexist, supporting various niches of the market. The key to success will be to understand the unique proposals of the value of each platform and adapt the investment strategy to the personal risk profile.

The only certain thing is that “War Perp Dex” is just the beginning of the revolution in decentralized trade in derivatives. The winner will ultimately be users who will gain access to more and more advanced and competitive commercial platforms.


The text is not investment advice. Trade with a lever is associated with the risk of losing all capital.