What have the mainstream Perp DEXs been up to recently?

While the entire crypto market seems to have entered another "bear market" phase, enthusiasm for the new track has not waned much.

Especially in the Derivatives track, many traders and community users are focusing more on the high-frequency, structured, gamified perpetual market. This is why the yet-to-be-launched Perp DEX continues to deliver impressive numbers in a downturn environment.

This momentum will see a concentrated outbreak in December: two top-tier yet-to-be-launched Perp DEXs are about to TGE. Will they be able to recreate the fervor of the Aster launch, or even replicate that phenomenon-level rally? Many users, including the author, are eagerly looking forward to it.

BlockBeats has compiled a list of the current top-ranked in trading volume, and most-discussed Perp DEXs, summarizing their key events and dynamics over the past two to three weeks, helping deepen everyone's understanding of the PerpDEX track.

edgeX: Seal Meme is Here

1. Community Memecoin Seal $MARU Has Arrived

The most standout event for edgeX is undoubtedly the launch of the community memecoin $MARU. This token, based on the edgeX seal mascot, attracted a lot of attention upon its announcement.

With a total supply of 10 billion, the expected launch date is after the Open Season, which is after December 3. The overall allocation is 70% directly allocated to airdrops and ecosystem incentives, 20% for the liquidity pool (unlocked upon listing for trading convenience), and the remaining 10% reserved for core contributors (fully locked for long-term incentives).

How to get $MARU? There are mainly two channels:

The first is through Open Season points, which is also the primary channel. These points will be converted into $MARU airdrops after December 3. It is important to note that the platform has a minimum trading volume requirement, and wash trading behavior will be identified and excluded. The weightage for obtaining points is as follows:

Trading perpetual contracts: 60% weightage, the major portion of the points;

Referral rewards: 20% weightage;

TVL/Liquidity provision: 10% weightage;

Position Size / Liquidation: Weight 10%;

The second is Creator Activity, which can be simply understood as Kaito's way of earning rewards through content creation. There are various forms of posts, such as making tweets, videos, memes, etc., and mentioning @edgeX_exchange. Original high-quality content selected by the official team (AI-generated content does not count; supports English, Chinese, Korean, and Japanese) will have the opportunity to share a prize pool of 500,000 USDT + 20 million MARU.

Some users have already seen temporary rewards on the dashboard (such as 21,370 MARU + 464 USDT). USDT can be claimed first, and MARU will be distributed after its official launch.

2. edgeX Messenger Upgrade

Related to the previous point, the edgeX Messenger upgrade was announced on November 13. This plan aims to elevate edgeX Messenger from a simple communication tool to a global DeFi collaboration center.

Core direction: Provide a collaboration platform for traders and influencers; deeply integrate with the $MARU incentive mechanism. In simple terms, the goal is to create a platform that combines traders' community, content creation, and incentive mechanisms.

3. edgeXFlow Ecosystem Sets Sail

On November 19, edgeX made another big move by launching the edgeXFlow ecosystem.

In brief, edgeXFlow is a new modular execution layer that operates in parallel with the existing StarkEx. Technical specifications: Execution delay: <10ms; Order processing capacity: 200,000 transactions per second; ZK proof ensures transparency, and so on.

The first partner is Ave.ai, and together they launched the XPIN trading event (November 19-26). The design of this event is quite interesting—not just the traditional PnL competition but adopting a mixed incentive model: airdrop rewards based on trading volume tiers; a leaderboard with 200 slots (to broaden the winning scope); 1.1x edgeX points bonus.

edgeX has ambitious goals, aiming to onboard 30 ecosystem partners by Q2 2026. It seems they intend to establish this infrastructure as an industry standard for a modular execution layer.

4. Points Countdown

The Open Season is now in the final countdown stage! We are currently in weeks 20-24, with an estimated 2-4 weeks remaining. In recent weeks, 300,000 points have been distributed each week, covering 13,000-14,000 addresses.

According to calculations by a community influencer, based on edgeX revenue being approximately 16% of Hyperliquid's, if the FDV reaches around 20-70 billion USD at TGE, the value of a single point may fall in the range of 30-300 USD. Of course, this is only an estimate, and the actual value will depend on market conditions. The probability of edgeX on Polymarket's FDV on launch day is as follows:

5. Strategic Partnership with Polymarket

This is also a significant piece of news. Yesterday, edgeX announced a strategic partnership with Polymarket: Polymarket's prediction scenarios will seamlessly integrate into the edgeX mobile app; users will be able to participate in event prediction with a single click; and both parties will jointly develop innovative leveraged prediction products.

Since this news was announced yesterday, there are not yet more details available. However, we can follow the updates, and it is expected that the products developed as part of the collaboration in the future will be one of the key projects in the edgeXFlow ecosystem.

Lighter: Raised 68 Million in Funding, Valued at 15 Billion

1. Major Funding Round

On November 11, Lighter announced the completion of a $68 million funding round, propelling it into the ranks of DeFi unicorns. The lineup of investors in this round is quite impressive:

Funding Details:

Amount: $68 million (equity + token subscription rights)

Valuation: $15 billion (post-money valuation)

Lead Investor: Founders Fund (Peter Thiel), Ribbit Capital

Other Investors: Haun Ventures, Robinhood (a rare brokerage VC participant)

Total Funding: Approximately $90 million (previously raised $21 million in 2024, led by Haun/Craft)

This funding round has several key points:

First, the investor lineup is top-notch. Founders Fund is one of Silicon Valley's top VCs, and Robinhood, as a brokerage, personally invested in the perp DEX, which is very rare in the industry. This indicates that traditional finance's acceptance of decentralized derivatives is increasing.

Second, the founder has a hardcore background. Novakovski is a legendary figure—entered Harvard at 16, recruited by Citadel founder Ken Griffin right after graduating at 18, and later worked as an engineer and trader in multiple financial institutions for nearly 15 years. Founders Fund partner Joey Krug bluntly stated that 85%-90% of the investment thesis is because of founder Vladimir Novakovski and his team.

2. The only perp DEX with a daily trading volume exceeding 10 billion

Lighter's recent growth data is quite explosive.

24-hour trading volume: around 79-112 billion USD (fluctuates based on timestamps, once becoming the only perp DEX to break 100 billion);

TVL: around 1.15 billion USD (2000x growth in 6 months! From around 500k USD at the end of March);

Open interest: over 170 billion USD;

L2 Ranking: has already risen to the top in the Ethereum L2 protocol, considered the first native perp DEX on Ethereum;

However, some analysts have expressed concerns: Lighter's trading volume/open interest ratio has at one point reached 27 (industry health value usually ≤5), suggesting that some of the trading volume may come from volume-driven incentivized trading activities. Pre-TGE trading volume contains volume-driven activities, which is also a feature of the industry. The true trading volume of Lighter may be revealed shortly after the TGE. However, considering the platform has just graduated from the beta version, the overall performance is still very impressive.

3. Oracle Integration + RWA Expansion, Targeting Traditional Financial Assets

Lighter recently announced a partnership with Chainlink to integrate real-time oracle data, formally expanding into the real-world asset (RWA) derivatives field.

Supported asset categories include: commodity futures contracts (gold, oil, etc.); stock index derivatives; forex pairs; other real-world assets.

In addition, due to the fact that the RWA price feed is not available 24/7 (for example, assets like gold and stocks only have prices during trading hours), Lighter has also made some special arrangements: during non-trading hours, it enters a "liquidation only" mode where users can only submit liquidation orders; funding rates continue to be calculated as usual during non-trading hours; the RWA market only supports isolated margin mode (considering its experimental nature and high volatility); a dedicated XLP (Experimental Liquidity Provider) pool is established to provide liquidity for the RWA market, isolated from the main LLP pool.

Hyperliquid: The Joy and Sorrow of the King

1. HIP-3 Upgrade, Transaction Fees Reduced by 90%

On November 19, Hyperliquid released a major upgrade: HIP-3 Growth Mode.

HIP-3 itself allows anyone to deploy their own perpetual contract market on Hyperliquid without permission by staking 500,000 HYPE tokens. The "Growth Mode" introduced this time is a further optimization based on HIP-3, specifically designed to provide ultra-low transaction fee incentives for new markets.

The key changes include: Taker fee reduced by over 90%, from the original 0.045% to 0.0045%-0.009%; highly staked users benefit more, as those reaching the highest staking and trading volume tier can enjoy fees as low as 0.00144%-0.00288%; rebates and trading volume contributions can also decrease by over 90% simultaneously.

However, to prevent "parasitic trading volume," there are exclusion rules for the Growth Mode market: it cannot include BTC or markets already operated by validators, cryptocurrency baskets/ETFs, synthetic price indices, or any assets that duplicate existing markets (such as gold already having PAXG-USDC).

The purpose of this upgrade is clear: to lower the barrier of entry for new markets. New markets often start with few traders and low liquidity, a 90% fee discount can effectively attract early users, further helping Hyperliquid transition from "a PerpDEX" to "a permissionless financial infrastructure layer."

2. Another Whale Takes a "Different Path to the Same End"

Internet-famous trader Andrew Tate recently lost all his funds on Hyperliquid, jokingly referred to as being "Hyperliquidated."

According to Arkham on-chain data, Andrew Tate's liquidation dates back to almost a year ago. There was a collective liquidation of long positions in BTC, ETH, SOL, LINK, HYPE, PENGU, and other assets on December 19, 2024.

On November 18, when BTC dropped below $90,000, Andrew Tate's final position was completely liquidated, and his account was emptied. This incident instantly became a meme material, considering he often portrayed himself as a financial master.

Some analysts directly labeled him as "one of the worst traders in crypto history," alongside other whales who suffered significant losses on Hyperliquid (James Wynn lost $23 million, Qwatio lost $25.8 million, 0xa523 lost $43.4 million in a month).

3. POPCAT Manipulation Attack

On November 12, Hyperliquid faced its second major attack of the year, the previous one being XPL, and this time the target was the memecoin POPCAT.

The attacker withdrew 3 million USDC from OKX and dispersed it to 19-26 new wallets. They opened leverage long positions of about $20-30 million in POPCAT on Hyperliquid (around 5x leverage) and then placed a buy wall of about $20 million at a price of $0.21, creating the illusion of strong demand. Other traders, seeing the buy wall and thinking there was support, rushed to go long. The attacker suddenly removed the buy wall, causing the POPCAT price to plummet from $0.21 to $0.13.

In the end, a large number of leveraged long positions were liquidated, totaling $25.5 million in positions across at least 26 liquidated accounts, resulting in a loss of $2.98 million in collateral, and the HLP treasury was forced to absorb $4.9 million in bad debt. The strangeness of this attack lies in the fact that the attacker themselves lost $3 million, seemingly not for profit.

There are two main speculations in the community regarding this: one is that this attack was purely a "stress test" to undermine Hyperliquid's reputation, with Binance/CZ being the main suspect. The other is that the attacker opened hedged positions on a centralized exchange, therefore profiting overall, with on-chain analysis pointing to BTX Capital, but founder Vanessa Cao has denied involvement.

Aster: Giving Away Money While Buying Back

1. Phase Four "Aster Harvest" Airdrops 120 Million ASTER

On November 10, Aster officially launched the fourth phase of airdrops, codenamed Harvest. The distribution size is 120 million ASTER (1.5% of the total supply) over a duration of 6 weeks (November 10 - December 21), with a weekly distribution of 0.25%, evenly spread across 6 epochs.

Compared to the previous phases (S2 4% allocation, S3 2.5% allocation), the allocation ratio for S4 has indeed shrunk. However, community analysis believes that due to a potential decrease in participants, individual user rewards may be higher, and the deflationary halving may drive up the token price.

Some of the key Tips to earn more points in this phase are: $ASTER can be used as perpetual contract collateral, using $ASTER as collateral provides additional points; paying fees with $ASTER grants a 5% discount; spot trading is now also eligible for points; additionally, there are anti-wash trading measures, and Aster now heavily emphasizes high-quality trading, implementing a maker order and symbol accelerator multiplier mechanism in an attempt to filter out wash trading behavior.

2. $10 Million Trading Competition "One Fish, Two Eats"

On November 17, Aster launched its largest-ever trading competition: a total prize pool of $10 million.

In terms of the format, it is divided into 5 weekly stages (lasting until December 21), each stage has an independent leaderboard, with a $1 million prize pool for the first stage, up to $2 million per week; 1000 winning seats per stage; limited to perpetual contract trading, ranked by trading volume and PnL.

The highlight of this trading competition is the "One Fish, Two Eats" feature, where the same trade can be counted for both the competition and the S4 airdrop. For example, the top player can earn up to $300,000 in a single week, and theoretically, if they dominate the leaderboard for 5 consecutive weeks, they could potentially receive $1.5 million.

3. Continued Protocol Buyback

Aster's buyback efforts in the perp DEX track are considered to be quite aggressive. As of November 13, the total repurchase amount is approximately $214 million; the repurchased token amount accounts for 7.11% of the circulating supply.

Recently, CZ publicly announced a purchase of over $2 million worth of ASTER, sparking speculative demand; additionally, market makers such as Wintermute have quietly increased their holdings, leading some analysts to predict that ASTER could rise to $10.

However, some in the community also have concerns: around 6.35 billion ASTER tokens are still locked, and future unlocks may bring selling pressure. There are about $700 million worth of tokens awaiting unlocking by 2026. The fluctuating unlock schedule in recent times has caused some panic. However, the official statement is that the unlock schedule will not be changed.

4. "Machi Mode" Feature

This may be the most meme-worthy new feature launched on Aster. On November 19, Aster announced the introduction of "Machi Mode," where liquidated users can receive point rewards, essentially giving a "consolation prize" to losing traders.

Why is it called Machi Mode? It is a nod to the renowned trader Jeffrey Huang, known in the community as "Machi Big Brother."

According to Lookonchain data, the top three whales in terms of liquidations on Hyperliquid since November 1 are: Machi Big Brother—71 liquidations; James Wynn—26 liquidations; Andrew Tate—19 liquidations.

Machi is way ahead, arguably the unlucky "Liquidation King." He once lost over $53 million in a month, known for his high leverage and aggressive trading style. Aster named this feature after him, to some extent, also embracing the degenerate culture of the crypto community.

Others

Additionally, the editor would like to introduce two other upcoming projects in the space that are of personal interest, especially in the realm of Perp DEX.

1. Pacifica

On November 12, Pacifica announced the launch of the TIF=TOB (Time in Force = Top of Book) order type.

In simple terms, when you submit a post-only limit order, if the price is set too aggressively and would otherwise penetrate the order book (i.e., get immediately filled), the traditional practice would be to cancel the order outright. However, with TIF=TOB, the order is not canceled but automatically adjusted to the top of the order book.

For example, suppose the current best bid for BTC is $100,000, and the best ask is $100,100. If you submit a TOB buy order at $100,200 (which would penetrate the Ask), the system will automatically adjust your order to $100,099—just below the best ask—becoming the new top of the order book. This is a great feature for market makers.

Currently, Pacifica has become one of the most important projects on the Solana blockchain.

2. Variational

Another key aspect is Variational, which played a significant role in the Arbitrum DeFi Revival Strategy for Perp DEX.

Its features include: an automatic listing engine that eliminates coordination delays via internal OLP; currently supporting 515+ tokens, making it the DEX with the most listings; protocol provides liquidity with hedging costs of only 0-2 basis points, with users paying a 4-6 basis point spread; achieving a period of over 300% APY; and loss compensation: currently over $2 million in refunds have been issued, covering 70,000+ trades, benefiting 6,500+ users, with the highest single refund exceeding $100,000, accounting for approximately 2% of the platform's total losses.

On November 15th, over $1 million in retroactive rewards were distributed; on November 17th, a retail sentiment index tool was introduced, showing that 89% of the trading volume comes from the long tail market. Overall, the data growth has been very rapid, with no open championship level yet, but volume retrospection may be possible in the future.