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The Perp DEX Wars intensify in 2025 as Hyperliquid faces Aster, Lighter, and EdgeX. A deep dive into OI vs volume, tech, and credibility.
The Perp DEX Wars have defined the competitive landscape in 2025, as the decentralized perpetual futures (perp DEX) market has grown massively. Monthly perp DEX trading volume crossed $1.2 trillion for the first time in October 2025, attracting attention from retail traders, institutional investors, and venture capitalists.
For much of the past year, Hyperliquid ruled supreme, peaking at 71% of all onchain perp trading volume in May. Fast forward to November, and its market share has plunged to just 20%, as new challengers carve out territory:
This way, from this fast-moving ecosystem, four dominant players have emerged, now rivalling for the huge industry dominance:
This deep-dive investigation separates hype from reality, examining each platform’s technology, metrics, controversies, and long-term viability across The Perp DEX Wars.
Why Hyperliquid Dominates?
Hyperliquid has established itself as the leading decentralized perpetual contract exchange in the industry, with over 71% market share at its peak. While competitors have temporarily captured headlines with explosive volume growth, Hyperliquid remains the structural backbone of the perp DEX ecosystem.
The Technical Foundation: Hyperliquid’s dominance stems from a revolutionary architectural decision: building a custom Layer 1 blockchain purpose-built for derivatives trading. The platform’s HyperBFT consensus mechanism enables sub-second order finality and 200,000 transactions per second performance that rivals and often exceeds centralized exchanges.
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The Open Interest Reality Check: While competitors often print eye-catching 24-hour volume numbers, the metric that actually reveals where real capital is deployed is open interest (OI), the total value of outstanding, still-open perpetual positions.
Volume shows activity. Open interest shows commitment.
According to 21Shares, during September 2025: Aster captured ~70% of total volume. Hyperliquid temporarily slipped to ~10%
But this dominance was volume-only, and volume is the easiest metric to distort through incentives, rebates, market-maker churn, or wash-style activity.
This means Hyperliquid holds nearly two-thirds of all outstanding positions across the major perp venues, more than Aster, Lighter, and edgeX combined.
This is the metric that reflects where traders are leaving capital open overnight, not where they are simply farming incentives or churning trades.
Hyperliquid: A high OI/Volume ratio (~0.64) shows that a large share of trading flows convert into active, ongoing positions.
Aster & Lighter: Low ratios (~0.18 and ~0.12) indicate high trade turnover but relatively little capital left open, often a signature of incentive-driven activity rather than durable liquidity.
Volume rankings fluctuate. Open interest reveals the true market leader, and that leader is Hyperliquid.
Battle-Tested: During the October 2025 liquidation event, $19 billion in positions liquidated, Hyperliquid maintained perfect uptime while processing massive volume spikes.
Institutional Recognition: 21Shares has filed a Hyperliquid (HYPE) product with the U.S. SEC and has already listed a regulated HYPE ETP on the SIX Swiss Exchange. These developments, reported across outlets like CoinMarketCap and other market trackers, signal growing institutional access to HYPE. The HyperEVM ecosystem is expanding as well, though publicly available data does not verify the exact claims of “180+ projects” or “$4.1B TVL.”
Based on current filings, exchange listings, and ecosystem growth reported by CoinMarketCap and similar trackers, Hyperliquid shows strong momentum and increasing institutional validation, reinforcing its position as a leading DeFi derivatives platform.
Aster is a multi-chain perpetual futures exchange that launched in early 2025 with a very specific goal: bring high-speed, high-leverage derivatives trading to users across BNB Chain, Arbitrum, Ethereum, and Solana without forcing them to bridge assets.
The project wasn’t built from scratch. It came out of a merger between Asterus and APX Finance in late 2024, combining APX’s working perp engine with Asterus’ liquidity technology.
The Explosive Rise: Aster launched on September 17, 2025 at $0.08 and hit $2.42 within a week, a 2,800% pump. Daily volume exploded to $70+ billion at peak, dominating the entire perp DEX market.
The rocket fuel? CZ. Binance’s founder backed Aster through YZi Labs and tweeted about it, sending the token vertical. In its first 30 days, Aster generated over $320 billion in volume, briefly capturing 50%+ of the perp DEX market.
The DefiLlama Delisting: On October 5, 2025, DefiLlama (crypto’s most trusted data source) deleted Aster’s data after discovering the platform’s volume matched Binance’s volume almost perfectly, a 1:1 correlation.
Real exchanges show natural variation. Perfect correlation means one thing: manufactured numbers.
Aster’s Defense: CEO Leonard claimed the correlation was just “airdrop farmers” hedging on Binance. But if that’s true, why refuse to show the data proving it?
Aster was relisted weeks later, but DefiLlama warned: “still a black box, we can’t verify the numbers.”
What It Actually Offers: To be fair, Aster has real features: 1001x leverage, hidden orders, multi-chain support (BNB, Ethereum, Solana), and yield-bearing collateral. It’s building Aster Chain with zero-knowledge proofs for privacy. But good tech can’t fix fake metrics.
Evidence = overwhelming:
Aster extracted massive value through CZ hype and manufactured volume, but failed to build real infrastructure. May survive due to Binance backing, but credibility is permanently damaged.
For traders: High risk. You’re betting on CZ’s narrative, not real growth. Set tight stop-losses.
For investors: Avoid. Too many red flags, better alternatives exist (Hyperliquid)
The Technical Edge: Lighter is different. Founded by ex-Citadel engineers and backed by Peter Thiel, a16z, and Lightspeed ($68M at $1.5B valuation), it uses zero-knowledge proofs to verify every trade cryptographically.
As an Ethereum L2, Lighter inherits Ethereum’s security through an “escape hatch”, if the platform fails, users can recover funds through smart contracts. App-chain L1s don’t have this safety net.
Launched October 2, 2025. TVL hit $1.1B in weeks. Daily volume: $7-8B with 56,000+ users.
Zero Fees = Aggressive Play
Lighter charges 0% fees for makers and takers. Zero. This makes every competing platform obsolete for fee-sensitive traders.
The strategy is simple: steal market share through unsustainable economics, build loyalty, monetize later.
Ten days after mainnet, crypto’s largest liquidation event hit, $19B wiped out.
Founder Vlad Novakovski: they’d scheduled a database upgrade for Sunday, but Friday’s volatility killed the old system first.
Healthy = below 3. Above 5 = suspicious. 8.03 is extreme.
Traders generate $8 in volume per $1 deployed; rapidly flipping positions to farm points, not holding real positions.
30-day data confirms: $294B volume vs $47B cumulative OI = 6.25 ratio. Still way too high.
The Airdrop Question: Lighter’s points program is aggressive. Points convert to LITER tokens at TGE (Q4 2025/Q1 2026). OTC markets price points at $5-100+. With potential airdrops worth tens of thousands, explosive volume makes sense.
Critical question: what happens after TGE? Do users stay or does volume collapse?
Strengths:
Concerns:
Key Difference from Aster: No wash trading accusations. No DefiLlama delisting. High ratio reflects aggressive but temporary incentives, not systematic fraud.
Bottom line: Lighter has world-class technology wrapped in concerning metrics. Can it convert farmers to real users? Technology says yes. History says probably not.
For farmers: Good opportunity pre-TGE.
For investors: Wait 2-3 months post-TGE to see if volume survives.
Probability: 40% top-3 platform, 60% another points farm with great tech underneath.
The Amber Group Advantage: EdgeX operates differently. Born from Amber Group’s incubator (managing $5B in assets), it brought together pros from Morgan Stanley, Barclays, Goldman Sachs, and Bybit. This isn’t crypto natives learning finance, it’s TradFi professionals bringing institutional expertise to DeFi.
Amber’s market-making DNA translates directly into EdgeX: deep liquidity, tight spreads, and execution quality that matches centralized exchanges. The platform launched September 2024 with one goal: CEX-grade performance without sacrificing self-custody.
Built on StarkEx (StarkWare’s battle-tested ZK engine), EdgeX processes 200,000 orders/second with sub-10ms latency, matching Binance’s speed.
Fees:
For a trader doing $10M monthly volume, that’s $7,000-$10,000 saved annually versus Hyperliquid.
Plus better liquidity for retail sizes (<$6M orders)—tighter spreads and less slippage than competitors.
Real Revenue, Healthy Metrics. Unlike Lighter’s zero-fee model or Aster’s questionable numbers, EdgeX generates real, sustainable revenue:
At first glance, 10.51 looks terrible. But context matters: EdgeX launched with aggressive points programs to bootstrap liquidity. The ratio has been steadily improving as the platform matures.
More importantly, EdgeX maintained healthy revenue throughout proving real traders, not just farmers.
During the October 11th crash ($19B liquidated), EdgeX passed with flying colors:
The eLP (EdgeX Liquidity Pool) proved superior risk management when it mattered most, profiting during extreme volatility while competitors struggled.
Multi-Chain Flexibility:
Best Mobile Experience: Official iOS and Android apps (Hyperliquid has none). Clean UX for managing positions on the go.
Asian Market Focus: Strategic push into Korean and Asian markets through localized support and Korean Blockchain Week events. Capturing underserved regions while Western competitors fight over the same users.
Explicitly states: “We will not reward wash trading”. And the metrics back it up, volume/OI improving, not worsening like pure farms.
Market Share: Only 5.5% of perp DEX open interest. Growing from here requires either aggressive incentives (risks farming) or major partnerships.
No Killer Feature: EdgeX does many things well but nothing exceptional. It’s the “business class” option, solid across the board, but not revolutionary.
Can’t Compete on Fees: Lighter’s zero fees make EdgeX’s “lower than Hyperliquid” advantage less compelling.
Later TGE Timing: Expected Q4 2025, after competitors. Misses first-mover airdrop hype.
EdgeX is the professional’s choice, boring excellence over flashy hype.
Strengths:
Concerns:
Who EdgeX Is For:
Bottom line: EdgeX will likely capture 10-15% market share serving Asian markets, institutions, and conservative traders. Won’t threaten Hyperliquid’s dominance, but doesn’t need to; it’s building a sustainable, profitable niche.
Think of it as the “Kraken of perp DEXs” not the biggest, not the flashiest, but solid, professional, and trusted by sophisticated users who value execution quality over hype.
For farmers: Moderate opportunity, less saturated than competitors.
For investors: Small position for diversification. Lower risk, lower reward.
Hyperliquid – Established Leader
Aster – High Growth, High Questions
Lighter – Technology Pioneer
EdgeX – Institutional Focus
Platform Selection for Trading:
Token Investment Timeline:
