Looking for the next UNI? Here are 5 Perp DEX projects worth watching that haven't issued tokens yet

This is the most undeniable major trend of 2025.

Since November 29, 2024, when Hyperliquid airdropped its tokens and ignited the entire network, this sector has entered the fast lane. As a representative of the new generation order book Perp DEX, Hyperliquid's token HYPE once surged to $50 and has since stabilized around $47, becoming one of the most influential and wealth-generating projects of the year.

The Perp DEX sector not only has high income but also significant growth potential, posing an unprecedented strong threat to CEXs. The daily trading volume of crypto derivatives has long been 4-5 times that of spot trading, while the penetration rate of on-chain derivatives markets is currently less than 10%, indicating at least 10 times more growth potential in the future.

Just as there has never been only one centralized exchange, more and more teams are entering the fray, raising the sector's ceiling and intensifying competition. Major projects are continuously upgrading in technology, liquidity, depth, user experience, and incentive mechanisms, all stepping up their game. The clustering of projects and frequent innovations have also brought about a stronger 'wealth spillover' effect, attracting a large amount of capital and sustained user attention, especially towards a new batch of Perp DEX players that haven't issued tokens.

Currently, Hyperliquid's second season airdrop is about to launch, and other new projects with rapid growth, strong team backgrounds, and high expectations for token issuance are emerging. BlockBeats will review five Perp DEX dark horses that haven't issued tokens—they are either growing rapidly, resource-rich, or backed by star VCs, making them key projects not to be missed by the 'airdropping' army and contract players.

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According to the latest data, edgex's actual revenue in the past 30 days reached $5.6 million, surpassing leading perp DEXs like GMX ($2.45 million) and dYdX ($1.23 million). Projects ranking high in revenue have more genuine capital flows, with users' fees being 'real'. (Although Hyperliquid has a larger trading volume, it hasn't been included in DefilLama's perp DEX comparison list due to its positioning as an independent chain.)

In terms of market depth, edgeX currently performs the best among all Perp DEXs. Taking BTC/ETH as an example, with a spread of 0.01%, edgeX's BTC can support a position of $6 million, surpassing hyperliquid ($5 million), Aster ($4 million), and Lighter ($1 million). Although the overall depth is still slightly inferior to hyperliquid, in most scenarios, edgeX is the Perp DEX with the best depth besides hyperliquid.

Comparison of BTC and ETH depth across platforms with a spread of 0.01%

In terms of the team, edgeX is backed by Amber Group, with crypto and traditional finance practitioners from top institutions like Morgan Stanley, Barclays, Goldman Sachs, and Bybit, boasting over 7 years of exchange operation and trading experience.

Additionally, perhaps benefiting from the resources of its incubator Amber Group, edgeX's market-making vault has more strategic designs to help improve capital efficiency and risk management. In the typical Perp DEX structure, the vault acts as a central liquidity pool, responsible for market-making and liquidation of positions. Although statistics usually show positive returns within quarterly cycles, the vault still faces risks of unilateral market exposure, 'bankruptcy', or capital shortage attack vectors.

Unlike the traditional 'MM Vault', edgeX's eLP (Edge Liquidity Pool) combines passive liquidity with intelligent hedging mechanisms, with funds always providing depth for the spread, dynamically hedging large exposures. At the same time, the vault also has dynamic leverage adjustment and a dedicated insurance fund, adjusting in real-time based on profit/leverage to prevent malicious operations with large funds, with 10% of each profit entering the insurance pool to cushion the vault's losses from extreme market conditions.

Next, edgeX will upgrade from the current perp app rollup (V1) to a high-performance financial chain (V2), supporting fully modular and composable financial infrastructure.

Lighter

Lighter is a new Perp DEX in the Ethereum ecosystem, initially launched as a spot DEX on Arbitrum in 2023, transformed into a zksync layer 3 DEX in March 2024, and then into a ZK Perp DEX in November 2024, built on zk-rollup, with a mechanism similar to edgeX. Technically, it achieves 5 milliseconds of soft finality and a matching speed of 10,000 orders per second.

Despite still being invite-only, Lighter's daily trading volume has stabilized between $1 billion and $2 billion, with a cumulative trading volume of $2.4 billion, second only to Hyperliquid, making it the fastest-growing Perp DEX.

One of the reasons for Lighter's rapid growth in trading volume is its Robinhood-like zero-fee model—both makers and takers are completely free of fees. However, correspondingly, while Lighter's trading volume is huge, due to its zero-fee (0-fee) model, there may be wash trading components in the trading volume, and the platform currently lacks a solid revenue model.

In terms of protocol mechanism, Lighter has a native market-making vault LLP similar to Hyperliquid's HLP. LLP allows retail investors to inject funds into a public pool, managed by professional traders, with profits shared according to the investment ratio, also currently free of fees. However, LLP deposits no longer receive point rewards. Currently, Lighter's points are priced at $5 each in the OTC market.

In terms of the team, Lighter's founder and CEO Vladimir Novakovski graduated from Harvard University and was an angel investor in Fabric Cryptography and Daimo, with a strong background. Institutional investors include a16z, Lightspeed Ventures, and other top-tier capitals.

Aster

Aster was upgraded from the merger of Astherus and APX on March 31, 2024, originally focusing on staked asset liquidity, now serving as one of Binance's ways to enter the Perp DEX market. Aster is highly tied to the BNB ecosystem, natively compatible with Binance Wallet, fully invested by YZi Labs, with CZ frequently interacting and endorsing, enjoying strong ecological resources and traffic support.

Backed by a big tree for shade and with strong expectations for token issuance, Aster's trading volume has also grown extremely fast, currently at $210 million.

Aster supports two trading modes. Simple mode pursues ultimate simplicity and ease of use; Pro mode targets professional users, with maker fees at 0.01% and taker fees at 0.035%. Additionally, Aster has innovatively introduced a Dumb prediction game, allowing users to predict short-term asset fluctuations by the minute and place bets, offering a unique gameplay.

Unlike other Perp DEXs' vaults, most of Aster's liquidity is supported by its own liquidity hub, without relying on external market-making teams. The protocol's USDF stablecoin TVL has reached $130 million, and asBNB (in collaboration with the BNB chain) TVL is about $115 million.

Ethereal

Ethereal is the first project natively built on the Ethena Network, also the 'son' project of the ENA community, supported by the USDe stable币, aiming to build a one-stop, vertically integrated DeFi platform, fully unleashing the potential of USDe.

Ethereal V1 is the starting point of this vision, bringing fully functional spot and perpetual contracts to the upcoming Ethena network. In terms of technical architecture, Ethereal adopts the EVM solution, settling through Converge, Arbitrum execution environment, and Celestia data availability layer, with order matching latency below 20 milliseconds, capable of processing about 1 million orders and 1,000 trades per second at peak.

In terms of liquidity, Ethereal V1 aims to become the core venue for on-chain USDe capital hedging and trading. The platform has been officially approved by Ethena governance (99.6% support rate) and has committed to allocating 15% of future governance tokens to ENA stakers (sENA), deeply binding with community interests.

On June 20, 2025, Ethereal officially launched its testnet, where users can experience high-performance on-chain trading products supported by USDe at testnet.ethereal.trade.

In the future, Ethereal will gradually introduce products including spot, lending, loans, RWA, and more derivative financial products based on USDe, continuing to expand the DeFi landscape.

Paradex

Paradex is incubated by the crypto institutional liquidity platform Paradigm (unrelated to the venture capital of the same name), built on the Ethereum Layer 2 blockchain Paradex Network based on Starknet Stack, with this Layer 2 positioned for high-performance decentralized trading and asset management.

Although the incubator is not the well-known top crypto VC Paradigm but the crypto institutional liquidity platform of the same name, it is still worth watching.

Paradigm was founded in 2019, providing services to hedge funds, market makers, and family offices, with extensive research in crypto options and other derivative trading markets. Initially, its working model involved handling OTC matching, leaving on-exchange execution, clearing, and settlement to exchanges like FTX. At its peak, it accounted for 30% of the global crypto options market, completing a $35 million financing at a $400 million valuation, co-led by Jump Crypto and Alameda Research.

But after the collapse of FTX, Paradigm, as a partner, was also greatly impacted, with trading volume plummeting, and later launched Paradex to rebuild the ecosystem.

Thanks to its years of research in the derivatives market, Paradex's feature is supporting perpetual contracts, perpetual futures, perpetual options, and spot trading, all unified in one account, with any asset as collateral, supporting isolated, cross, and portfolio margin modes. In terms of fees, Paradex's taker fee is 0.03%, with limit orders (maker) receiving a -0.005% rebate.

In terms of asset management, Paradex's vault allows users to obtain LP tokens by share and can combine with mainstream DeFi like Pendle, Morpho, and Aave. The vault supports both active trading and passive income from Vault Trading Funds (VTF), with some LP tokens potentially directly usable as collateral in the future, participating in more on-chain strategies. Moreover, Paradex's integrated lending market allows users to borrow directly with the same account, combining investment portfolios for collateral.

Currently, Paradex has announced its token economics, with the community having exceptionally strong expectations for token issuance. The platform token DIME's future uses will include payment for trading fees, fee discounts, staking and liquidity mining rewards, and participation in governance/voting. Currently, Paradex is the number one options DEX in cryptocurrency, though its growth in perpetual contract trading volume is not particularly outstanding.