- What is a perp DEX?
- A perp DEX is an onchain exchange for perpetual futures, leveraged contracts that track an asset's price and never expire. A funding rate paid between longs and shorts keeps the contract close to the index price, and traders keep custody of their collateral. Perp DEXs now handle over 13% of perp volume, up from 4% in 2024, and the largest is Hyperliquid.
- Which perp DEX has the most open interest in 2026?
- Hyperliquid. In our September 2026 data it held over 56% of onchain perp open interest, followed by Aster (9.7%), Variational (6.2%) and Lighter (5.7%). Hyperliquid's own open interest reached a record $9 billion, on roughly $180 billion to $250 billion of monthly volume through 2026. Its turnover of 1.16x a day means traders hold positions rather than churn them.
- Hyperliquid vs Lighter: which is cheaper to trade?
- Lighter is cheaper for standard orders because it charges no taker fee. On a $100,000 BTC order, Hyperliquid's slippage was 0.21 bps against 0.41 bps on Lighter, but Hyperliquid's total cost to open was 4.71 bps with its fee, while Lighter's was 0.41 bps. Hyperliquid has the deeper book: at $1 million it had the lowest median slippage of the five venues we tested, including Binance, Bybit and OKX.
- Are onchain perp DEXs as liquid as Binance?
- On the largest crypto assets, close. Centralised books were about 3x tighter than Hyperliquid on BTC and ETH at $100,000, but the gap shrinks with size, and once taker fees are included Hyperliquid was 1% to 24% cheaper to trade than the centralised median across BTC, ETH, SOL, ZEC and HYPE. Hyperliquid also matched or exceeded centralised resting depth within 10 bps on four of the five assets.
- How does Variational work?
- Variational is an RFQ protocol with no order book. On Omni, each trader has an isolated settlement pool with the Omni Liquidity Provider (OLP), which prices from CEX, DEX and TradFi data and hedges its exposure on external venues. Variational charges no maker or taker fees and earns from the spread, and RWA trading is now over 50% of its volume.
- What is the difference between Variational swaps and perps?
- Perps use funding rates to keep the contract close to the index price. Variational swaps track an asset's total return and charge a carry fee once a day at 5pm EST, based on the real cost of financing the underlying in traditional markets, such as SOFR for US equities. Long swap positions receive dividends and short positions pay them.
- Which venue is best for trading stock and commodity perps onchain?
- It depends on size and timing. In our weekday US-hours test across seven TradFi assets, TradeXYZ had the tightest spread (0.35 bps) and the lowest slippage at $100,000 (0.84 bps), while Lighter was cheapest to open at 1.04 bps because it charges no fee, and Variational's slippage barely rose with size. On weekends, venue indices diverged by up to 30 bps and some venues kept charging funding, so carry cost matters more than execution.
- What is HIP-3 on Hyperliquid?
- HIP-3 lets anyone run their own perp exchange on HyperCore after staking 500,000 HYPE. The deployer sets markets, oracles and risk parameters, and validators can slash the stake for misconduct. HIP-3 markets bring about 30% of Hyperliquid's net volume, TradeXYZ accounts for over 98% of HIP-3 volume, and deployers keep up to 50% of the fees their markets generate.
- How do RWA perps trade when stock markets are closed?
- Each venue applies its own pricing rule. TradeXYZ switches to order-book pricing smoothed by a 30-minute EWMA inside dynamic discovery bounds, Ondo lets the oracle move within roughly 5% of the last TradFi close, QFEX applies hard price limits and charges no funding while the reference market is shut, and Variational swaps wait for the market to reopen before liquidating.
