Is Arkham also going to build Perp DEX? On November 6, $ARKM was affected by the news that “Arkham is about to launch its derivatives trading platform”, and it rose above $2.1 in a short period of time, rising by more than 20% in 24 hours. Arkham itself is not involved in Defi. The initial positioning of the project is an artificial intelligence on-chain analysis tool. Arkham uses artificial intelligence to collect, classify and display large amounts of on-chain data through the Arkham panel, providing data that was previously only available to blockchain analysts and enthusiasts, improving the transparency of on-chain data. It should be noted that although Arkham’s newly announced permanent exchange and Arkham Intel exchange are both exchanges, they are completely different things.
AI seems to be a universal vest that can be applied everywhere. Arkham’s entry into the DeFi track relying on its AI data platform certainly has its natural advantages, but why is it transitioning to Perp?
Why is everyone rolling Perp?
On the one hand, market liquidity has shifted from centralized exchanges such as CEX to on-chain. Retail investors holding listed altcoins are still trapped, while the real altcoin season has begun on the chain. The altcoins on the exchange are still going “a hundred times in the opposite direction”. Even though Bitcoin has reached a new high of 7.5W, these altcoins are still capping the previous high. On the other hand, there are many golden dogs on Sol, and NEIRO, MOODENG, GOAT and other sacred disks are constantly emerging. Binance, for example, has to list these native meme coins on the chain one after another. Wherever there is a wealth creation effect, there is liquidity.
On the other hand, CEX is not only slow to list coins, but also restricts transactions in different regions. The most important thing is that it lists a series of “VC coins” with a seriously unfair chip structure. Just a while ago, the CEO of Moonrock Capital, a cryptocurrency investment consulting company, tweeted, claiming: “Binance requires a potential project to provide 15% of its total token supply to ensure that it is listed on a centralized exchange. , and this accounts for 15% of the total supply of tokens, worth about 50 million to 100 million U.S. dollars.” So major KOLs started discussing the listing fee on Twitter.
Regardless of the fee for listing the currency, in the eyes of the majority of retail investors, a vicious cycle of “VC-project party-CEX” three-party accumulation, currency opening and retail investors’ lock-in has been formed. Therefore, compared to the stagnant water of secondary listing tokens, users are forced to embrace the chain. At least the ecological niche of retail investors on the chain is relatively fair. As the old saying goes: “Fair, fair, fair.” To a certain extent, CEX’s “blame on yourself” gives these on-chain players room to grow.
Who are the major players in the market?
The current Perp DEX track seems to be as crowded as Ethereum L2. In addition to the well-known leading projects such as dydx, Hyperliquid, Jupiter, etc., there are more than a dozen Perp DEXs that are barely maintaining vital signs. Due to the lack of liquidity, it has basically become an arbitrage tool for speculators. The author will analyze them one by one in order of market share.
Hyperliquid
Hyperliquid stands out among many Perp DEXs and is the undisputed market leader from different data dimensions. It currently occupies about 25% of the market share in the entire Perp DEX track.
Hyperliquid not only has a solid foundation and has improved its trading performance, it also introduced the HyperBFT algorithm for optimization in May this year, increasing the transaction speed to the level of 10-20WTPS. At the same time, Hyperliquid has chosen the path of building a low-latency, high-throughput Perp DEX application chain.
Moreover, Hyperliquid’s operations are also very skillful. When Hyperliquid launched the spot function, it airdropped the meme currency PURR to early users of the platform. Before many CEXs had reacted to the meme coins on the chain, Hyperliquid had already “preemptively” launched the corresponding spot.
However, because Hyperliquid does not issue coins, it has little popularity in the Chinese area. More of them are “value discoveries” from the English area.
Jupiter
Jupiter, as the leading DEX aggregator on Solana, has naturally inherited the overwhelming traffic on Solana. Jupiter will find the most favorable price routes among all major DEXs and AMMs on Solana, minimizing slippage and transaction fees and improving transaction efficiency for users. Although Jupiter provides various functions such as spot trading, DCA fixed investment, and limit order trading, the most popular one is Perp trading. Among them, Jupiter’s perpetual contract trading accounts for half of its fee income.
Jupiter’s native token $JUP is also very popular and loved by the community. JUP holders can pledge to vote for dividends, and JUP will also have a certain increase and can be eaten and taken. With good fundamentals and community reputation, Jupiter occupies about 10% of the market share
SynFutures V3
SynFutures was initially deployed on Ethereum’s Layer 2 Blast. However, as Blast’s overly inflated “Pinduoduo” points caused negative community reviews and large-scale ecological losses, SynFutures “moved” to the Base chain in July this year. Currently, SynFutures has become the largest on-chain derivatives trading platform on Base. As Bitcoin exceeded US$80,000, the market gradually recovered. The trading volume and TVL of SynFutures V3 have also begun to hit new highs.
On November 6, SynFutures launched Perp Launchpad, the industry’s first issuance platform focused on the derivatives market, on Base. The project party only needs to use the project token to provide initial liquidity and then the corresponding perpetual contract market can be launched. At the same time, SynFutures has established a $1 million Perp Launchpad incentive plan to provide bonus support for emerging projects such as trading competitions, market promotions, and community activities.
dydx
dydx is a commonplace project among people. Many KOLs regarded it as a 100-fold coin at the beginning of the bull market. However, both its fundamental performance and the price of the token DYDX were shocking. As a result, many early players in the community turned to FUD dydx, which can be said to be “deep love, deep responsibility”. dydx’s market share barely remains at around 6-7%, and it is already at the bottom of the mainstream echelon.
As the first project to come out of Perp DEX, dydx’s TVL will reach its peak in 2022 at nearly US$1.2 billion. However, after the market entered a deep bear, it collapsed, and even in the mid-term of the Mavericks in 2024, there was no recovery. Even when the on-chain market is so hot recently, its TVL is still being lost. Only when the pump was announced, the token DYDX rose by 20%, barely enjoying this meme dividend. On October 10, dydx founder Antonio Juliano announced his return and resumed his role as dyadx CEO, followed by layoffs and rectification. The market is also looking forward to the return and reform of the founder, which can lead dydx out of the current predicament.
Arkham
Arkham perpetuals exchange will provide users with 0-fee pending order spot and contract transactions (i.e. Maker). For users of market transactions (i.e. Taker), the fee reduction will be determined based on the $ARKM they hold and the trading volume. If users choose to use ARKM to pay the handling fee, they will also receive a 25% handling fee discount. Users can earn points by trading on Arkhams perpetual exchange. VIP users can increase their total points by 10% by opening an account, while their points in Arkham Intel exchange are still valid.
However, the way Arkham operates as a perp is no different from other perp startups. Attract the first users through the points or fee discount model, but these users only use perp DEX as a mine and are not really effective traffic. Let’s take a look at Aevo, the light of perp in March this year.
After Aevo announced the airdrop details in March this year, its TVL and trading volume reached their peak. Subsequently, TVL continued to decline, and transaction volume began to plummet at the weekly level. One month later, the actual transaction volume lost 80%. From a data point of view, most of the people who come to Aevo to participate in transactions are “Lumaojia” on the chain, and there are very few real users. After losing the appeal of token airdrops, the whitewashed traffic data was ruthlessly pierced by the market. Ironically, its currency price also fell by nearly 90% after the airdrop.
The points program and the reduction of handling fees can certainly attract a large number of users in the early stages of the platform, but how can we rely on “real products” and “real business” to retain “real users” after this “quasi-mining” activity is over, and avoid going to Aevo? The old path of steep decline in various data is the next test that Arkham perp will face.
How is the current perp market?
Although Perp DEX is also changing its products, it not only has spot, lending, bet, and per-lauch in terms of products, but also orderbook and auction from the perspective of liquidity design, and has even begun to work on UI and memes. However, perp dex is not all smooth sailing. Hyperliquid, which is as strong as the leader, cannot compete with Binance. According to Dune data, Hyperliquid trading volume only accounts for 1/9 of Binance’s spot trading volume.
In today’s decentralized perpetual contract track, almost every L1 and L2 will support a Perp DEX of their own in order to collect the “DeFi family bucket”.
However, the decentralization of public chains brings about the fragmentation of liquidity. There is no perfect egg under the crowd. This is true for the public chain, and the same is true for Perp. Decentralized liquidity is difficult to achieve scale utility. If liquidity interoperability can be achieved between chains, then Perp can enjoy sufficient liquidity like CEX, and then the entire Perp DEX market will usher in a real leader. The pattern of the multi-chain universe is like iron chains constraining the ceiling of Perp’s development.
On the other hand, Perp DEX is mostly targeted at risk-seekers. Compared with CEX, Perp has the advantages of fast currency listing, rich currency types, and flexible products, which is naturally attractive to high-risk speculators. Therefore, the target group is naturally smaller than CEX at the audience level. In addition, centralized exchanges such as OKX, Bybit, and Bitget are also constantly involved in the pre-market market segment, competing with perp dex for market share. Perp DEX still has a long way to go on its way to taking the top spot in CEX and competing for the right to speak in the market.
