Introduction: From Performance Race to Ecosystem Race in Perp DEXs

In Part I, we analyzed how new-generation Perp DEXs have surpassed CEX-level performance and implemented deflationary, value-capturing tokenomics. Yet, technical upgrades alone do not ensure long-term success. The decisive factors are user adoption, liquidity distribution, and ecosystem growth.

In 2025, Hyperliquid, Aster, Lighter, and GRVT are redefining growth strategies. Rather than chasing superficial metrics like TVL or trading volume, they focus on sustainable expansion through user segmentation, incentive design, and liquidity architecture—an evolution that CoinEx Research will analyze in detail in this article.

User Growth and Distribution: Building Sustainable Perp DEX Ecosystems

As product features converge and performance gaps narrow, user growth models have become the main differentiator for new-generation Perp DEXs. Unlike first-generation protocols that relied heavily on airdrops and trading mining, these projects are now creating continuous growth flywheels through more sophisticated distribution strategies.

Hyperliquid: Developer-Centric B2B2C Distribution

Hyperliquid empowers developers as the core growth engine through Builder Codes. Developers integrate custom trading interfaces and earn 100% of Builder Fees, settled on-chain. This transforms the platform from user-driven to developer-driven growth, creating a multi-layered ecosystem spanning quant trading front ends, aggregator terminals, and analytics dashboards. By embedding economic incentives in products, Hyperliquid achieves continuous organic distribution without relying on airdrops or rebates.

Aster: On-chain Extension of Social Virality

Aster adapts CEX referral systems for the DEX world. Users earn rebates from invited users’ trading fees, complemented by points, team bonuses, and tiered rewards. This social propagation rapidly expands adoption in KOL-driven and Chinese-speaking markets. While effective for early-stage growth, its reliance on channels and influencers introduces sustainability risks, making long-term retention dependent on product depth and trading experience. Aster represents a socially-driven retail growth engine for DeFi.

GRVT: Institutional and Technical Ecosystem Growth

GRVT targets growth through ecosystem embedding and institutional partnerships. Collaborations with ZKsync and EigenLayer provide technical traffic, while privacy and compliance features attract institutional traders and market makers. Growth is slower but higher-quality, prioritizing trust, compliance, and stable liquidity. GRVT’s strategy mirrors traditional finance whitelists, focusing on long-term ecosystem stability over explosive retail expansion.

Lighter: Performance-Driven L2 Ecosystem Penetration

Lighter emphasizes “performance as growth”. By leveraging Ethereum L2’s low latency and low gas costs, it naturally attracts high-frequency traders and DeFi players. The protocol supplements this with ecosystem incentives like Builder Grants and Fee Subsidies to encourage integrations and quantitative strategy teams. Compared to Aster, Lighter grows more slowly but builds strong user stickiness, reflecting a deep penetration model driven by technical reputation and ecosystem co-building.

Overall, the new generation of Perp DEXs demonstrates distinct user acquisition paths:

Hyperliquid: B2B2C developer ecosystem and product-embedded distribution.
Aster: Socially-driven retail expansion via referral networks.
GRVT: Privacy and institutional ecosystem penetration.
Lighter: Organic, performance-centric technical adoption

While first-generation DEXs depended on mining and airdrops, the second generation relies on product and ecosystem self-distribution. This evolution in growth capability will determine which protocols can sustainably scale beyond early hype and construct resilient on-chain financial networks.

On-Chain Data Reveals True Market Health of Perp DEXs

In 2025, the Perp DEX competition is no longer defined by UI or marketing hype. Instead, liquidity distribution and real trading activity determine protocol dominance. Trading volume increasingly concentrates on platforms with native matching engines, low-latency execution, and genuine revenue models, while projects relying solely on incentives begin to fade. On-chain metrics provide the clearest insight into protocol robustness and user retention.

Hyperliquid: A CEX-like Leader in Liquidity and Retention

As of early November 2025, Hyperliquid's daily trading volume has stabilized in the $1.5-2.5 billion range, with peaks exceeding $4 billion, surpassing most second-tier centralized exchanges. Its TVL remains around $2 billion, with over 100,000 active positions. On-chain data shows its trader retention rate (percentage of active users repeating within 30 days) reaches 48%, significantly higher than the industry average (around 22%).

This high retention rate is closely related to its extremely low matching latency and Builder ecosystem, making it the most "CEX-like" existence in on-chain liquidity structures. Furthermore, Hyperliquid's stable funding rates and extremely low oracle slippage also reflect its market-making depth and matching stability.

Aster: Multi-Chain Growth and Retail Dominance

After Aster launched multi-chain access (ETH, BNB, Arbitrum, Solana) in Q3 2025, its TVL significantly increased. Latest data shows its TVL has exceeded $1.4 billion, with daily trading volume fluctuating between $800 million and $1.2 billion. Although slightly lower than Hyperliquid, its growth curve is steeper, mainly benefiting from incentive airdrops, KOL recommendations, and on-chain social propagation.

In terms of user structure, Aster exhibits clear retail characteristics: the average single transaction value is around $2,000 (compared to Hyperliquid's $7,000), but its total active user count is the highest, indicating a solid user growth foundation.

Lighter: Professional-Grade L2 Infrastructure

Lighter’s Ethereum L2 architecture ensures low latency and cost-efficient execution. Based on Dune community tracking, its estimated daily trading volume is around $300-500 million, and its TVL also exceeds $1.1 billion. Although its scale is not as large as the former two, its user structure is highly concentrated: the top 1% of addresses contribute about 65% of the trading volume, indicating deep involvement from professional quantitative teams.

Lighter functions more as a specialized professional infrastructure than a retail-driven platform, highlighting the importance of performance and technical reputation over sheer user count.

GRVT: Stable Growth Driven by Compliance

GRVT's privacy features limit the transparency of on-chain data, but according to cross-statistics from the ZKsync and EigenLayer ecosystems, its TVL is around $27 million, and its daily trading volume is between $200-400 million. Although the overall scale is small, its capital volume is stable, and its volatility is lower than similar projects.

This aligns with its positioning focused on institutional clients, private settlements, and fixed-income products. Its growth logic is more akin to "on-chain Prime Brokerage"—slow, steady, and trusted.

Overall, the new generation of Perp DEXs in 2025 exhibits three main characteristics:

Concentration of Trading Volume: Hyperliquid and Aster combined hold over 70% of the market share.
Layered User Structure: Aster is retail-driven, Lighter is professionally focused, and GRVT is institutionally oriented.
Transparent Liquidity: Matching, settlement, and buyback mechanisms are all verifiable on-chain, forming a new foundation of trust.

The key takeaway is that liquidity is now driven by performance and trust, not merely incentives, signaling a maturation of the Perp DEX market toward sustainable, on-chain financial ecosystems.

Beyond Performance: The Next Stage of Perp DEX Competition

As performance gradually homogenizes, the battle shifts to defining user experience and sustainable value loops. Key differentiation now emerges in three dimensions: technical infrastructure, revenue & incentive models, and user perception.

Technical Infrastructure: L1 Chains vs. L2 & Multi-Chain Strategies

Hyperliquid: Fully self-developed Layer1 chain ensures controllable latency, high performance, and data independence, forming a strong technical moat. Trade-off: limited ecosystem compatibility.
Aster: Hybrid path—currently multi-chain deployment (BNB, Arbitrum, Solana) for rapid adoption, with plans for a self-developed Aster Chain.
Lighter: Built on Ethereum L2, inherits security, liquidity, and ecosystem openness, but with shared throughput constraints.
GRVT: Deep integration with ZKsync, emphasizing privacy and compliance at the protocol level.

Self-developed chains offer performance and governance independence but slower ecosystem growth, while L2 and multi-chain strategies enable faster user acquisition and liquidity integration.

Revenue and Incentive Mechanisms: Deflation, Rebates, and Ecosystem Incentives

Hyperliquid: Deflation-driven model linking revenue buybacks and Builder Fees to token value, fostering long-term sustainability.
Aster: Social and referral incentives drive community distribution, but reliance on rebates may induce short-term volume swings.
Lighter: Incentives focus on ecosystem co-building, with token utility in staking, governance, and gas fee discounts.
GRVT: Prioritizes institutional trust and privacy, foregoing high-yield or deflationary mechanisms.

These four models represent four competitive paths: deflation-driven, social-driven, technology-driven, and trust-driven growth.

User Experience & Brand Perception: The Decentralized Experience Layer

User experience is now a decisive factor for adoption:

Hyperliquid: Viewed as “Binance on-chain”, appealing to professional traders with high performance and deep liquidity.
Aster: Retail-friendly, attracting users via social virality, multi-chain access, and simple interfaces.
Lighter: Branded as a performance-oriented on-chain dYdX, ideal for high-frequency strategies and advanced traders.
GRVT: Positioned as a privacy-compliant hybrid DEX, catering to institutional clients, prioritizing trust over scale.

Brand perception, trading experience, and front-end usability are becoming key differentiators as DEXs converge on underlying technology.

In summary, we believe Hyperliquid is the top choice for professional traders, possessing deep liquidity and leading technology, though it has a higher barrier to entry for retail. Aster is more retail-friendly, attracting speculative demand with multi-chain convenience and high leverage. Lighter differentiates itself with zero fees + ZK-verified fairness, positioning itself as "the missing piece of Ethereum's native infrastructure", suitable for high-frequency arbitrage and retail users. GRVT, with its unique positioning as the only regulated hybrid DEX, focuses on institutional markets and private transactions, sacrificing scale for compliance.

The Logic of Perp DEX Emergence: From Narrative to Paradigm Shift

The rise of new-generation Perp DEXs is the result of technical breakthroughs, evolving user perception, and capital repricing of on-chain efficiency. This convergence has transformed decentralized derivatives from a niche concept into a scalable, high-performance infrastructure.

Technical Breakthrough: CEX-Level On-Chain Performance

Between 2024–2025, ZK-Rollups, customized L2s, and self-developed chains reached production-grade performance, enabling on-chain matching at CEX-level speed without compromising decentralization. Latency dropped from seconds to milliseconds, throughput exceeded Ethereum mainnet limits, and Hyperliquid’s L1 processed over 200,000 TPS. Reduced gas costs made high-frequency and small-value trading feasible, democratizing access and making on-chain trading a core infrastructure for inclusive finance. This leap turned “decentralized high-efficiency trading” from concept into reality.

Market Timing: Trust Rebalancing Fuels Adoption

Post-FTX event, users increasingly value non-custodial, transparent mechanisms over opaque centralized alternatives. Years of user education have lowered barriers to on-chain adoption, while regulatory pressure on CEXs redirected capital toward DeFi. The convergence of technical readiness and trust crisis created an optimal environment for new Perp DEXs to emerge and scale rapidly.

Token Incentives & Community Flywheel

Unlike first-generation protocols reliant on trading mining, new-generation projects employ sophisticated token models and revenue return mechanisms. Aster allocated 53.5% of tokens to the community, while Hyperliquid’s airdrops reached 31%, enabling rapid cold-start liquidity and user acquisition. Revenue mechanisms shifted from simple dividends to deflationary buybacks, enhancing token value. Hyperliquid’s annual revenue exceeds $800 million, largely used to repurchase HYPE, while Aster leverages yield-collateral mechanisms to reduce user costs and increase staking returns. Compared to first-generation daily revenues of $50k–$100k, these protocols demonstrate orders-of-magnitude improvements in economic closure and verifiable revenue.

Ecosystem Moat: From Single-App to System-Level Resilience

Long-term defensibility now depends on ecosystem integration rather than isolated application performance. Hyperliquid integrates over 100 applications, including Polymarket, enabling external reuse of trading flow and liquidity. Aster’s multi-chain aggregation and Lighter’s Ethereum-native design reduce fragmentation and deepen liquidity. EVM compatibility and developer-friendly tools foster network effects, encouraging continuous ecosystem growth. The moat of new-generation Perp DEXs has shifted from performance alone to system-level resilience and composable ecosystem advantages.

The Future Landscape of Perp DEX

New-generation Perp DEXs have overcome the limitations of first-generation protocols in performance, cost, and transparency through architectural upgrades, user-focused products, and sustainable tokenomics. Hyperliquid leads with its self-developed L1 and deep liquidity, Aster drives retail expansion via multi-chain aggregation, Lighter innovates with low-cost ZK-verified trading on Ethereum L2, and GRVT targets institutional markets with privacy and compliance.

Looking forward, success will depend on technological iteration, ecosystem growth, and community-driven resilience. The next wave of decentralized derivatives shifts from a performance race to a convergence of trust, efficiency, and user perception, shaping the future of on-chain finance.

Disclaimer: This content is for informational purposes only and not investment advice. Information may not be complete or accurate. Do your own research; the authors accept no liability for losses.

Next-Gen Perp DEX Deep Dive 2025 (II) : Hyperliquid vs. Aster vs. Lighter vs. GRVT