Perp DEX Landscape: November 2025

a lot of smart people on my timeline made the mistake of dumping this too early. even more painful, looking at people's tweets who tried to short it instead of treating this as a PvE event

Why DEX'es / perp dexes?

• perp futures are banned on tier1 exchanges. banned for US. for EU. for many others. it's crazy how many countries are disallowed
• EU implements DAC8 -> in 2026, all your regulated EU exchanges will start sending tax info to your tax regulator
• outside of regulatory overreach, also these dexes offer really generous fee structures

I think going into 2026, we will see dexes vamping A LOT of market share from cexes. (and HL has set the precedent that it can work)

Aster

1. rly good UX
2. volumes look fairly good
3. own stablecoin USDF
4. perpetual stocks futures (GOOG, TSLA, etc on 50x leverage)

It's a solid product. BUT it's also in a tough competitive landscape.

Biggest volumes are on HL Biggest upcoming competitor Lighter is also preparing for a token launch and has high volumes

theres a LOT of other smaller perp dexes that are competing. notable ones: Paradex (backed by Paradigm), Avantis (backed by Pantera & Coinbase), Extended, EdgeX

tldr:

• perp dex market will GROW
• aster good product
• competitors also good product, it's competitive, may the best one win