On November 14, members of the Lighter, Aster, and Helix teams jointly initiated an online roundtable to discuss the future landscape of the on-chain perpetual contract market. During the session, guests talked about the operational strategies of different PerpDEXs, their unique characteristics, and future layouts, as well as prospects for the development of the Perp market. This article is a written record of the roundtable, filled with valuable insights, and I recommend everyone read and share it.
Host: Tonight, we will discuss a very important topic: the operational strategies and future landscape of PerpDEXs. We will focus on several core topics, such as the structural dilemmas currently faced by the PerpDEX track, the mapping logic between on-chain Perp and on-chain finance versus the real market, and how various projects are addressing user growth, liquidity, and long-term user retention issues.
Today's guests are:
Ken—Core Contributor of Helix
Amber—Head of BD at Aster
Mr. Block—Core Contributor of Lighter
Let's move on to the first topic: What is the core advantage of on-chain PerpDEX that is hardest for competitors to replicate? Why?
Amber—Head of BD at Aster:
This question is very interesting. From the essence of PerpDEX products, everyone is essentially building trading infrastructure, and liquidity is undoubtedly the most critical component. The so-called advantage of PerpDEX boils down to the smoothness of trading and the depth of liquidity pools. For Aster, we hope to stand out in several areas.
First, we have adopted an order book and a fully on-chain trading model, allowing users to choose based on their needs—do you want to execute complex strategies like a professional trader, or do you prefer to perform simple operations easily?
For the latter, they can use Aster's trading model, which offers up to 1001x leverage and is easy to operate. This is our first unique mechanism: providing two trading models, allowing users to choose the right product based on their desired experience.
Second, we have made early moves in privacy. We launched a feature called "hidden orders," which is very useful for many large traders. If they do not want their order information to be fully public, they can use hidden orders.
Of course, hidden orders have not yet fully realized their potential because our public chain has not officially launched. An important direction moving forward is to launch an independent public chain specifically for order book services. At that time, trading information will be both transparent and auditable while maintaining privacy. Whether large traders or ordinary users, if they do not want their positions or order information to be fully visible to others, they can trade while protecting their privacy, and the entire system will still have data auditability.
Therefore, allowing users to trade in a privacy-preserving environment is currently a significant differentiator and advantage of Aster compared to other PerpDEXs.
Mr. Block—Core Contributor of Lighter:
If we only talk about technical differences, each has its unique aspects, such as the dark pool mentioned earlier. But I believe the core lies in the "DNA" of each project. Aster's DNA is Binance; without Binance, Aster would not be as large as it is today.
Hyperliquid's DNA is its supporting community; while Lighter's DNA includes Peter Thiel's Founders Fund and Ribbit Capital, as well as Haun Ventures and Robinhood.
Therefore, when retail investors choose which PerpDEX to participate in, aside from the product itself, the most important factor is to look at its DNA, which is the biggest difference among these three DEXs.
Another significant difference is whether a token has been issued. Currently, the core players that have not issued tokens are Edgex and Lighter. Thus, retail investors tend to favor platforms that have not yet issued tokens when choosing their "mining" targets. The current trading volume data may also be inflated because everyone is frantically boosting their volumes.
In contrast, Aster and Hyperliquid's data is more authentic because they have already gone through the trading mining and token issuance phases. So, if we really want to predict who will ultimately win, I think we need to wait until June or July of next year, combining changes in the market cycle to see clearly.
I personally experienced the entire DeFi Summer, witnessing the competition among all DEXs at that time, including Uniswap, Balancer, Curve, and many Uniswap fork projects like Pancakeswap. I feel that the current competitive landscape of PerpDEXs is similar to that of the DeFi Summer back then. Hyperliquid succeeded, and everyone wants to follow suit.
If Hyperliquid had not succeeded back then, but Polymarket had instead, then everyone here might not be doing PerpDEXs but rather prediction markets. So, this again highlights the importance of timing, location, and human factors.
Ken—Core Contributor of Helix:
I am a core contributor of Helix, which is a PerpDEX deployed on the Injective chain.
Returning to the earlier question, if we talk about the core advantage of Helix that is hardest to replicate, I believe the key lies in the fact that Helix is not just a simple perpetual contract DEX; it is built on the high-performance and modular Injective public chain. On Helix, in addition to cryptocurrencies, stocks, commodities, foreign exchange, and various RWA assets can be traded, providing a truly unified multi-asset trading experience.
Furthermore, Helix leverages Injective's RWA module to support the launch of various innovative financial derivatives. For example, we recently opened trading exposure related to Pre-IPO and private market assets, including OpenAI and SpaceX. This is virtually unique among current on-chain trading platforms, and even in some centralized platform systems, such products are scarce. Helix fills this gap perfectly.
In contrast, other DEXs or trading platforms may still focus on a single vertical track. To truly replicate a system like Helix—one that combines the matching speed, depth, and liquidity of centralized trading platforms with a fully on-chain transparent multi-asset trading engine—not only does it require a high-performance blockchain as the underlying architecture, but it also needs to adopt a modular design to support rapid iteration and flexible on-chain integration of diverse assets.
This model, which integrates an extreme trading experience with asset breadth and depth, combined with near CEX-level experience and end-to-end transparency, constitutes Helix's long-term advantage that is difficult to replicate, and it makes us believe that Helix has the capability to lead the evolution of the next generation of on-chain financial systems.
Host Moonlight: Thank you to the three guests for the wonderful discussion. I see a clear consensus: the competitive barriers of on-chain perpetual contract platforms are no longer limited to product functionality alone, but also include mechanism design, liquidity, market structure, and a comprehensive advantage formed by continuously listening to the community and iterating optimally.
Next, we want to delve into a topic: Have major projects begun to support RWA assets? As we all know, RWA is a very hot track in this cycle. How do you view the role and importance of RWA in reshaping the DeFi ecosystem?
Ken—Helix:
Helix currently supports various trading markets related to RWA, covering stocks, commodities, foreign exchange, and other non-cryptocurrency assets. On Helix, perpetual contracts for stocks and commodities are typical representatives of migrating traditional financial markets onto the chain. In these RWA markets, Helix still maintains good liquidity and depth, making it one of the few multi-asset trading platforms currently on-chain.
From Helix's perspective, the RWA track has considerable long-term development potential. There are many users globally who wish to trade traditional financial assets but are limited by regulations or geographical restrictions—such as investors who want to trade Apple or Tesla stocks, or users interested in Pre-IPO assets like OpenAI and SpaceX. They all hope to participate through the RWA market.
Another example is that Helix launched the first derivative market tracking the rental price index of NVIDIA H100 graphics cards a few months ago. This fully reflects Helix's philosophy of "bringing all assets on-chain." We do not want RWA to be limited to stocks; instead, we hope to expand it to more diversified forms of financial derivatives. Looking ahead, we hope Helix can become the preferred platform for decentralized commodity or foreign exchange trading.
Amber—Aster:
For Aster, we have already launched tokenized stocks, including several mainstream assets like Apple and Tesla, as well as gold (XAU) and other assets.
We are always trying to list more traditional financial assets because, for Aster, it is not just a PerpDEX but a one-stop trading platform on the entire chain. Therefore, asset diversity is crucial, and RWA is a core cornerstone.
From my personal perspective, on-chain stocks and RWA assets significantly lower the trading threshold for users. Once these assets are on-chain, accessibility will greatly increase, and both the assets themselves and the markets they target will gain broader liquidity.
Moreover, for certain specific RWA assets, they inherently possess real yield capabilities. This is particularly important in DeFi—what we often refer to as "real yield." Users who experienced the DeFi Summer may remember that everyone was frantically chasing high yields, only to later find out it was at the cost of overdrawn token value. However, assets like RWA, which have actual underlying yield support, can inject real yield sources into the DeFi sector once they are on-chain, and they are expected to become incremental assets in the next phase of DeFi.
From Aster's perspective, we have been actively seeking and promoting the integration of various RWA assets. At the same time, we also pay great attention to the compliance and security of asset listings to ensure that user trading does not encounter any issues. Therefore, we continue to explore diverse RWA and stock assets for listing, committed to expanding the boundaries of on-chain finance in a stable manner.
Host Moonlight: Thank you for sharing; this is indeed fantastic! Building a one-stop trading platform undoubtedly brings great convenience to users. RWA assets, especially the US stocks and gold mentioned by the guests, are becoming new traffic entry points and differentiated growth points in the current Perp DEX field. Next, we want to delve into a question:
Liquidity is the lifeline of all trading platforms. In the current market environment, many people believe that the rhythm of this bull market is difficult to grasp. We would like to ask each of you, what specific strategies or mechanisms do you have to attract and retain deep liquidity in the long term that you can share with the audience?
Ken—Helix:
For any trading platform, liquidity is absolutely core. Helix's approach is to combine the depth of ecosystem-level liquidity with the platform's own liquidity mechanisms to build a relatively complete system that maintains depth over the long term.
From an infrastructure perspective, Injective has a built-in exchange module, and Helix is technically deeply integrated with this module. This module comes with a cross-chain order book matching system, which gives Helix a natural advantage in liquidity matching. When users trade on Helix Markets, by interacting with Injective's Exchange module, all DeFi projects based on INJ can share liquidity.
Additionally, Injective also provides incentive support for liquidity in other ways. For example, Helix directly offers an "Open Liquidity Program" to Injective, which introduces liquidity with depth and programmatic periodic incentives to multiple trading platforms. This mechanism allows Helix to maintain high trading volumes and tight spreads in different market environments, providing traders with a stable trading experience even during increased market volatility.
On top of ecosystem liquidity, Helix has also launched its own market-making bot incentive mechanism, aimed at rewarding those market-making bots that maintain liquidity and stability. These bots provide a relatively stable algorithmic liquidity foundation for the platform, and their behavior patterns resemble incentivizing a group of small professional market makers, keeping them long-term bound to the Helix platform, thus helping to maintain overall health.
It is worth mentioning that ordinary users can also participate in this program without any barriers. They just need to enter the "Liquid Pool" BOT page on the Helix website or app, hold the corresponding assets, or even just a single-sided asset to join and earn incentives in real-time.
Finally, in the future product roadmap, Helix will launch an important liquidity upgrade plan—what we call the "Mega Vault." This mechanism will integrate various existing liquidity incentives to build a more structured and transparent reward system, emphasizing returns based on real contributions and utility.
Amber—Aster:
Regarding liquidity, there is a core concept: it cannot be generated solely through short-term subsidies but needs to attract naturally by building a healthy and positive market structure.
Let me give an example: Aster currently adopts an order book model, relying on professional market makers to provide liquidity. But this is essentially a "chicken and egg" problem—if there is not enough user trading volume, even professional market makers will have concerns when providing liquidity.
Therefore, our core strategy is divided into several levels:
First, we initiate the "flywheel effect" through early incentives. We provide liquidity incentives to early market makers to help them reduce initial costs, thereby creating a basic liquidity environment for users. When users are attracted by a good trading experience, trading volume increases, and market makers will naturally be more willing to provide better liquidity depth, thus forming a positive cycle.
Second, we provide strong trading infrastructure for professional teams. We continuously optimize our native API interfaces and various trading parameters to ensure that the market makers we cooperate with can quote and place orders more efficiently and accurately, thus providing users with deeper order books and a more stable trading environment.
Third, we design a long-term ecological binding and incentive system. We hope that professional liquidity providers will not only come to trade but also stay in the ecosystem for the long term. This will be related to our upcoming independent public chain—we will design mechanisms that allow professional liquidity providers and all token holders to participate more deeply in ecological construction. This effectively completes a transformation from "pure liquidity providers" to "ecological identity binders." Once this identity binding is achieved, as Mr. Block mentioned earlier, users will recognize the platform's "DNA," and they will stay here longer.
Finally, although our current order book liquidity is still dominated by professional market makers, we are also exploring the launch of new assets and developing a liquidity solution that does not rely entirely on professional teams. Everyone can follow our official Twitter for updates on this new solution, which will be launched soon.
Host Moonlight: Overall, the liquidity construction of PerpDEX has clearly evolved from the early short-term reward model to a more structured and well-designed system. Next, we would like to ask the experts to elaborate further from the product perspective: Could you provide more details on what new features will be launched in the future to help traders operate more conveniently? For example:
Will there be trading bots, especially smart tools that incorporate AI technology?
Are there plans to develop a copy trading system or portfolio analysis features?
Will there be significant upgrades to the mobile experience? After all, many users are "mobile users," and sitting in front of a computer for long periods is not convenient.
Could the experts share what new features are coming soon?
Ken—Helix:
Currently, Helix is advancing development in multiple product directions, with the core goal always being to provide traders with a more complete and smoother trading experience. For example, our data dashboard, trading bot integration, and portfolio analysis features have become important components of the Helix ecosystem. We will continue to iterate and optimize these existing modules.
One of the key development directions for Helix is to comprehensively enhance the mobile experience—which is also what the host just mentioned. We have noticed that more and more users are accustomed to trading anytime and anywhere. Therefore, we have recently invested a lot of resources in mobile development, including optimizing page loading and interaction speed, simplifying interface levels, and ensuring that even on mobile, multi-asset trading scenarios can be clearly presented, allowing users to quickly complete opening positions, adjusting positions, and various risk control operations on small screens.
Our goal is very clear: users should be able to manage all positions, track markets, and execute orders on mobile without relying on a PC. In the future, Helix will also introduce AI technology, enabling the platform to support more efficient AI trading bots and user-defined strategies, providing users with an experience that rivals any centralized trading platform.
In summary, the primary principle we follow remains consistent: to allow traders to enjoy a high-performance, information-dense, and sufficiently convenient on-chain trading experience, regardless of location or device.
Amber—Aster:
First of all, our mobile application is now live, and everyone can download and use it. The mobile end has always been a key focus for us.
Secondly, we recently launched the AI Arena campaign. Many developers and teams have built various trading tools based on Aster, especially with AI trading strategies being highly regarded. Through AI Arena, we collaborate with ecosystem partners to select and introduce a batch of high-quality AI strategy tools, which users can now use on the Aster platform for trading. We hope to continuously bring more mature and excellent products from the ecosystem to traders through such collaborations.
Third, on the product level, the top priority is our independent public chain. It is important to clarify that this public chain is not a complete ecological public chain but is designed specifically to serve the order book system. Our goal is to achieve a high-performance trading experience comparable to centralized trading platforms while ensuring that data on-chain is fully transparent and verifiable. For traders, this means you can enjoy performance and smoothness that is on par with CEX while fully controlling your own data. This will be the core of our next steps.
Host Moonlight: Currently, a large number of traders still primarily operate on centralized trading platforms. As Amber emphasized, the smoothness of PerpDEX is now comparable to CEX. So, what are the reasons that encourage a broader user base to shift to on-chain trading, or at least allocate part of their assets on-chain?
Ken—Helix:
I believe that for those who are already accustomed to using CEX for high-frequency trading, switching to Helix or other decentralized perpetual contract platforms means they can obtain complete self-custody and transparent security guarantees without sacrificing the trading experience.
All order placements, position updates, and clearing actions related to perpetual contracts must be completed publicly on-chain. This is crucial because it means there is no "black box" matching during the trading process, no invisible internal counterparties, and no additional risks to bear. The black swan risks that existed in some centralized trading platforms or institutions in the past—such as unilateral freezing of withdrawals, platforms facing regulatory or compliance issues, or operational failures leading to service interruptions—even some large platforms have experienced similar situations—may be bearable for spot trading, but for contract trading, such risks are completely unacceptable.
Looking back over the past year, it is not difficult to find relevant cases, whether it is hacker attacks or so-called "pulling the plug," such cases are common. Even if some platforms offer compensation afterward, the process is often lengthy and difficult to cover all losses. For perpetual contract traders, a single pinning incident can wipe out months or even years of accumulated profits.
For high-frequency or heavy traders, these risks constitute real, invisible counterparty risks. The core value of on-chain trading is to solve this problem by eliminating single points of trust and failure: users' assets are always stored in wallets they control, and the trading and clearing logic is clearly defined and publicly verifiable by smart contracts, meaning the platform cannot arbitrarily change user positions or restrict asset withdrawals.
Moreover, the airdrops and other welfare mechanisms in the on-chain ecosystem also provide traders with additional benefits that are difficult to obtain on centralized platforms. On Helix, users can enjoy the security guarantees of transparency and self-custody while sharing in the potential returns brought by the growth of Helix and the entire Injective ecosystem.
I believe that the combination of these two aspects—the trading experience comparable to CEX and the unique security and yield opportunities on-chain—is the most attractive advantage of current on-chain trading and the core reason and vision encouraging everyone to gradually migrate to on-chain.
Amber—Aster:
Ken has already covered many core points, and I would like to add a few more:
First, from Aster's perspective, we are committed to providing an experience that is almost indistinguishable from centralized trading platforms. The logic behind this is clear: the trading process of CEX has been highly optimized for user experience, and most users are already accustomed to it. What we are doing is to provide users with a one-stop on-chain trading platform without KYC, without sacrificing this smoothness. We hope that when users turn to on-chain, they do not have to sacrifice trading efficiency.
Second, why should users shift from centralized to decentralized? In addition to the basic advantages of no KYC, self-custody of assets, free deposits and withdrawals, and trading transparency, there is also a key point regarding the speed and flexibility of listing new assets. For centralized trading platforms, listing new assets usually involves a lengthy review process, which is relatively cumbersome. In contrast, decentralized trading platforms can list new assets more quickly—just as we have seen, the reason why DEXs like Uniswap and PancakeSwap continue to see growth in trading volume and an increasing number of users is that they can list new assets faster.
The same goes for Aster. We continuously explore how to accelerate the onboarding process for new assets, allowing users to trade on our platform even before some assets are listed on centralized platforms. This is one of the reasons why more and more users are starting to pay attention to and use on-chain perpetual contract platforms: you can access emerging assets earlier, and the sooner you participate, the greater the potential opportunity often is.
Host Moonlight: In my view, the future trend may not necessarily be a choice between "on-chain" or "centralized," but rather a parallel existence of both. More and more users will gradually migrate their capital exposure on-chain. For example, when I first entered the space, I primarily used centralized trading platforms, but after experiencing this market cycle, I began to try decentralized platforms, and the experience was excellent. Now, I use both. This may be a viable path for PerpDEX to achieve user growth.
Since we are talking about growth paths, we must mention how to attract users. In the last market cycle, many people achieved considerable profits by participating in airdrops, attracting a large number of users' attention and even giving rise to professional studios and "airdrop hunters." However, users inevitably experience fatigue, especially when faced with "reverse airdrops."
I am curious how the experts design airdrop mechanisms to avoid attracting only short-term airdrop hunters and instead truly convert rewards and activities into long-term, high-quality, and high-loyalty users.
Ken—Helix:
This is indeed a timeless topic in blockchain projects—how to ensure the fairness of airdrops and incentives. I would like to introduce Helix's current approach to incentive design from two aspects.
First, we rely on the open liquidity incentive program of the Injective blockchain. Anyone who provides liquidity through liquidity pool bots on Helix can receive corresponding trading incentives. Based on the activity and market depth of the supported trading pairs, users can view the available incentive amounts in real-time on Helix's liquidity rewards dashboard.
Secondly, Helix has also established its own points system, but it is fundamentally different from the common "grab and go" model in the market. We adopt a multi-round, continuously accumulating "dark accumulation" mechanism, which has several common characteristics: it encourages users to engage in real trading on Helix, maintain continuous interaction, and even in cases where some perpetual trading positions are liquidated, as long as users remain active during market fluctuations, they can still earn points.
For Helix, real participation is far more important than artificially inflated trading volume. Therefore, we do not deliberately set overly quantifiable scoring rules. Once the rules become too straightforward, it is easy to trigger strategic arbitrage, leading to industrialized volume inflation and monetization behaviors. On the surface, the data may look impressive, but it actually harms the long-term value of the product and ecosystem—users are merely "pretending to use the product" rather than genuinely retaining.
At Helix, we assess the effectiveness of the points program through a comprehensive evaluation of user activity and real trading behavior, focusing more on the quality of participation rather than simply stacking TVL or trading data. Therefore, Helix's points system is designed around real trading and real behavior, aiming to incentivize, align, and reward genuine traders rather than short-term arbitrageurs.
Amber—Aster:
Regarding incentive design, Aster mainly focuses on two core aspects: behavioral quality and identity binding.
First, in terms of behavioral quality, unlike many trading platforms that rely solely on trading volume mining, we do not only value volume as a single metric. We comprehensively evaluate multiple dimensions, such as whether users maintain stable positions and whether they have continuous trading behavior. Essentially, we observe and recognize each trader's real participation on the platform from a more three-dimensional perspective. Behavioral quality itself is the core basis of our incentive system.
Secondly, we emphasize identity binding. We aim to build an incentive ecosystem that creates a value loop rather than a one-time activity. Aster's goal is not only to attract users through activities but also to transform them into long-term, high-quality participants through our close interaction and collaboration with the community.
The logic behind this is clear: as many of you may have noticed, since the TGE, Aster's product iteration speed has been very fast, and we are continuously optimizing and updating. Users may initially learn about us through activities like airdrops, but we hope that after actual trading and providing feedback, they can feel that we genuinely value their voices. By actively responding to user feedback and quickly iterating on our products, we hope users can grow alongside Aster.
In fact, some early airdrop holders have already felt this over the past two to three months. I also hope that new users, through their participation in the community and activities, can feel through this close communication that we sincerely wish to retain everyone and jointly create an on-chain trading platform that offers an experience comparable to CEX, truly complete and mature.
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