Woke up to find that old DeFi project SNX suddenly pumped, felt super weird, so I went to check it out. Turns out @synthetix_io officially announced the launch of their Perp Dex two days ago. It’s definitely Perp season right now. For now, it’s just the deposit phase—trading and the app won’t go live until next month. Because of this, I specifically checked out the Bankless podcast with the founder @kaiynne, and found out this Perp is actually built on the ETH mainnet… The guy’s reasoning is super straightforward: he said they’ve been experimenting on L2 (OP) for years, but realized users just don’t want to leave L1. People staking for years without moving an inch… Alright then, let’s just build the Perp directly on ETH L1! As for the technical framework, it feels like a “simulated L2 Appchain,” but without any cross-chain asset transfers. Basically, placing and managing orders is definitely off-chain to focus on user experience, while settlement is similar to L2, with batches submitted to L1 as blobs. Also randomly discovered that the guy’s a music and arts enthusiast—look at all the guitars, keyboards, and mixers in the background…