Top 5 Undervalued Perp DEX Dark Horses to Watch in 2025

In 2025, the Perp DEX sector continues to develop at a rapid pace.

The under‑the‑radar, not‑yet‑tokenized Perp DEX dark horses worth watching in 2025 include edgeX, Lighter, Aster, Ethereal, and Paradex. These five projects have significant advantages in liquidity, technology, and team strength.

Since the Hyperliquid token airdrop on 29 November 2024 sparked a wave of attention across the internet, the sector has entered a full‑speed lane. Hyperliquid, as a next‑generation order‑book Perp DEX, saw its token HYPE surge to $50 and now holds steady around $47, making it one of the most compelling and wealth‑generating projects of the year.

The Perp DEX sector not only generates high revenue, but also offers ample growth space, posing an unprecedented threat to centralized exchanges (CEXs). Daily trading volume of crypto derivatives is typically 4–5 times that of spot markets, while on‑chain derivatives penetration is still below 10 %, indicating that at least a ten‑fold upside remains possible.

As more teams crowd into the space, the sector’s ceiling keeps rising and competition intensifies. Projects continuously upgrade technology, liquidity, depth, user experience, and incentive mechanisms, pouring more capital into the race. The clustering of projects and frequent innovation also create a stronger “wealth spillover” effect, attracting large amounts of capital and user attention—especially from the new wave of not‑yet‑tokenized Perp DEX contenders.

Currently, Hyperliquid is preparing to launch its second‑quarter airdrop, and other fast‑growing, well‑backed projects with strong token‑issuance expectations are emerging. This article surveys five promising, still‑unissued Perp DEX dark horses—each either soaring in growth, backed by abundant resources, or supported by star venture capital firms. They are key projects that “yield‑hunters” and contract traders should not overlook.

In this piece we list the most promising not‑yet‑issued Perp DEX projects for next year, focusing on their technical capabilities, liquidity deployment, and team credentials. By deeply analyzing sector trends, we aim to help readers identify potential investment break‑throughs—reading it carefully is recommended.

edgeX

• edgeX is the first batch of projects incubated by Amber Group’s accelerator launched in July 2024. It enjoys high popularity in Korean communities and offers a smooth mobile‑app experience.
• Built on StarkEx ZK‑Rollup and deployed on Ethereum Layer 2, it can process 200 k orders per second, with matching latency under 10 ms, setting a new benchmark for speed and efficiency in decentralized derivatives exchanges.
• Fees: Maker 0.038 %, Taker 0.015 %.

• In the past 30 days it generated $5.6 million of actual revenue, surpassing leading Perp DEX platforms such as GMX ($2.45 million) and dYdX ($1.23 million).
• Among all Perp DEX, edgeX shows the best market depth. For the BTC/ETH pair, at a 0.01 % price spread, BTC can support $6 million of open interest, exceeding Hyperliquid ($5 million) and Aster ($4 million).

• The team is backed by Amber Group; members have previously worked at Morgan Stanley, Barclays, Goldman Sachs, Bybit and other top institutions, accumulating more than seven years of exchange‑operation experience.
• edgeX’s eLP (Edge Liquidity Pool) combines passive liquidity with a smart‑hedging mechanism, providing dynamic hedging and an insurance fund. Ten percent of each profit is funneled into the insurance pool to cushion treasury losses during extreme market moves.
• Future plans include upgrading from the current Perp app rollup (V1) to a high‑performance financial chain (V2), delivering a fully modular and composable financial infrastructure.

Lighter

• Lighter is a fresh Perp DEX in the Ethereum ecosystem. It originally launched as a spot DEX on Arbitrum in 2023, transitioned to a zkSync Layer 3 DEX in March 2024, and upgraded to a ZK Perp DEX in November 2024, built on zk‑rollup technology.
• Technical specs: 5 ms soft finality and 10 k matches per second.
• Although still invitation‑only, daily trading volume has stabilized between $1‑2 billion, with cumulative volume of $2.4 billion—second only to Hyperliquid across the whole network.
• Lighter adopts a zero‑fee model (both Maker and Taker pay nothing). Consequently, part of the reported volume may include wash‑trading activity, and the platform’s revenue model is relatively thin.
• The protocol features a native market‑making vault (LLP) similar to Hyperliquid’s HLP, allowing retail users to deposit funds into a public pool managed by professional traders who share the profits. The LLP token currently trades on off‑chain markets at $5 per unit.
• Founder and CEO Vladimir Novakovski graduated from Harvard University, previously acted as an angel investor in Fabric Cryptography and Daimo. Institutional backers include a16z, Lightspeed Ventures and others.

Aster

• Aster emerged on 31 March 2024 from the merger and upgrade of Astherus and APX. Initially focused on liquidity for staked assets, it now enters the Perp DEX market as a Binance‑affiliated project.
• Deeply tied to the BNB ecosystem, it natively supports Binance Wallet, received full‑equity investment from YZi Labs, and has been repeatedly endorsed by CZ, providing strong ecosystem resources and traffic support.
• Trading volume has reached $210 million.
• Two trading modes:

1. Simple mode, aiming for ultra‑minimalist usability;
2. Pro mode, targeting professional users, with fees of Maker 0.01 % and Taker 0.035 %.

• Introduced an innovative Dumb prediction game, allowing users to bet on minute‑level short‑term asset price movements.
• Liquidity is primarily supplied by an internal Liquidity Hub, eliminating reliance on external market‑making teams. Within the protocol, the USDF stablecoin TVL stands at $130 million, while asBNB (in partnership with BNB Chain) TVL is about $115 million.

• Supports perpetual contracts for seven major U.S. equities—Amazon, Apple, Google, Meta (Facebook), Microsoft, Nvidia, and Tesla—allowing 24/7 crypto‑margin trading.
• Long‑term roadmap includes building a dedicated Aster Layer 1 public chain specifically for on‑chain derivatives, providing bespoke infrastructure for the sector.

Ethereal

• Ethereal is the first project built natively on the Ethena Network and is considered the “baby” of the ENA community. It is underpinned by the USDe stablecoin and aims to deliver a one‑stop, vertically integrated DeFi platform.
• Ethereal V1 will bring a full suite of spot and perpetual contracts to the upcoming Ethena mainnet. Technically it uses an EVM‑compatible stack, settlement via Converge, execution environment on Arbitrum, data‑availability layer on Celestia, and achieves matching latency under 20 ms, with peak capacity of roughly 1 million orders and 1 k trades per second.
• On the liquidity side, Ethereal seeks to become the core hub for USDe‑based hedging and trading on‑chain. The platform has received formal approval from Ethena governance (99.6 % support) and has pledged to allocate 15 % of future governance tokens to ENA stakers (sENA), tightly aligning community incentives.

• On 20 June 2025, Ethereal launched its testnet, accessible at testnet.ethereal.trade, where users can experience high‑performance on‑chain trading backed by USDe.
• Future phases will gradually roll out spot trading, lending, borrowing, real‑world asset (RWA) products, and additional USDe‑based derivative instruments, further expanding the DeFi landscape.

Paradex

• Paradex is incubated by the crypto‑liquidity platform Paradigm (not to be confused with the venture‑capital firm of the same name) and is built on the Starknet‑based Ethereum Layer 2 blockchain Paradex Network, targeting high‑performance decentralized trading and asset management.
• Paradigm was founded in 2019 to serve hedge funds, market makers, and institutions, once holding roughly 30 % of the global crypto options market. It completed a $35 million funding round at a $400 million valuation, led by Jump Crypto and Alameda Research. After the collapse of FTX, Paradigm faced headwinds and launched Paradex to rebuild its ecosystem.
• Paradex supports perpetual contracts, perpetual futures, perpetual options, and spot trading under a unified account system. Any asset can be used as collateral, and the platform offers isolated, cross‑margin, and portfolio‑margin modes. Fees are set at 0.03 %, with a –0.005 % rebate for limit orders.
• The vault allows users to receive LP tokens that can be composited with Pendle, Morpho, Aave and other mainstream DeFi protocols, enabling both active trading and passive yield. Some LP tokens may later be usable directly as collateral for additional on‑chain strategies.
• Tokenomics have been disclosed, and the community strongly anticipates a token launch. The native token DIME will be used for fee payment, fee discounts, staking, liquidity‑mining rewards, and governance voting.
• Today Paradex ranks as the top options DEX in the crypto space, with relatively stable growth in perpetual contract volume.

The above provides a comprehensive analysis of “the next hundred‑fold opportunity? A look at the most promising not‑yet‑tokenized Perp DEX dark horses for 2025.” For further related content, follow Bitaigen (比特根) and its other publications.

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Related Reading

• Perp DEX Guide: Decentralized Perpetual Contracts Explained
• Perp DEX: Decentralized Perpetual Contract Exchange
• Top 5 Permanent Decentralized Exchanges to Watch in 2025

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