DEX Perpetual Futures Smash Records: $1 Trillion Monthly Volume for 3 Straight Months to Close 2025

Decentralized exchanges just rewrote the rulebook on derivatives trading. Forget gradual growth—this was a vertical takeoff.

The New Volume Kings

DEX perpetual futures markets didn't just hit a milestone; they blasted past it. Month after month, the $1 trillion mark became the new baseline, signaling a fundamental shift in where traders place their bets. The infrastructure held, liquidity deepened, and the user experience finally caught up to the hype.

Why This Isn't a Fluke

This streak wasn't powered by a single catalyst. It was the culmination of seamless cross-margin systems, aggregated liquidity protocols, and a growing distrust of traditional finance's opaque ledger-keeping—speaking of which, when was the last time your bank's quarterly report made any sense?

The Inevitable Takeover

The narrative has flipped. DEXs are no longer the alternative; they're becoming the main venue. They cut out the intermediaries, bypass legacy settlement delays, and hand control directly back to the trader. This volume proves the demand was always there, just waiting for the technology to match it.

The record books for 2025 are closed, and they tell a clear story: decentralized finance isn't coming for the derivatives throne—it's already sitting on it.

On-chain data shows perpetual volume activity tripled in 2025

Perpetual Protocol (PERP) and dYdX were among the earliest DEXs for perpetual futures trading, starting around 2021. The market has since experienced an increase in trading volume, particularly since 2023, when the Hyperliquid decentralized blockchain entered the market. Trading volume in 2025 increased by more than 3 times compared to 2024, according to DefiLlama data. 

Perp volumes more than tripled in 2025

The sector shifted from a near-monopolistic setup dominated by Hyperliquid into a highly competitive field.

Mainly driven by liquidity rotation from memecoins, perps volume hit an ATH of $1.8T in October, retracing to $864M at the EOY.… pic.twitter.com/jl4t3x0xby

— CryptoRank.io (@CryptoRank_io) January 8, 2026

Based on on-chain data, approximately $8 trillion in cumulative perpetual trading volume was recorded in 2025, surpassing roughly $2.4 trillion recorded in 2024.

Hyperliquid DEX dominated the perpetual futures market, posting monthly volumes that exceeded $100 billion consecutively throughout the year. DEX platforms, including Aster, Lighter, and EdgeX, emerged in the second half of 2025, challenging Hyperliquid’s dominance. The narrative across the market changed when rival markets emerged, evolving to no longer being dominated by a single platform but a multi-venue landscape. 

Hyperliquid captured approximately 71% of the perpetual contracts market in 2025. The network’s share plummeted going into November, when Lighter, Aster, and EdgeX emerged with roughly 27.7%, 19.3%, and 14.6%, respectively.

Hyperliquid’s 2026 volume has peaked at roughly $45 billion, compared to $33 billion for Lighter, $25 billion for EdgeX, and $43 billion for Aster. In terms of fees, Aster generated $358 million in annual fees, compared with $749 million for Hyperliquid. 

Lighter even surpassed Hyperliquid in volume in December, recording approximately $200 billion in volume against Hyperliquid’s roughly $169 billion volume during the same period. Lighter’s monthly volumes grew from as low as $1.1 billion in February to the peak of $292 billion recorded in November.

So far, Lighter trails at the third position by trading volume behind Aster and Hyperliquid. 

Hyperliquid’s design architecture supports the network’s dominance

The trading patterns across the perpetual DEXs primarily allow traders to leverage their positions rather than serving as a supplementary alternative to centralized exchanges, giving them huge leverage to amplify their exposure far beyond their initial capital. The maturity across the sector shows improved liquidity and execution capabilities that meet the requirements of professional and institutional traders. 

Hyperliquid’s network is an L1 blockchain that is designed for derivative trading using the HyperBFT consensus mechanism. The mechanism supports sub-second order confirmation and a TPS of 200,000, surpassing many CEXs. 

Hyperliquid’s current open interest, representing the total value of open perpetual contracts, stands at $8.95 billion. DefiLlama data shows Aster’s OI at $2.62 billion and Lighter at $1.415 billion. Aster, which launched in September, experienced a growth of roughly 2,800% within the week of its release, trading from a low of $0.08 to $2.42. Its trading volume peaked at $70 billion. At some point, it dominated the entire DEX perpetual contracts market. 

At the time of publication, Aster was down 1.3% on the daily chart, trading at $0.7. Hyperliquid token HYPE was down 2.7%, trading at $ 25.50, with a market cap of $8.66 billion. The HYPE token has increased by 4.4% since the start of 2026, with a perp volume of approximately $43 billion over the past week across the network. 

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