While the entire crypto market seems to have entered another "bear market," enthusiasm for the new track has not waned much.

Especially in the Derivatives track, many traders and community members are focusing more on the high-frequency, structured, gamified perpetual market. This is why the unaudited Perp DEX can still achieve impressive results in a downturn environment.

This momentum will experience a concentrated outbreak in December: two top unaudited Perp DEXs are about to TGE. Can they recreate the frenzy of Aster's launch, or even replicate that phenomenon-level rally? Many users, including the author, are looking forward to it.

BlockBeats has compiled a list of the current top-tier Perp DEXs in terms of trading volume and highest visibility, summarizing their key events and dynamics over the past two to three weeks to help deepen everyone's understanding of the PerpDEX track.

edgeX: The Seal Meme Has Arrived

1. Community Memecoin Seal $MARU Has Arrived

The most notable event for edgeX is undoubtedly the launch of the community memecoin $MARU. This token, based on edgeX's seal mascot, attracted a lot of attention as soon as it was announced.

With a total supply of 10 billion tokens, it is expected to go live after the Open Season, which is after December 3. The overall distribution includes 70% directly allocated to airdrops and ecosystem incentives, 20% for the liquidity pool (unlocked upon launch for easy trading), and the remaining 10% reserved for core contributors (completely locked for long-term incentives).

How to get $MARU? It mainly involves creator activities, which can be understood as Kaito's task of creating content to earn rewards in the form of tweets, videos, memes, etc., and tagging @edgeX_exchange. After the official selection, original high-quality content (AI-generated content does not count; supports multiple languages such as English, Chinese, Korean, Japanese) will be considered.

2. edgeX Messenger Ambassador Program Upgrade

Somewhat related to the previous point is the upgrade of the edgeX Messenger. This plan, announced on November 13, has expanded its collaboration to the DeFi track. The core direction is to provide a collaboration platform for traders and influencers, deeply integrating with the $MARU incentive mechanism. It's like building its own ambassador program, which combines trader community, content creation, and incentive mechanisms.

3. edgeXFlow Ecosystem Sets Sail

On November 19, edgeX made another big move: launching the edgeXFlow ecosystem.

In simple terms, edgeXFlow is a new modular execution layer that operates in parallel with the existing StarkEx. Technical specifications: Execution latency: <10ms; Order processing capacity: 200,000 transactions per second; ZK proof ensuring transparency, and more.

The first partner is Ave.ai, and together they launched the XPIN trading event (November 19-26). The design of this event is quite interesting—not just the traditional PnL competition, but adopting a hybrid incentive model: airdrop rewards based on trading volume tiers; a leaderboard with 200 slots (expanding the reward distribution scope); 1.1x edgeX points bonus.

edgeX's ambition is significant, aiming to onboard 30 ecosystem partners by Q2 2026. It seems they intend to deploy this infrastructure and establish it as an industry standard modular execution layer.

4. Countdown to Points Distribution

The Open Season is now in the countdown stage! We are currently in weeks 20-24, with an expected 2-4 weeks remaining. In recent weeks, 300,000 points have been distributed weekly, covering 13,000-14,000 addresses.

According to a calculation by a community influencer, estimating based on edgeX revenue being about 16% of Hyperliquid's, if the Fully Diluted Valuation (FDV) reaches around 20-70 billion USD at the TGE, the individual point value may fall in the range of 30-300 USD. Of course, this is only an estimate, and the actual value will depend on market conditions. The potential probability of edgeX on Polymarket on launch day's FDV is shown below:

5. Strategic Partnership with Polymarket

Another heavyweight announcement came as edgeX declared a strategic partnership with Polymarket yesterday: Polymarket's prediction markets will seamlessly integrate into the edgeX mobile app; users can easily participate in event forecasting; both parties will collaborate on developing innovative leveraged prediction products.

Since this was announced yesterday, there are not yet more details available. However, we can look forward to upcoming developments, and it is expected that products developed through the cooperative incubation will be one of the key projects on the edgeXFlow ecosystem.

Lighter: $68 Million Financing, $15 Billion Valuation

1. Major Financing Round

On November 11th, Lighter announced the completion of a $68 million financing round, propelling it into the ranks of DeFi unicorns. The lineup of this round's financing is quite impressive:

Financing Details:

Amount: $68 million (Equity + Token Subscription Rights)

Valuation: $15 billion (Post-money Valuation)

Lead Investor: Founders Fund (Peter Thiel), Ribbit Capital

Participants: Haun Ventures, Robinhood (Rare brokerage VC participation)

Total Funding: Approximately $90 million (previously raised $21 million in 2024 led by Haun/Craft)

This financing round has several highlights:

Firstly, the investor lineup is top-notch. Founders Fund is one of the most prestigious VCs in Silicon Valley, and Robinhood, as a brokerage, personally invested in a perp DEX, which is rare in the industry, indicating that traditional finance's acceptance of decentralized derivatives is increasing.

Secondly, the founders have a hardcore background. Novakovski is a legendary figure—entered Harvard at 16, recruited by Citadel founder Ken Griffin right after graduating at 18, and then worked as an engineer and trader in multiple financial institutions for nearly 15 years. Founders Fund partner Joey Krug stated that 85%-90% of the investment rationale is due to founder Vladimir Novakovski and his team.

2. Oracle Integration + RWA Expansion, Targeting Traditional Financial Assets

Lighter recently announced a partnership with Chainlink to integrate real-time oracle data, formally expanding into the realm of real-world asset (RWA) derivatives.

Supported asset categories include: Commodity Futures Contracts (gold, oil, etc.); Stock Index Derivatives; Forex Trading Pairs; Other real-world assets.

Additionally, since RWA price feeds are not available 24/7 (e.g., gold and stocks only have prices during trading hours), Lighter has also made some special arrangements: entering a "liquidation-only" mode during non-trading hours, where users can only submit liquidation orders; funding rates continue to be calculated normally during non-trading hours; the RWA market only supports an isolated margin mode (considering experimental and volatile nature); a dedicated XLP (Experimental Liquidity Provider) pool is set up to provide liquidity to the RWA market, isolated from the main LLP pool.

Hyperliquid: The Joy and Sorrow of Titans

1. HIP-3 Upgrade, Transaction Fees Plummet by 90%

On November 19, Hyperliquid released a major upgrade: HIP-3 Growth Mode.

HIP-3 itself allows anyone to deploy their own perpetual contract market on Hyperliquid without permission by staking 500,000 HYPE tokens. The "Growth Mode" this time is a further optimization based on HIP-3, specifically designed to provide ultra-low fee incentives for new markets.

Key changes include: Taker fee reduction of over 90%, from the original 0.045% to 0.0045%-0.009%; high-staking users benefit more, with fees as low as 0.00144%-0.00288% if they reach the highest staking and trading volume levels; rebates and trading volume contributions can also be reduced by over 90% simultaneously.

However, to prevent "parasitic trading volume," Growth Mode markets have some exclusion rules: they cannot include BTC or existing validator-operated markets, cryptocurrency baskets/ETFs, synthetic price indexes, or assets duplicating existing markets (such as gold, which already has PAXG-USDC).

The purpose of this upgrade is clear: to lower the barrier for new markets. New markets often start with few traders and low liquidity. A 90% fee discount can effectively attract early users, further helping Hyperliquid evolve from "a PerpDEX" to "a permissionless financial infrastructure layer."

2. Another Whale Takes the Same Path

Social media trader Andrew Tate recently lost all his funds on Hyperliquid, leading to what is jokingly referred to as being "Hyperliquidated."

According to Arkham on-chain data, Andrew Tate's liquidation can be traced back to almost a year ago. There was a collective liquidation of long positions in BTC, ETH, SOL, LINK, HYPE, PENGU, and more on December 19, 2024.

On November 18, when BTC dropped below $90,000, Andrew Tate's final position was liquidated entirely, leaving his account balance at zero. This incident quickly became a meme material, especially since he often presented himself as a financial guru.

Some analysts directly categorize him as one of the "worst traders in crypto history," alongside other large holders who suffered significant losses on Hyperliquid (James Wynn lost $23 million, Qwatio lost $25.8 million, 0xa523 lost $43.4 million in a month).

3. POPCAT Manipulation Attack

On November 12, Hyperliquid experienced its second major attack of the year, the previous one being XPL, with this attack targeting the memecoin POPCAT.

The attacker withdrew 3 million USDC from OKX and dispersed it to 19-26 new wallets. They opened leveraged long positions of around $20-30 million in POPCAT on Hyperliquid (approximately 5x leverage) and then placed buy walls of about $20 million at the $0.21 price level to create the illusion of strong demand. Other traders, seeing the buy walls and thinking there was support, followed suit with long positions. The attacker suddenly removed the buy walls, causing the POPCAT price to plummet from $0.21 to $0.13.

In the end, a large number of leveraged longs were liquidated, with at least 26 liquidated accounts totaling $25.5 million in position liquidation, losing $2.98 million in margin, and the HLP treasury forced to absorb $4.9 million in bad debt. The bizarre aspect of this attack is that the attacker themselves lost $3 million, seemingly not for profit.

There are two main speculations in the community regarding this: one is that the attack was purely a "stress test" to damage Hyperliquid's reputation, with Binance/CZ being the primary suspect. The other is that the attacker opened hedging positions on a centralized exchange, so overall they profited. On-chain analysis points to BTX Capital, but founder Vanessa Cao has denied involvement.

Aster: Giving Away Money While Buying Back

1. Phase Four "Aster Harvest" Airdrop of 1.2 Billion ASTER

On November 10, Aster officially kicked off the fourth stage of the airdrop, codenamed Harvest. The distribution size is 1.2 billion ASTER (1.5% of the total supply) with a duration of 6 weeks (November 10 - December 21), distributed at 0.25% per week evenly across 6 Epochs.

Compared to the previous stages (S2 4% allocation, S3 2.5% allocation), the allocation ratio for S4 has indeed decreased. However, community analysis suggests that due to a potential decrease in participation, individual user earnings may actually be higher, and the halving of inflation may drive up the token price.

Some key tips to earn more points in this stage are: $ASTER can be used as perpetual contract collateral, using $ASTER as contract collateral can earn additional points; paying fees with $ASTER receives a 5% discount; spot trading is now also eligible for points; in addition, there are anti-wash trading measures, and Aster now emphasizes high-quality trading, implementing a maker order and symbol accelerator multiplier mechanism in an attempt to filter out wash trading behavior.

2. $10 Million Trading Competition "Kill Two Birds with One Stone"

On November 17th, Aster launched its largest-ever trading competition: a total prize pool of $10 million.

In terms of the competition format, it is divided into 5 weekly stages (running until December 21st), each stage has an independent leaderboard, the prize pool for the first stage is $1 million, with weekly prizes of up to $2 million; 1000 prize seats per stage; limited to perpetual contract trading, ranked by trading volume and PnL.

The highlight of this trading competition activity is the "Kill Two Birds with One Stone" feature, which means that the same transaction can be counted in both the competition and the S4 airdrop. For example, the top player can earn up to $300,000 in a single week, and if they dominate the leaderboard for 5 consecutive weeks, theoretically they could win $1.5 million.

3. Protocol Buyback Continues to Advance

Aster's buyback efforts in the perp DEX track are considered relatively aggressive. As of November 13th, the accumulated buyback amount is approximately $214 million; the buyback token amount accounts for 7.11% of the circulating supply.

Some time ago, CZ shouted out to buy more than $2 million worth of ASTER, sparking speculative demand; in addition, market makers such as Wintermute have quietly increased their holdings, leading some analysts to predict that ASTER could rise to $10.

However, some members of the community also have concerns: about 6.35 billion ASTER tokens are still locked up, and the future unlocking may bring selling pressure. It is estimated that there are about $700 million in tokens waiting to be unlocked by 2026. The back-and-forth changes to the unlocking schedule recently have also caused some panic. However, the official statement is that the unlocking schedule will not be changed.

4. "Machi Mode" Feature

This may be the most meme-worthy new feature launched on Aster. On November 19, Aster announced the introduction of "Machi Mode," where liquidated users can receive points as a reward, essentially giving a bit of a "consolation prize" to the losing traders.

Why is it called Machi Mode? It is a playful reference to the renowned trader Jeffrey Huang, known in the community as "Machi Big Brother."

According to Lookonchain data, since November 1, the top three whales liquidated on Hyperliquid are: Machi Big Brother—71 liquidations; James Wynn—26 liquidations; Andrew Tate—19 liquidations.

Machi is way ahead, arguably the unlucky "liquidation king." He has lost over $53 million in a month, known for his high-leverage and aggressive trading style. Aster named this feature after him, to some extent, embracing the degen culture of the crypto community.

Others

Additionally, the editor would like to further introduce two recent developments in an unreleased coin Perp DEX that they usually pay attention to.

1. Pacifica

On November 12, Pacifica announced the launch of the TIF=TOB (Time in Force = Top of Book) order type.

In simple terms, when you submit a post-only limit order, if the price is set too aggressively and would sweep the order book (immediate fill), the traditional approach is to cancel the order directly. However, TIF=TOB does not cancel the order; instead, it automatically adjusts your order to the top of the order book.

For example, suppose the current best bid price for BTC is $100,000, and the best ask price is $100,100. If you submit a TOB buy order at $100,200 (which would sweep the Ask), the system will automatically adjust your order to $100,099—just below the best ask price, becoming the new top of the order book. This is a great feature for market makers.

Currently, Pacifica has become one of the most important projects on the Solana blockchain.

2. Variational

Another key player is Variational, which played a significant role in the Arbitrum DeFi revival strategy.

Its features include: an automatic listing engine that eliminates coordination delays through internal OLP, currently supporting 515+ tokens, making it the perp DEX with the most listings; the protocol provides its own liquidity with hedging costs of only 0-2 basis points, with users paying a 4-6 basis point spread, achieving over 300% annualized returns in some periods. Additionally, there is a loss subsidy program: currently over $2 million has been refunded, covering 70,000+ transactions, benefiting 6,500+ users, with the highest single refund exceeding $100,000, accounting for approximately 2% of the platform's total losses.

On November 15, over $1 million was retroactively distributed as rewards; on November 17, a retail sentiment index tool was launched, showing that 89% of the trading volume comes from the long tail market. Overall, the data growth is very rapid, and while there are currently no open championship-level competitions, there may be volume retroactivity in the future.

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