Money always flows to where more money is, and liquidity always seeks deeper liquidity.

The market cap of Bitcoin is 1.7 trillion dollars, while the total market cap of the US stock market exceeds 50 trillion dollars. Tech giants like Apple, Microsoft, and Nvidia, each have a market cap that can crush the entire cryptocurrency market.

More and more clever crypto folks also seem to have reached a subtle consensus that trading stocks is really better than trading coins.

The US stock market is deeply tied to the global economy, geopolitics, and technological innovation. Its volatility and relevance far surpass any single cryptocurrency. This global attention is something that Meme coins and Shitcoins can never reach.

Major Perp DEX platforms in the crypto industry like Hyperliquid, Trade.xyz, Ostium, and Lighter have already launched perpetual contract trading for US stocks.

By combining on-chain perpetual contracts, this financial tool that has long been commonplace in the cryptocurrency market has made the US stock market more exciting and attractive.

After all, in the traditional financial world, ordinary people who want to trade US stocks need to overcome many obstacles: opening an overseas brokerage account, enduring lengthy verification processes, tolerating limited trading hours, and accepting a leverage limit of 2x or at most 4x.

But now, the rules of the game are being rewritten. Perpetual contracts are now combining with the US stock market in an unstoppable manner. US stock perpetual contracts may also be the next focal point of smart money investments.

This article will delve into the core mechanisms of Trade.xyz, Ostium, and Lighter platforms, comparing their differences in trading experience, risk control, and data performance.

Which DEX Platform Has More Stocks and Higher Leverage?

Let's first look at some of the most basic questions that traders care about: the supported stocks, available leverage ratios, and fee structures.

trade.xyz

trade.xyz is the first perpetual DEX based on the Hyperliquid HIP-3 protocol, and it is also the largest perpetual DEX on HIP-3, launched in October 2025. The key innovation is achieving 24/7/365 round-the-clock US stock trading, focusing on the XYZ100 stock index and individual stock perpetual contracts. It is currently in a growth phase, with trading fee reductions of ≥90%, and the actual taker fee is only about 0.009%.

The team is relatively mysterious, mainly consisting of Hyperunit team members (@hyperunit), who operate in an anonymous or low-key mode, without disclosing detailed founder information. There are community rumors that the Hyperunit team may have come from Hyperliquid. Currently, the project has not undergone external financing and is a Pre-TGE project. Related reading: "$20 Billion Trading Volume in 10 Days, Another Hit from Hyperliquid".

As shown in the image, trade.xyz currently supports 11 U.S. stock assets, with most stocks offering 10x leverage, while the XYZ100 index product (tracking the Nasdaq) can be leveraged up to 20x. The trading mode used is the Central Limit Order Book (CLOB) mode.

The fee structure is also relatively friendly: in the current growth stage, fee discounts are greater than or equal to 90%, with actual fees: taker ≤0.009% (approximately $0.009 per $1000), maker: ≤0.003%.

Lighter

Lighter is a custom ZK-rollup perpetual trading platform based on Ethereum, officially launched in early 2025, known for zero transaction fees and provable fairness. The platform uses zero-knowledge proof technology to verify all order matching and settlement processes. It just launched U.S. stock trading functionality on November 26.

Founder Vladimir Novakovski has a strong background, a Russian immigrant, a gold medalist in the U.S. Math and Physics Olympiad, joined Citadel as a trader after graduating from Harvard at the age of 18, with 15 years of experience in financial technology. He co-founded the AI social platform Lunchclub (raised $30 million). Lighter completed a $68 million Series B financing in November 2025, valuing it at $1.5 billion, led by Founders Fund (Peter Thiel) and Ribbit Capital, with other investors including a16z crypto, Lightspeed, Coatue, and other top institutions.

As shown in the diagram, Lighter supports 5 types of US stock assets, all with a uniform leverage of 10x. The trading mode adopted is also the CLOB mode.

When it comes to transaction fees for Lighter's US stock trading, it still adheres to Lighter's biggest selling point and feature: 0 fees, with a 0% fee for retail market and limit orders. For high-frequency trading and corporate users, the fees are Maker 0.002% and Taker 0.02%. In addition, Lighter also calculates the funding rate, with a cap of ±0.5% per hour, based on premium TWAP.

Ostium

Ostium is an open-source decentralized perpetual futures trading platform built on Arbitrum, focusing on Real World Asset (RWA) trading, including US stocks, indices, commodities, forex, and more. Its core feature includes leverage of up to 200x.

Ostium Labs was founded by former Bridgewater Fund employees in 2022, with two founders who are Harvard alumni. On October 6, 2023, it completed a $3.5 million seed round of financing, led by General Catalyst and LocalGlobe, with participation from prominent institutions such as Balaji Srinivasan, Susquehanna International Group (SIG), GSR, and others. It is currently in the Pre-TGE stage, operating a points system to reward active users.

As shown in the diagram, Ostium has the most comprehensive variety of US stock listings, currently supporting 13 types of US stock assets. The leverage multiples are also quite aggressive, varying based on the liquidity and trading volume of different assets. Major tech stocks such as Apple, Amazon, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia, and Tesla support leverage of up to 100x. Crypto-related stocks such as Coinbase, Robinhood, MicroStrategy, SBET, Circle, etc., support leverage of 30-50x.

Unlike the CLOB mode of the previous two, Ostium adopts the Arbitrum AMM Pool-to-Pool trading mode.

In terms of fee structure, the opening fee is a fixed 0.05%, with no closing fee; the oracle fee is charged at $0.10 each time, which may be refunded after closing based on the different trading forms, as detailed in the Fee Rules; there is also a rollover fee similar to the funding rate, calculated based on block compound interest and holding costs, with asymmetric long and short rates.

How Does Wall Street Sleep Trade US Stocks?

After comparing the three projects in terms of underlying assets, leverage, and fees, there is another crucial factor that determines the "trading experience difference": US stocks do not trade 24 hours a day, while on-chain perpetual contracts do.

So when the external price is stagnant, how oracles continue to operate, and how to handle trading during market closures, each platform's solution is completely different.

trade.xyz

For trade.xyz, its approach can be summarized as "asset-specific, time-specific".

Index products (such as XYZ100 tracking the Nasdaq) do not directly rely on US stock spot prices but use CME's NQ futures—these futures trade 23 hours a day, making the price source more continuous. trade.xyz uses a cost-of-carry model to back out the futures price into a "corresponding spot index price," allowing the index contract to have price updates almost around the clock.

However, for individual stocks, the situation is not as simple. Stocks do not have the same liquidity as futures throughout the day, so trade.xyz mainly relies on Pyth's price feed, covering pre-market, after-hours, overnight, and other extended periods.

Only when there is no external data input at all, such as the one-hour daily futures market close or the 48-hour weekend stock market closure, does the system switch to trade.xyz's internal pricing mechanism: based on the on-chain order book, it uses an eight-hour time constant exponential moving average (EMA) to smooth the price and adjusts the impact spread based on the order book depth, allowing the price to reflect on-chain supply and demand even without external data. Once external data is restored, the oracle immediately switches back to external prices.

This design allows the oracle to self-adjust based on the on-chain order book when lacking external data, maintaining responsiveness to market supply and demand.

Ostium

Ostium has built its own pull-based RWA oracle system, which handles different asset trading periods, futures expiration, opening gaps, and other scenarios in detail. The data sources, exchange trading hour information, and node aggregation logic are all developed by the team itself and then operated by node networks like Stork.

The overall cost will be relatively high, so trading on Ostium will involve an oracle fee of $0.1 per transaction. If a transaction fails due to reasons such as excessive slippage, the fee will still be charged. However, the fee can be refunded after a successful transaction completion and full settlement. For specific details, refer to the Fee Breakdown.

For regular users, this means that prices will not experience drastic fluctuations during off-market hours. However, you can still place advance orders—both limit and stop-loss orders can be placed. They will be executed once the market reopens and price conditions are met, but market orders cannot be submitted during off-market hours. This mechanism is somewhat similar to "strict adherence to traditional market rhythms" and even incorporates special holiday shutdown times to make price feed behavior more closely resemble the real market.

Furthermore, although Ostium's leverage multiplier is quite aggressive, allowing up to a maximum of 100x leverage, this is only for intraday trading. Once beyond the intraday window or into overnight trading, leverage requirements will be significantly tightened.

Example of Intraday Trading Position

Specifically, the leverage multiplier can be activated or adjusted at any time during normal market hours (Eastern Time from 9:30 am to 4:00 pm). Once beyond the intraday window (Eastern Time from 9:31 am to 3:45 pm) or into overnight trading, leverage requirements will be tightened. The extent to which leverage is tightened varies among different asset categories. All intraday trades exceeding the leverage limit will be forcibly liquidated 15 minutes before market close, which is at 3:45 pm Eastern Time to reduce overnight risks.

Lighter

Lighter's strategy is more straightforward.

During off-market hours, Lighter chooses to freeze the market in a relatively safe state: entering reduce-only mode, where only position reductions are allowed, and no additional positions or leverage adjustments are permitted to further increase risk.

During trading hours, its RWA assets are no different from regular crypto assets, with prices updating normally and orders matching seamlessly. However, once in off-market hours, the index price will no longer update, and the mark price can fluctuate up to a maximum of 0.5% around the current point to prevent extreme deviations.

Funding Fee is still being collected as usual, but new active trading is disabled.

How to Handle the Dividend in Perpetual Swaps?

When it comes to US stock perpetual swaps, there is an unavoidable issue: stocks pay dividends, what happens to the contract?

Cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin never pay dividends; their price is their price. However, companies like Apple and Microsoft distribute money to their shareholders every quarter. In the traditional stock market, on the ex-dividend date, the stock price automatically drops—For example, if a stock is priced at $100 and pays a $2 dividend, post-ex-dividend, it becomes $98.

This poses a challenge in perpetual swaps: if no action is taken, wouldn't short positions simply pocket the $2 price difference? You could just open a short position before the dividend, wait for the price drop, and make money, isn't this a risk-free arbitrage?

So, let's see how these three platforms tackle this issue differently.

trade.xyz

Trade.xyz's solution incorporates the dividend into the funding rate. Assuming the oracle price is $100, and at a future moment T, it drops to $98 due to a $2 dividend. In every hour leading up to T, the mark price must exhibit a smooth discount curve.

At time T-1, to prevent arbitrage, the funding fee paid by shorts must precisely match the gains they would get due to the price drop from the mark price to $98. According to the funding rate formula: Funding Rate = ( Mark Price - Oracle Price ) / Oracle Price + Truncation function (...)

Since the mark price is lower than the oracle price, the funding rate becomes negative. A negative funding rate implies that shorts pay longs. Further back to T-2, T-3, the mark price gradually slides from 99.95, 99.90... all the way down to 98.975. Every hour, shorts pay a funding fee to longs.

Image Source: https://oldcoinbad.com/p/non-arbitrage-conditions-for-perpetual

The end result is: Shorts seemingly earn the $2 price difference (100→98), but it's all paid out through the funding rate; longs theoretically lose $2 (price drops from 100 to 98), but they recover it through the funding fee, effectively receiving the dividend.

Ostium

On the other hand, Ostium believes that perpetual contracts track price changes, not the stock itself. Since you don't actually own Apple's stock, why should you enjoy stock dividend payments? A contract is just a contract; price movement is the only thing that matters.

Therefore, on Ostium: On ex-dividend day, if the price should drop, it will drop, following the oracle's price; longs will not be compensated through funding rates, nor will shorts be charged additional fees.

Doesn't this put longs at a disadvantage? Here, Ostium uses another mechanism to balance this: Rollover Fee.

What is a Rollover Fee? Simply put, it is the cost of holding a position over time, similar to the financing cost or earnings of holding real stocks. Its features are: Long-short asymmetry: The rates for longs and shorts may differ; Compounded per block: Calculated every block (roughly every few seconds), but you won't notice it; Settlement on closure: Charges are not deducted in real-time but settled when you close your position.

The Rollover Fee will be displayed on the Net PnL (L/S) label. Hover over it, and a tooltip will appear explaining the long and short rollover costs.

In other words, if you go long on a stock, the rollover fee might be positive; if you go short, the rollover fee might be negative.

This Rollover Fee mechanism indirectly reflects holding costs, including the impact of dividends. Although Ostium does not directly handle dividends, through the Rollover Fee and oracle adjustments, the final PnL for both longs and shorts is still relatively fair.

Lighter

Lighter's documentation does not explicitly state the special handling of dividends, but from a mechanistic perspective, it should rely on oracle price adjustments.

In other words: If the spot price drops on ex-dividend day, the oracle will also follow suit; if the contract's mark price lags, it will result in a negative basis; the negative basis leads to a negative funding rate, with shorts paying longs; ultimately achieving equilibrium.

This approach is somewhat similar to Trade.xyz, except that Lighter does not specifically emphasize dividend handling separately but incorporates it into the overall price tracking mechanism.

Additionally, it is worth noting that Lighter has a funding rate cap: ±0.5% per hour. This is to prevent funding rates from skyrocketing in extreme market conditions and to protect traders from being overwhelmed by excessive fees.

Summary

The PMF of US Stock Perpetual Futures has been preliminarily validated. Data shows that the cumulative trading volume of trade.xyz has exceeded $2 billion, with a record-breaking $200 million in a single day during NVDA's earnings release, and a trading volume of approximately $7.34 billion in the past 24 hours.

Lighter's overall trading volume and Open Interest (OI) data are impressive, with a trading volume of $71.6 billion in the past 24 hours and an OI of $16.34 billion. As Lighter has just launched US stock trading in the past few days, the information regarding US stock trading is limited, and there is not yet a very reliable specific data source to track.

Turning to Ostium. The total trading volume is above $27.2 billion, with a trading volume of $1.38 billion in the past 24 hours.

According to Ostium's US Stock Contract Trading data statistics on Dune, the daily US stock contract trading volume has surpassed $50 million. The OI curve of US stock contract trading reached a historical peak of around $64 million in October this year and has now dropped to around $45 million. Looking at the OI, it can also be seen that Ostium's US stock contract OI accounts for 20% of the total OI.

However, amidst the excitement, it is also necessary to remind all US stock perpetual futures traders: the efficiency of the financial market is brutal, and behind the temptation of 100x leverage lies 100x risk. For those interested in US stock perpetual futures, it is still best to start with small positions and low leverage.

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