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Points of Focus
- Perp DEX market share rose from 2.7% to 26% by mid-2025, while daily volume later topped $100B.
- Unique perp DEX wallets passed 5M in 2025, up 400% year over year.
- The next growth barrier is onboarding traders who still rely on centralized exchanges and custodial wallets.
The numbers look like a success story. Perp DEXs captured 26% of the global perpetual futures market by mid-2025, up from just 2.7% at the end of 2023. Daily trading volumes exceeded $100 billion by October 2025, up from a few billion dollars in early 2024. By any measure, decentralized perpetual trading has arrived.
But dig past the volume charts and a more complicated picture emerges. The perp DEX sector has built something technically impressive and generated real revenue. What it hasn’t done is bring in the next hundred million users. The gap between who is trading on perp DEXs today and who could be trading on them tomorrow is the most significant untapped opportunity in DeFi derivatives.
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Rhea
Researcher focused on decentralized derivatives markets and the structural barriers to DeFi adoption. Current work centers on how protocol design, onboarding friction, and user behavior shape the gap between crypto's current user base and its addressable market. Contributing to Bullbit, a perpetual DEX on Base building toward CEX-level accessibility for first-time self-custody users.
