Coinbase’s David Duong points out that crypto derivatives trading spiked in 2025 as demand for onchain perpetual futures in decentralized exchanges exploded. Perpetual futures monthly trades have exceeded $1 trillion, with Hyperliquid on top.
On X, Duong explained that a lethargic altcoin market had motivated traders to move towards leveraging higher yields on perpetual futures. This year, altcoins have largely moved sideways, though the leverage numbers indicate that speculative exposure peaked at approximately 10% and had fallen to around 4% by October’s liquidations.
According to Duong, perpetual futures now provide unprecedented amounts of leverage, allowing traders to multiply their exposure with a small amount of capital — decentralized venues command the largest volumes.
This milestone marks both the increased interest of traders in highly leveraged positions and the rapid evolution of decentralized trading infrastructure. Perpetual futures enable traders to speculate on crypto price movements with leverage — typically dozens of times their initial amount — with no expiration dates, catering to both veteran speculators and automated trading strategies.
Unlike classic centralized exchanges (CEXs), on-chain or decentralized exchanges (DEXs) have helped accelerate this growth. Enhanced protocols, such as Hyperliquid, Lighter, Aster, and edgeX, collectively contribute to large liquidity pools by providing 24/7 automated, non-custodial trading with very low fees on Layer 2 networks.
Doung says perpetual futures are integrating with DeFi markets
The Coinbase researcher noted that equity perpetual futures may attract traders seeking 24/7, leveraged exposure to U.S. equities that extends beyond traditional exchanges.
“We think perpetual futures are evolving beyond isolated, high-leverage trading vehicles and are becoming core, composable primitives within DeFi markets,” he added.
He explained further that deep integration between perpetual futures and DeFi will open potent new opportunities for the more efficient use of capital. In practice, this means using perp futures to provide dynamic hedges for liquidity pools, power interest rate instruments, or act as collateral in lending protocols.
He further argued that the growing global appetite for U.S. equities, combined with tokenization, could pave the way for equity perpetual futures to disrupt traditional retail trading.
Hyperliquid, Aster, and Lighter dominate onchain perpetual futures trading
Hyperliquid’s onchain perp futures platform first went live in late 2023. Adoption later picked up in 2024 following the integration of spot trading. So far, the platform reached its highest monthly volume in July, at around $319 billion, according to DeFiLlama, as the crypto perpetual futures space became increasingly competitive.
However, shortly after its token generation event in September, Aster briefly claimed the top spot in DEX perpetual futures, with $36 billion traded in a single day, accounting for more than half of the market. In November, the platform Lighter also raised $68 million after launching its public mainnet.
Over the past 30 days, according to DeFiLlama data, onchain perpetual futures have traded approximately $972 billion, with Lighter, Aster, and Hyperliquid taking the top three spots.
Hyperliquid Labs expects its token allocation in January
Meanwhile, Hyperliquid Labs, the agency that launched Hyperliquid exchange, is set to receive its next token allocation. As announced on Sunday via a Discord post, the platform announced that it will receive its second significant token allocation early next month, comprising 1.2 million HYPE tokens ($31.2 million) that will be awarded to team members on January 6.
“Moving forward, distributions, if any, will take place on the 6th of the month,” Hyperliquid co-founder Iliensinc said on Discord.
On November 29, the team received its first allocation of HYPE tokens, which totaled approximately 1.75 million. Currently, approximately 238.4 million HYPE tokens are in circulation, trading at around $26, with a market capitalization of $6.2 billion and a fully diluted value of $ 25.1 billion.
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Source: https://www.cryptopolitan.com/onchain-perpetual-futures-surge-past-1t/
