The recent market volatility raised the TVL of on-chain perpetual DEX. Demand for risky trading boosted the value of Hyperliquid, along with other perpetual DEX.
Hyperliquid is leading the way in the renewed demand for perpetual DEX. The exchange has recovered its TVL in the past month, increasing its vaults to over $300M. Hyperliquid achieved 50% TVL growth in the past month after a series of high-value liquidations. The recovery follows a generally increased usage of perpetual DEX as the crypto market bounced from the recent lows.
In the past 30 days as a whole, perpetual DEX increased their volumes by over 177%, reaching over $10B in daily trades. Perpetual DEX were resilient to the market drawdowns in March and April and increased their volumes as traders tried to boost gains through leveraged trading in a volatile market.
Perpetual DEX are growing their volumes, getting a boost from crypto market trends for high-leverage long or short positions. | Source: DeFi Llama
In total, perpetual DEX locks up $4.95B in various vaults. Perpetual DEX carries hundreds of tokens and reacts to market trends by quickly opening new pairs. Some DEX, like Hyperliquid, also offer passive gains for providing liquidity, though with the inherent risk of having the liquidity pool drained in risky trades.
The performance of Hyperliquid currently surpasses all other smaller perpetual DEX in terms of daily volumes. Hyperliquid is also recovering from recent liquidations, where risk-taking whales developed large positions and allowed themselves to be liquidated. The recent performance of Hyperliquid and perpetual DEX showed the DeFi sector remained resilient and even benefitted from volatility.
Perpetual futures have always gained volumes on Binance, OKX, and other large-scale exchanges. However, decentralized, no-KYC exchanges are tapping a wider market. The past months saw almost daily launches of small-scale perpetual DEX protocols, which are now trying to grow their liquidity.
Hyperliquid leads perpetual DEX token growth
The appearance of multiple perpetual DEX led to the creation of a new class of tokens. HYPE is the leader, with a market cap of $6.2B. After a successful month, HYPE traded at $18.66, its highest price for the past 30 days.
Smaller tokens comprise the rest of the market cap, up to $7.6B, with most assets growing actively. Perpetual DEX appears on almost all major chains, tapping Solana and BNB Smart Chain.
The sector is highly competitive, with multiple markets aiming to repeat the success of Hyperliquid. Smaller markets are risky, as in the case of KiloEX, the recently hacked perpetual DEX market on BNB Chain and Mantle.
The main advantage of Hyperliquid and other perpetual DEX is the ability to tap the newest trends, especially for BTC and ETH. Hyperliquid still allows relatively high leverage, drawing whales to promising trades. Recently, a whale used the 20X leverage feature to long BTC. The perpetual DEX is also popular for shorting ETH due to the relatively predictable downward trend.
As a result, Hyperliquid has produced over $39M in fees for the past month, which is close to Uniswap. The DEX has produced over $304M in total fees since its launch.
