Author: Changan I Biteye Content Team

This week, Hyperliquid has once again become the focus of the market.

The price of HYPE surged over 40% at one point this week, reaching an all-time high. Meanwhile, related projects like Aster, Lighter, and edgeX have also seen varying degrees of increase, bringing the entire sector back into the market's view.

Over the past year, the Perp DEX sector has undergone significant changes. They are no longer just on-chain alternatives to CEX contracts, nor do they rely solely on trading mining, points, and fees for competition. Instead, they are continuously expanding into areas like stablecoins, RWA, prediction markets, proprietary chains, income buybacks, and yield-bearing margins.

In this article, we will chronologically outline the changes of several representative Perp DEXs over the past year, examining their achievements in recent months and what they are each doing.

1️⃣ Hyperliquid: From Trading Platform to On-Chain Financial Infrastructure

Over the past year, Hyperliquid's changes have not only involved an expansion in trading volume but also a clear broadening of product boundaries. It has evolved from a trading platform centered on perpetual contracts to simultaneously extending into stablecoins, prediction markets, and open contract deployment platforms.

September 2025: USDH Competes for Hyperliquid Settlement Assets

In September 2025, Hyperliquid advanced its native stablecoin USDH. Unlike ordinary projects that issue stablecoins, USDH is unique in that it competes for the dollar liquidity entry within Hyperliquid.

October 2025: HIP-3 Transitions from Official Asset Listing to Builder-Driven Market

In October 2025, Hyperliquid launched HIP-3. Prior to this, Hyperliquid's perpetual contract market was primarily determined by official decisions on which assets to list. After HIP-3, external builders can also deploy their own Perp markets on Hyperliquid.

Currently, the HIP-3 market has begun to cover asset classes such as traditional finance, commodities, and stocks.

• WTI crude oil has a 24-hour trading volume of approximately $877 million, with open interest of about $209 million;

• Brent crude oil has a 24-hour trading volume of approximately $368 million, with open interest of about $323 million.

If you are not familiar with these numbers, you can understand it as: the 24-hour trading volume of the top HIP-3 market is approaching the mid-level mainstream asset level of the top 10 to 20 on Binance's trading leaderboard.

May 2026: HIP-4 Launches, Hyperliquid Begins Developing Native Prediction Markets

In February 2026, Hyperliquid proposed HIP-4, introducing outcome contracts; subsequently, it advanced on the testnet, with the first live outcome markets appearing in early May.

HIP-4 differs from traditional perpetual contracts in that users trade on which price range the underlying asset will ultimately fall into.

Currently, HIP-4 has launched two BTC price prediction markets, including "Will BTC be above a certain price at a certain point in time?" and "What price range will BTC fall into?"

The biggest difference from Polymarket is that HIP-4 is not a standalone product but is directly embedded within Hyperliquid's account system and matching engine, allowing users to participate in prediction markets without switching funds, using the same trading account.

From current data, HIP-4 is still in its early stages. The top market has a 24-hour trading volume of about $32,900, with open interest of about $34,900.

For the BTC daily price prediction market, Polymarket has a daily trading volume of about $433,700, while Hyperliquid's current top HIP-4 market is about $32,900, roughly 1/13 of the former, still in a very early stage.

May 2026: Coinbase and Circle Enter the Scene, USDC Becomes a Protocol-Aligned Stablecoin Again

Also in May 2026, Hyperliquid's stablecoin strategy saw new changes.

Coinbase announced plans to act as a capital deployer, activating AQAv2 on USDC; Circle will serve as the technical deployer, responsible for CCTP and native cross-chain infrastructure. Both Coinbase and Circle have committed to staking HYPE to activate AQAv2. As part of a transitional arrangement, Native Markets has agreed to grant Coinbase the right to purchase USDH brand assets.

This means that the focus of protocol-aligned stablecoins within the Hyperliquid ecosystem is transitioning from USDH to USDC.

With Coinbase as the capital deployer, most of the reserve income will be shared with the protocol, making USDC a stablecoin that aligns better with the protocol's revenue distribution logic on Hyperliquid.

In future network upgrades, the HIP-4 standardized outcome markets will also use USDC as the quoted asset.

2️⃣ Aster: From Volume Explosion to Attempting to Build Its Own Trading Ecosystem

Compared to Hyperliquid's year-long expansion of protocol boundaries, Aster's growth path is more straightforward: first, boost trading volume, then gradually expand products and infrastructure.

December 2025: Shield Mode Launches

Aster released its 2026 H1 Roadmap while gradually launching Shield Mode, TWAP strategy orders, and expanding RWA perpetual markets for stocks, forex, and commodities.

March 2026: Aster Chain Mainnet Phase One Launches, Aster Moves from Perp DEX to Its Own L1

Focusing on privacy trading, using ZK proofs and privacy addresses to hide part of the trading information, while emphasizing low latency, high throughput, and zero gas experience.

Aster does not want to be just a Perp DEX deployed on multiple chains; it aims to integrate matching, privacy, RWA assets, trading incentives, and subsequent governance into its own on-chain system.

May 2026: Global Hot Assets Continue to Launch and Permissionless Listing Vote

Aster continues to expand tradable assets. Aster has started to incorporate more stocks, Pre-IPO, commodities, and forex markets into its trading system, such as the SpaceX Pre-IPO perpetual contract and other new assets.

At the same time, Aster launched the Permissionless Listing Vote. This mechanism effectively opens up part of the asset listing rights to the community: eligible validators or ASTER stakers can propose new trading pairs, which the community will then vote on for approval.

This is somewhat similar to Hyperliquid's HIP-3, transforming "the platform decides which assets to list" into "external participants jointly promote new markets."

From current data, some traditional finance-related markets have begun to show trading activity. For example,

• Crude oil (CLU) has a 24-hour trading volume of about $8.37 million,

• Silver (XAG) about $7.48 million, Gold (XAU) about $3.30 million;

• In the Pre-IPO market, the SpaceX contract has a 24-hour trading volume of about $1.50 million.

3️⃣ StandX: Turning Perp Margin into Yield-Bearing Assets

Most Perp DEXs compete only on matching, leverage, and trading fees. StandX takes a more interesting approach: it attempts to turn idle or sunk funds during trading into yield-bearing assets.

January 2026: StandX Launches Maker Points.

It rewards not the trades themselves but the liquidity of limit orders. Users can earn Maker Points even if they only submit limit orders that have not yet been executed; once the order is filled, they further earn Trading Points.

In other words, StandX first turns the passive liquidity in the order book into incentivized assets.

March-April 2026: StandX Continuously Launches SIP-1 to SIP-4

The product direction begins to become clearer: building a more capital-efficient Perp trading layer around DUSD, position yields, and large trade executions.

• SIP-1 is Block Trade, which extracts large derivative trades from the ordinary order book, supporting on-chain matching and StandX settlement, reducing the impact of large orders on the order book.

• SIP-2 is Position Yield, allowing eligible perpetual positions to participate in yield distribution.

• SIP-3 further strengthens the native yield of DUSD by directing part of the StandX Perps trading fees to the DUSD yield pool.

• The latest SIP-4 expands Block Trade to TP/SL scenarios. It does not simply add a take-profit and stop-loss button but makes TP/SL a type of position-linked execution right: users can arrange more flexible trading based on future exit prices, protection prices, and reservation fees.

Looking at it together, StandX's product narrative is already quite complete: DUSD solves margin yield, Maker Points incentivize limit order liquidity, Position Yield improves capital efficiency of positions, and Block Trade and TP/SL serve larger and more professional trading needs.

This makes StandX not just a simple Perp DEX but more like a trading system built around "yield-bearing margins." Its differentiation lies not in providing users with higher leverage but in minimizing idle funds before, during, and after trading.

4️⃣ Lighter: Since 2026, Shifting from Airdrop Expectations to Income Buybacks, RWA, and ZK Security Narrative

January 2026: Launch of LIT Buyback, Protocol Revenue Begins to Bind with Tokens

In January 2026, Lighter launched the LIT buyback plan. Unlike many projects that keep revenue in the treasury, Lighter claims it will use the fees generated by the DEX and future products to buy back LIT on-chain.

Early reports indicated that when the buyback plan was initiated, the protocol treasury had about $1.35 million USDC available for market buybacks; subsequent buybacks were also executed multiple times.

February 2026: Upgrade LLP, Begin Designing Liquidity Strategies for RWA

In February 2026, Lighter adjusted its Liquidity Provider infrastructure to introduce independent strategies for different market types, including crypto perpetuals, forex, and RWA markets. This is to manage the risks, liquidation, and ADL of different assets separately, rather than having all markets share a single liquidity pool.

This step lays the groundwork for future RWA expansion. Because the volatility, trading hours, and liquidity structure of markets like commodities, stocks, and forex differ from crypto assets, it would be challenging to scale if all risks were handled by a single pool.

April 2026: Launch of Liquidity Partner Program, Focus on RWA Depth

In April 2026, Lighter launched the Liquidity Partner Program, rewarding participants who provide deep liquidity for RWA markets. This program is open to everyone, with rewards distributed through random snapshots of the order book, and the official will announce the weekly reward amount in advance.

The program rewards about $250,000 weekly, focusing on crude oil, precious metals, and stocks like NVDA and Tesla.

5️⃣ edgeX: Since 2026, Transitioning from Pre-TGE Incentives to EDGE Chain and TradFi Perps

February 2026: Circle Ventures Invests, USDC Native Integration Becomes a Focus

In February 2026, Circle Ventures invested in edgeX.

After Circle Ventures entered, edgeX can subsequently focus on margin, settlement, cross-chain, and institutional liquidity access around USDC, making its TradFi Perps route smoother.

March 2026: EDGE TGE, Token Economics Officially Launched

In March 2026, edgeX first announced the EDGE airdrop terms and opened pre-market trading. The official then announced that the EDGE TGE would be held on March 31.

April-May 2026: TradFi Perps Expansion, edgeX Begins Adding Stock and Commodity Markets

After the TGE, edgeX continued to expand TradFi Perps. The platform added a large number of stock, commodity, and bulk markets, including assets like NVDA, TSLA, AAPL, gold, silver, and crude oil.

This step is similar to Hyperliquid's HIP-3 and Aster's RWA expansion, both extending Perp DEX from crypto asset trading to traditional financial asset trading.

From current trading data, some TradFi markets have begun to show liquidity. For example:

• Gold (XAUUSDC) has a 24-hour trading volume of about $9.49 million

• Crude oil (BZUSDC) about $5.89 million

May 2026: Contract V2 Beta Launches, edgeX Transitions from a Single Perp DEX to EDGE Stack

In May 2026, edgeX opened Contract V2 Beta.

Simply put: V1 is edgeX's early trading system, primarily used to get contract trading up and running. V2 is the next-generation system aimed at enabling the platform to support more markets, faster matching, and more complex trading products.

After this upgrade, it supports contracts, spot trading, prediction markets, as well as trading of traditional financial assets like stocks, ETFs, gold, and crude oil.

Currently, V2 is still in the Beta stage, but many new markets can already be seen on the platform, such as perpetual contracts for stocks and commodities.

Final Thoughts

Looking back over the past year, the changes in Perp DEX are quite clear: they are no longer satisfied with merely being on-chain contract exchanges.

They have chosen different paths, but the underlying judgment is similar: Perp DEX cannot remain confined to the crypto contract market.

Since the beginning of this year, the U.S. stock market has performed strongly, with technology stocks, AI-related assets, and traditional financial markets continuously attracting capital attention. For on-chain trading platforms, user demand is no longer limited to trading BTC, ETH, and altcoins, but rather a desire to trade crypto assets, U.S. stocks, indices, gold, crude oil, and even Pre-IPO assets all within the same account.

Therefore, what Perp DEX is competing for is not just the crypto contract market, but a larger global asset trading demand. This is also why several leading Perp DEXs have been focusing on TradFi assets over the past year.

The surge in HYPE has merely pushed Perp DEX back into the market's view. The deeper change is that the competition among Perp DEXs has shifted from being alternatives to CEXs to "who can accommodate more global asset trading demand."