{"id":971,"date":"2025-12-29T23:22:25","date_gmt":"2025-12-29T23:22:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sosahustle.com\/blog\/2025\/12\/29\/onchain-perps-drove-crypto-derivatives-growth-in-2025\/"},"modified":"2025-12-29T23:22:26","modified_gmt":"2025-12-29T23:22:26","slug":"onchain-perps-drove-crypto-derivatives-growth-in-2025","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sosahustle.com\/blog\/2025\/12\/29\/onchain-perps-drove-crypto-derivatives-growth-in-2025\/","title":{"rendered":"Onchain Perps Drove Crypto Derivatives Growth in 2025"},"content":{"rendered":"

Introduction to Onchain Perpetual Futures<\/h2>\n

Crypto derivatives activity has seen a significant surge in 2025, with traders increasingly turning to onchain perpetual futures, according to Coinbase researcher David Duong. By the end of the year, decentralized exchanges were processing over $1 trillion in monthly perpetual futures volume, highlighting the growing importance of onchain derivatives markets. This trend is largely driven by the absence of a traditional altcoin season, leading traders to seek higher returns through leverage rather than spot markets.<\/p>\n

Data from onchain venues such as Aster and Hyperliquid shows that the surge in activity has been driven mainly by decentralized trading platforms, with these platforms accounting for much of the volume. Source: David Duong. Perpetual futures, or perps, are crypto derivatives that allow traders to gain leveraged exposure to price movements without an expiration date.<\/p>\n

Emerging Trends and Growth Areas<\/h2>\n

According to Duong, equity perpetual futures could emerge as a next area of growth, as tokenized stock derivatives may combine crypto\u2019s 24\/7 access and leverage with demand for exposure to major US equities outside traditional market hours. He notes that perpetual futures are evolving beyond isolated, high-leverage trading vehicles and are becoming core, composable primitives within DeFi markets.<\/p>\n

Hyperliquid launched its onchain perpetual futures platform in late 2023 and gained broader traction in 2024 after it added spot trading. In July, the platform posted a record volume, with data from DeFiLlama showing the exchange processed about $319 billion in trades over the month. \"\" Hyperliquid trading volume. Source: DefiLlama.<\/p>\n

Competition in the Crypto Perpetual Futures Market<\/h2>\n

Competition in the crypto perpetual futures market has intensified over the past year. In September, shortly after its token generation event and launch, Aster briefly topped decentralized perpetual futures rankings with nearly $36 billion in 24-hour trading volume, accounting for more than half of total perp DEX activity. In November, Lighter, an onchain perpetual futures exchange founded by tech entrepreneur Vladimir Novakovski in 2022, raised $68 million in a funding round following the launch of its public mainnet.<\/p>\n

Over the past 30 days, data from DeFiLlama shows onchain perpetual futures generated about $972 billion in trading volume. During the same period, Lighter led trading with about $203 billion in volume, followed by Aster at roughly $171.8 billion and Hyperliquid with about $160.6 billion. \"\" Onchain perpetual exchange volumes. Source: DefiLlama.<\/p>\n

Smart Tip for Readers<\/h2>\n

When exploring onchain perpetual futures, it’s essential to understand the risks associated with leverage and to thoroughly research the platforms and instruments before engaging in any trading activities. For more information on this topic, you can visit Here<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Introduction to Onchain Perpetual Futures Crypto derivatives activity has seen a significant surge in 2025, with traders increasingly turning to onchain perpetual futures, according to Coinbase researcher David Duong. By the end of the year, decentralized exchanges were processing over $1 trillion in monthly perpetual futures volume, highlighting the growing importance of onchain derivatives markets. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":972,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/images.cointelegraph.com\/cdn-cgi\/image\/f=auto,onerror=redirect,w=1200\/https:\/\/s3.cointelegraph.com\/uploads\/2025-12\/019b2c1b-b76b-73ec-9138-c17c853aaf52.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-971","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-crypto"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sosahustle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/971","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sosahustle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sosahustle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sosahustle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sosahustle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=971"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sosahustle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/971\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":973,"href":"https:\/\/sosahustle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/971\/revisions\/973"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sosahustle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/972"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sosahustle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=971"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sosahustle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=971"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sosahustle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=971"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}