Onchain Perpetuals Top $1T Monthly Volume as Crypto Traders Chase Leverage
Crypto derivatives buying and selling accelerated sharply in 2025 as merchants more and more turned to onchain perpetual futures, pushing month-to-month volumes previous the $1 trillion mark, in line with evaluation from Coinbase researcher David Duong.
Key Takeaways:
- Onchain perpetual futures topped $1T month-to-month quantity as merchants chased leverage in 2025.
- Decentralized platforms led the shift, gaining share from centralized derivatives venues.
- Equity perpetuals may very well be the following development frontier for onchain derivatives.
By late 2025, decentralized exchanges had been processing greater than $1 trillion in month-to-month perpetual futures quantity, a degree that rivals exercise on some centralized venues.
In a post published Monday on X, Duong mentioned the shift was partly pushed by the absence of a conventional altcoin season.
Crypto Traders Turn to Perpetual Futures as Leverage Replaces Spot Gains
With fewer alternatives for outsized beneficial properties in spot markets, merchants as a substitute sought leverage by perpetual futures to spice up returns.
Perpetual futures, generally recognized as perps, enable merchants to achieve leveraged publicity to cost actions with out an expiration date.
Duong famous that the “unprecedented diploma of leverage” out there in these devices has made them particularly enticing, enabling merchants to manage massive positions with comparatively small quantities of capital.
The development has been led primarily by decentralized buying and selling platforms relatively than centralized exchanges.
Onchain venues such as Aster and Hyperliquid accounted for a big share of the exercise, underscoring a broader shift towards self-custodial derivatives buying and selling.
— David Duong
(@DavidDuong) December 29, 2025
According to Duong, this pattern displays rising confidence in onchain infrastructure and enhancements in execution, liquidity and person expertise.
Looking forward, Duong steered that fairness perpetual futures may emerge as the following main development space.
Tokenized inventory derivatives may mix crypto’s always-on buying and selling setting and leverage with demand for publicity to main US equities exterior conventional market hours.
Such merchandise would prolong the attain of perpetual futures past crypto-native property and deepen their integration into decentralized finance.
“We assume perpetual futures are evolving past remoted, high-leverage buying and selling autos and have gotten core, composable primitives inside DeFi markets,” Duong mentioned.
Competition Heats Up Among Onchain Perpetual Futures Platforms
Competition amongst onchain perpetual futures platforms has intensified alongside the quantity development.
Hyperliquid, which launched its perp platform in late 2023, gained broader traction in 2025 after including spot buying and selling.
Data from DeFiLlama exhibits the trade processed roughly $319 billion in trades in July, marking a file month.
Other gamers have additionally made fast beneficial properties. Following its token launch in September, Aster briefly topped decentralized perp rankings with practically $36 billion in 24-hour buying and selling quantity, accounting for greater than half of whole perp DEX exercise on the time.
In November, Lighter raised $68 million after launching its public mainnet, including recent capital to an more and more crowded subject.
Over the previous 30 days alone, onchain perpetual futures generated about $972 billion in buying and selling quantity, with Lighter, Aster and Hyperliquid rising as the main venues.
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