Written by: 0xShinChan, Crypto KOL
Compiled by: Felix, PANews
The post-FTX era has completely transformed the trading landscape, driving a large number of users towards decentralized perpetual contract exchanges (Perp DEX). The daily trading volume of these platforms now often exceeds $3 billion, demonstrating the enormous demand for decentralized derivatives.
However, the fragmented nature of early Perp DEXs was often hindered by UI/UX usability, liquidity depth, and price feed reliability, impeding their widespread adoption. Starting in 2024, the market landscape began to change, marked by innovative models like GMX PVP and dYdX order books. Now, lending, DEX, and yield trading protocol teams on Sui Network are expanding their product lines, including perpetual contract trading.
Sui's Advantages in Perp DEX
Sui actually offers several compelling features that make it a strong contender for building perpetual DEXs.
High Performance and Low Latency: Sui's parallel transaction processing enables high throughput and low latency, which is crucial for efficient order matching and smooth trading experiences on DEXs.
Object-Centered Data Model: Sui's unique data model supports efficient storage and parallel processing of account and asset data.
Seamless Onboarding with zkLogin: The zkLogin feature simplifies the user onboarding process, allowing account creation with familiar Web2 credentials, reducing entry barriers for new traders.
Sponsored Transactions: Sui's sponsored transaction feature can lower user costs and enhance the overall trading experience.
Here are Sui's early builders:
Bluefin
Astros, supported by NAVI Protocol
Aftermath Finance
Typus Finance GLP Trading Model
Kriya is also about to launch its Perp DEX.
Before delving into each, here is a comprehensive comparison table.
The following will compare and study each protocol, analyzing their trading characteristics, protocol mechanisms, and performance.
Bluefin
Bluefin, an established Perp DEX on Sui, combines a fast off-chain order book with a secure on-chain settlement engine. The protocol's liquidity is managed by professional market makers (MM):
Leveraging Sui's parallel transaction processing capabilities, Bluefin has extremely low order execution latency and fast on-chain finality (under 500 milliseconds). Additionally, it supports perpetual contract assets for almost all assets on Sui, with the broadest coverage, including $DEEP, $WAL, and $TRUMP.
Bluefin's platform 24-hour perpetual contract trading volume ranges between $40 million and $70 million, indicating high platform activity.
BTC-PERP trading pair typically accounts for the largest share of daily trading volume (about 60%), followed by SUI-PERP and ETH-PERP.
According to Defi Llama, it generates approximately $4 million in fees annually.
Excellent UI/UX. Users can use the trading view feature with a clear interface containing all necessary elements. Notably, Bluefin's zkLogin integration is supported by Sui. This simplifies the user onboarding process and eliminates wallet and seed phrase complexities.
Aftermath (Testnet)
Aftermath first launched its Perp DEX testnet in November 2024. It operates entirely on-chain, unlike many Perp DEXs that rely on off-chain order book matching. Since it is currently in the testnet phase, statistical data is limited.
Aftermath is more focused on improving the liquidity/TVL of its DEX and existing pools. Potential future incentives/official Perp DEX launch may occur later.
Astros (Beta)
Astros is a DEX aggregator + Perp DEX built by the NAVI Protocol team. Like Bluefin and Aftermath, NAVI Protocol also uses an order book mechanism in its Perp DEX. Currently in the testing phase, information about market maker (MM) collaborations and specific mechanisms is not yet comprehensive. Its 24-hour trading volume reaches $300 million, possibly driven by its ongoing trader incentive program.
Typus Perp
Typus Finance launched its GMX-style Perp DEX about two weeks ago. According to Defi Llama, its 24-hour trading volume is around $200,000, with TLP pool TVL exceeding $700,000.
Assets in the TLP pool include $SUI, $USDC, $DEEP, and $LBTC, with the current APR exceeding 100%.
Observations and Conclusions
Rise of Order Books: The current Perp DEX ecosystem on Sui clearly leans towards the order book model, evident in both protocol design choices and trading volume dominance. This suggests that the order book mechanism either has inherent applicability in Sui's architecture or has gained market acceptance from its user base.
Asset Scarcity and Meme Attraction: The range of assets supported by Sui network Perp DEXs is notably limited, representing potential opportunities. If a protocol can quickly embrace the high-volatility, high-profit meme coin trading domain (which has a developing cultural foundation on Sui), leveraging these assets' inherent speculative nature could drive platform trading volume.
Early Stage and the Necessity of Incentive Mechanisms: Compared to the mature and highly liquid Perp DEX ecosystems on EVM and Solana, Sui's cumulative trading volume and TVL are still in the early stages. Given the existing feature sets and available functionalities on these alternative chains, attracting traders to Perp DEXs on the Sui network may require more than just technical innovation. Highly attractive incentive mechanisms might be the key catalyst for attracting speculative capital and promoting significant growth in the Perp DEX ecosystem.
