A warning to those who are into Fomo Perp Dex: some "discordant" remarks

Author: X@tmel0211

I've seen too many people Fomo Perp Dex. After sobering up, I'd like to share some thoughts that are a bit "incongruous" with the prosperous market. The following are just my personal understanding:

1) The rise of this wave of Perp Dex was driven by the successful model of @HyperliquidX. In the first half of 2025, the total trading volume exceeded one trillion, and Hyperliquid accounted for 70%. Driven by the dual flywheels of transaction fees and buybacks, it has become a phenomenal CEX killer-level product. So everyone wants to emulate Hyperliquid: CEXs do so out of panic, other Perp Dex protocols imitate out of envy, and influencers (KOLs) follow suit out of fear of missing out on the next $HYPE. 2) New projects like @Aster_DEX and @SunPerp_DEX are CEXs learning from Hyperliquid's new product thinking and rebuilding the "exchange" operational flywheel. In other words, they're using Hyperliquid's product thinking for CEXs and the exchange's operational model for DEXs.

The operational logic is very simple. In the early stage, it attracts LPs and large investors to inject capital. In the middle stage, it uses points and airdrops to create Fomo. In the later stage, it uses low fees and business rebate logic to lock in traffic. Throughout the whole process, technical narrative is more of a packaging role, and the entire "operational flywheel" is the real skill;

3) HyperLiquid first ran the business logic and mastered liquidity and pricing power, so stories such as the CLOB mechanism and high-performance L1 have a foothold. Now, @Lighter_xyz, Aster, Sunperp and other newcomers who followed the trend are similar. They first use "black box technology" to build momentum, brush beautiful data to attract attention, and then rely on points/airdrops to lock in traffic. For example, Lighter's ZK-SNARK proofs verifying every transaction are currently closed-source and black-box, making it impossible to tell if they're real or not. Aster's ZK optimization, multi-chain, and MEV-proof hidden order book are still in the roadmap stage, driven solely by @cz_binance's call-and-response strategy. I won't comment on Sunperp, as everyone understands. 4) My previous article criticized the failures of established Perp DEXs, but I was actually trying to provide them with guidance and direction. Most of them are still stuck in the technical dilemma of balancing transparency, compliance, and business, and perhaps simply need a more aggressive exchange approach to revitalize their operations. Consider @dYdX, which has made such a long journey from layer 1 applications to layer 2 and then to an independent chain, only to be hampered by compliance issues related to its governance token's non-dividend distribution. Meanwhile, @GMX_IO's expansion has been hindered by the high slippage of AMMs. It can be argued that technically savvy, rational builders are being throttled, while newcomers focused on hyping concepts and operational data have become a new hope. In other words, if this wave of new Perp Dex forces completely dominates, it would be a complete failure for the DeFi version of Perp Dex. 5) Hyerliquid's success lies in its use of a transaction-based mining + buyback model, which has overturned the previous DeFi model, which relied on governance token mining. Honestly, it's good that CEXs are willing to invest real money to create new, high-profile products and bring more new growth opportunities to the market. At least retail investors can benefit from the trend. The problem is that only Hyperliquid has successfully implemented the positive growth flywheel of "trading volume-fees-buyback-token appreciation." How many other new anti-dumping projects can be fully validated by the market? If they can't differentiate themselves from the previous wave of popular business strategies of creating CEXs and then Rug, can retail investors in the current market still withstand the scythe of harvesting?