Overview of Sui Network Perp DEX: What are the differences between the four major protocols?

Author: 0xShinChan, Crypto KOL; Compiler: Felix, PANews

The post-FTX era has completely changed the trading landscape, driving a large number of users to decentralized perpetual contract exchanges (Perp DEX). The daily trading volume of these platforms now easily exceeds US$30 billion, which shows that users have a huge demand for decentralized derivatives.

However, the fragmented nature of early Perp DEXs, often affected by UI/UX (user interface/user experience) availability, liquidity depth, and reliability of price feeds, hindered their widespread adoption. Starting in 2024, the market landscape began to change, marked by the emergence of innovative models such as GMX PVP and dYdX order books. Today, lending, DEX, and yield trading protocol teams on Sui Network are enriching 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 a perpetual DEX.

• High Performance and Low Latency: Sui's parallel transaction processing enables high throughput and low latency, which is essential for efficient order matching and smooth trading experience on DEX.

• Object-centric data model: Sui's unique data model supports efficient storage and parallel processing of account and asset data.

• zkLogin enables seamless onboarding: The zkLogin feature simplifies the user onboarding process, allowing accounts to be created using familiar Web2 credentials, reducing the experience barriers for new traders.

• Sponsored Transactions: Sui's sponsored transaction feature reduces user costs and improves the overall trading experience.

Here are Sui’s early builders:

• Bluefin

• Astros powered by NAVI Protocol

• Aftermath Finance

• Typus Finance GLP Trading Model

Kriya is also about to launch its Perp DEX.

Before diving into each one, here is an overall comparison chart.

The following will compare and study each protocol and analyze its transaction characteristics, protocol mechanisms, and performance.

Bluefin

As an established Perp DEX on Sui, Bluefin combines a fast-matching off-chain order book with a secure on-chain settlement engine. Protocol 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 final confirmation (less than 500 milliseconds). In addition, it also supports almost all perpetual contract assets on Sui, covering the widest range, including $DEEP, $WAL, and $TRUMP.

• The 24-hour perpetual contract trading volume on the Bluefin platform is between $40 million and $70 million, indicating that the platform has high trading activity.

• The BTC-PERP trading pair usually accounts for the largest share of daily trading volume (about 60%), followed by SUI-PERP and ETH-PERP.

• According to Defi Llama data, the fees generated each year are about $4 million.

The UI/UX is excellent. Users can use the transaction view function, the interface is clear and contains everything they need. It is worth mentioning that Bluefin’s zkLogin integration is powered by Sui. This simplifies the user onboarding process and eliminates the complexity of wallets and mnemonics.

Aftermath (Testnet)

Aftermath first launched its Perp DEX testnet in November 2024. It runs entirely on-chain, and unlike many Perp DEXs that rely on off-chain order book matching, Aftermath puts the entire order book on-chain. As it is still in the testnet stage, statistics are limited.

Aftermath is more focused on improving the liquidity/TVL of its DEX and existing funding pools. Potential future incentives/the official launch of Perp DEX may come 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. As it is currently in the testing phase, information about cooperative market makers (MM) and the specific mechanism is not yet exhaustive. Its 24-hour trading volume reached $300 million, which may be 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 data, the 24-hour trading volume is about $200,000 and the TVL of the TLP pool exceeds $700,000.

Assets in the TLP pool include $SUI, $USDC, $DEEP, and $LBTC, and the APR is currently over 100%.

Some observations and conclusions

The rise of the order book: Sui's Perp DEX ecosystem currently clearly favors the order book model, which is reflected in both protocol design choices and its dominance in trading volume. This suggests that the order book mechanism is either inherently applicable in Sui's architecture or has market acceptance among its user base.

Asset scarcity and the lure of memes: The range of assets supported by Sui Network Perp DEX is obviously limited, which represents potential opportunities. If a protocol can quickly embrace the volatile but lucrative memecoin trading space (an area that has a growing cultural foundation on Sui), then leveraging the inherent speculation of these assets may drive an increase in platform trading volume.

The need for early stages and incentive mechanisms: Compared to the mature and highly liquid Perp DEX ecosystem on EVM and Solana, Sui's cumulative trading volume and TVL are still in their infancy. Given the existing feature sets and available functions of these alternative chains, it may take more than just technical innovation to attract traders to the Sui network's Perp DEX. An attractive incentive mechanism may be the key inducement to attract speculative capital and promote substantial growth in the Perp DEX ecosystem.