This article spotlights five high-revenue, yet un-tokenized Decentralized Perpetual Exchanges (Perp DEXs), focusing on their protocol revenue, technical features, and growth potential. These projects demonstrate genuine profitability amidst intense competition in the sector.

edgeX: The High-Performance Contender

edgeX set a new revenue record for Perp DEXs in September 2025, with cumulative revenue reaching $49.47 million, solidifying its position as the second-highest revenue generator in the industry. In the last 30 days alone, the platform generated $20.46 million in revenue. Built on StarkWare's StarkEx zk-rollup technology, it boasts the capacity for 200,000 orders per second with sub-10ms matching latency. Its mobile experience is exceptional, featuring integrated MPC wallet technology for seamless onboarding. Incubated by Amber Group, which provides market-making support, edgeX has a strong focus on expanding in Asian markets. A Token Generation Event (TGE) is anticipated in Q4 2025.

Paradex: The Multi-Derivative Platform

Incubated by the institutional liquidity platform Paradigm, Paradex has accumulated $9.74 million in revenue. Its key feature is supporting a variety of derivatives, including perpetual contracts and options, all within a unified account. It has implemented a highly competitive zero-fee model for most UI traders. Paradex has already published its tokenomics, leading to strong community anticipation for a token launch. It is built on a custom Starknet-based L2 blockchain, enabling high throughput and customizable fee models.

Extended: The Seamless Cross-Chain Innovator

Extended's estimated cumulative revenue stands between $6-10 million. Its standout innovation is a "front-end EVM, back-end Starknet" design, allowing users to trade directly using MetaMask and other EVM wallets without complex bridging, seamlessly integrating multiple chains. The team has strong backgrounds from companies like Revolut. The project is backed by top-tier investors, including StarkWare itself. A successful migration to Starknet was completed in August 2025.

Ostium: The RWA Perpetuals Specialist

Focused on synthetic perpetuals for Real-World Assets (RWA) like stocks and commodities, Ostium has accrued $4.48 million in revenue. It employs a unique dual-oracle architecture and an OLP Vault model designed to reduce risk for Liquidity Providers. The founding team has impressive backgrounds, including experience at Bridgewater Associates, and the CEO was featured in Forbes' 30 Under 30 list. Backed by investors like General Catalyst, Ostium runs on Arbitrum and has not yet confirmed any token plans, though an ongoing points program fuels airdrop speculation.

Satori Finance: The Multi-Chain Hybrid Exchange

With cumulative revenue of $2.76 million, Satori Finance employs a hybrid off-chain/on-chain architecture. It supports over 14 blockchains and offers competitive fee rates. The team has traditional market-making experience from firms like Optiver. The project is backed by renowned VCs including Polychain Capital and Jump Crypto.

All these projects have not yet issued tokens but are preparing for potential airdrops through points programs, showcasing their differentiated advantages in technological innovation and business models.

Summary

Behind Aster's hype, the entire Perp DEX sector is experiencing unprecedented competition. From technological innovation to user experience, and from asset diversity to ecosystem integration, projects are seeking their own paths to differentiation.

However, one of the most critical metrics is revenue data. Based on revenue, these projects have already demonstrated real revenue-generating capability.

To provide a comprehensive view of the current landscape, we've identified the top 5 un-tokenized and most profitable Perp DEXs, examining how they've found their niche and their origins.

(Note: This analysis primarily filters and assesses projects based on protocol revenue. Well-known Perp DEXs like Lighter, while having strong trading volumes and user activity, are not included here due to their fee models—such as charging early closing fees instead of direct trading fees—making consistent revenue calculation difficult.)

1. edgeX ($49.47 Million)

edgeX refreshed the revenue record for the perpetual DEX sector in September 2025, with cumulative total revenue reaching $49.47 million, firmly securing the industry's second-place spot. In the past 30 days alone, the platform generated $20.46 million in revenue, a staggering 147% increase compared to its Q2 quarterly revenue of $8.29 million. This performance not only puts edgeX on track for an annualized revenue of $250 million but also captures an estimated 15-20% market share in the fiercely competitive perpetual DEX space, establishing itself as a PERP revenue giant second only to Hyperliquid.

Technically, edgeX is built on StarkWare's StarkEx zero-knowledge proof rollup technology, achieving a capacity of 200,000 orders per second with matching latency below 10 milliseconds—a performance metric that challenges the technical moat of centralized exchanges. More notably, edgeX demonstrates a competitive advantage in liquidity depth surpassing its peers. Within a 0.01% spread, edgeX's BTC trading pair can support positions up to $6 million, a figure that exceeds Hyperliquid's $5 million, Aster's $4 million, and Lighter's $1 million, establishing its depth advantage for medium-sized trades.

Regarding mobile experience, edgeX stands out. Its latest v2.9 mobile app integrates Privy MPC wallet technology, allowing users to start trading without memorizing complex seed phrases, significantly lowering the barrier to DeFi entry. The app also supports one-click USDC/Arbitrum top-ups, real-time push notifications for limit order execution, and professional trading features like one-click position reversal. This design philosophy, combining CEX-level user experience with DeFi security, has earned edgeX broad acceptance in mobile-first Asian markets.

edgeX's success is underpinned by its strong team background and strategic incubation support. As one of the first projects incubated by Amber Group in July 2024, the edgeX team brings together seasoned professionals from top-tier institutions like Morgan Stanley, Barclays, Goldman Sachs, and Bybit, with over 7 years of exchange operation and product development experience. Amber Group, a global digital asset company managing approximately $5 billion in assets, provides professional market-making support and deep liquidity, a key factor enabling the platform to achieve depths exceeding $10 million in a short time.

In its global expansion, edgeX places special emphasis on developing Asian markets, particularly South Korea. During Korean Blockchain Week 2025, it hosted multiple community events, including the "edgeX CONNECTS ALL" Seoul Community Night and live trading competitions, garnering high attention and participation within the Korean DeFi community. This localization strategy, coupled with multilingual support and a mobile-first product design, has helped edgeX gain a foothold in the competitive Asian market.

Based on community expectations, the Q4 2025 TGE is anticipated to bring substantial returns for points holders. Assuming a 20-35% token allocation, the estimated value per point could range between $370 and $870. This expectation has driven explosive growth in platform user numbers and trading volume, with deposit growth even reaching 1000% in July.

From an investment perspective, edgeX has demonstrated rare self-sustaining capability. Its $49.47 million cumulative revenue comes entirely from real trading fees, not token inflation or external subsidies. This sustainable business model, combined with its leading advantages in technology, user experience, and market expansion, solidifies its position.

2. Paradex ($9.74 Million)

Paradex was incubated by the crypto institutional liquidity platform Paradigm (not the venture capital firm of the same name) and is built on the Paradex Network, an Ethereum Layer 2 blockchain based on the Starknet Stack, positioned for high-performance decentralized trading and asset management.

Although the incubator is not the well-known top crypto VC Paradigm but a similarly named institutional liquidity platform, it is still noteworthy. Paradigm was founded in 2019, serving institutions like hedge funds, market makers, and family offices, with extensive experience in crypto derivatives like options. Initially, its workflow involved handling OTC matching, delegating execution, clearing, and settlement to exchanges like FTX. At its peak, it held a 30% share of the global crypto options market, raising $35 million at a $400 million valuation co-led by Jump Crypto and Alameda Research.

However, after FTX's collapse, Paradigm, as a partner, was significantly impacted, experiencing a rapid decline in trading volume. It subsequently launched Paradex to rebuild its ecosystem.

Leveraging its years of research in derivatives markets, Paradex's hallmark is supporting perpetual contracts, perpetual futures, perpetual options, and spot trading—all unified within a single account where any asset can be used as collateral, supporting isolated, cross, and portfolio margin modes.

In terms of fee structure, Paradex has implemented a highly competitive zero-fee model. Since September 10, 2025, the platform offers a completely fee-free experience for UI traders on all perpetual markets (excluding BTC and ETH), with 0% maker fees and 0% taker fees. For API traders, the platform charges 0% maker fees and 0.02% taker fees, a strategy that has effectively boosted platform trading activity.

By building a private Starknet instance, the team developed and deployed the blockchain using the Cairo programming language within a short 6-month development cycle. This customized solution offers significant advantages, including custom fee models, throughput rivaling centralized exchanges, and efficient batch order processing.

For asset management, the Paradex Vault allows users to obtain LP tokens representing shares and can integrate with mainstream DeFi protocols like Pendle, Morpho, and Aave. Vaults support both active trading and passive yields from Vault Trading Funds (VTF). Some LP tokens may eventually be used directly as collateral for more on-chain strategies. Furthermore, Paradex's integrated lending markets allow users to borrow directly using the same account, creating combined investment portfolios for collateral.

Paradex has already published its tokenomics, and community anticipation for a token launch is exceptionally high. The future platform token, DIME, is intended for uses including paying transaction fees, fee discounts, staking, liquidity mining rewards, and governance/voting participation.

In terms of market performance, Paradex's cumulative revenue has reached $9.74 million, with $1.28 million in revenue over the past 30 days. Trading data shows a 30-day volume of $9.32 billion and a cumulative trading volume of $83.6 billion, with a TVL of $92.74 million, demonstrating steady market performance.

3. Extended (Estimated $6-10 Million)

As an emerging force in the perpetual DEX arena, Extended has achieved remarkable financial performance within just over a year. Based on its cumulative trading volume of $20.635 billion and a standard fee structure, Extended's estimated cumulative revenue is between $6-10 million, with 30-day revenue estimated at $1.5-2.5 million. Although the platform is not yet tracked for revenue on major data aggregators like DefiLlama, this estimate is relatively conservative and aligns with industry benchmarks, based on a 0.025% taker fee and 0% maker fee (with high-volume users eligible for rebates up to 0.02%).

The platform's most notable innovation is its seamless "front-end EVM, back-end Starknet" integration design. Users can trade directly using EVM wallets like MetaMask without needing to install a Starknet wallet or perform complex cross-chain bridging. Deposits and withdrawals are available on six major EVM chains—Arbitrum, Ethereum, Base, BSC, Avalanche, and Polygon—while all trade settlement occurs on Starknet. This design not only aggregates roughly 80% of the DeFi liquidity from the EVM ecosystem but also provides users with a near-frictionless cross-chain trading experience.

Extended's migration to Starknet, launched on August 12, 2025, stands as one of the most successful technical upgrades in DeFi history. The migration occurred in three phases over about a month, requiring no manual fund withdrawals from users, as everything was migrated automatically. In the first phase, both systems ran parallel, but points were only accrued on Starknet, effectively incentivizing early user migration. The second phase switched StarkEx to reduce-only mode, and the third phase completely shut down StarkEx and force-closed all remaining positions.

Extended's success is largely attributable to its strong founding team background. CEO Ruslan Fakhrutdinov previously served as Crypto Business Operations Lead at Revolut and was a McKinsey consultant, bringing extensive crypto operations and strategic consulting experience. The CTO was the architect for four crypto exchanges, including the recently launched Revolut Crypto Exchange (Revolut X), while the CBO was a former Principal Engineer at Revolut Crypto and a core contributor to the Corda blockchain. The team's core motivation stemmed from user pain points observed during their time at Revolut: retail users entering the crypto market during the 2021 bull run faced both a poor DeFi experience and the risks of centralized exchanges (like the FTX collapse).

Extended completed a $6.5 million Seed round on April 30, 2024, attracting top-tier investment firms and renowned angel investors from the Web3 space. The lead investor, Tioga Capital Partners, is a European venture firm focused on Web3 investments, known for supporting outstanding European blockchain entrepreneurs. Co-investors included Brussels-based Semantic Ventures, fintech and Web3-focused Cherry Ventures, and StarkWare itself participating in a dual role as a technical partner. The angel investor lineup was equally notable, including Lido co-founder Konstantin Lomashuk and several former Revolut executives.

4. Ostium ($4.48 Million)

Ostium Labs is a decentralized protocol focused on synthetic perpetual contract trading for Real-World Assets (RWA), founded in 2022 by Kaledora Kiernan-Linn and Marco Antonio Ribeiro. The platform is built on the Arbitrum blockchain, offering users highly leveraged on-chain trading services (up to 200x) for traditional assets like stocks, commodities, forex, and indices.

The protocol employs a dual-oracle architecture: for real-world assets, it uses a pull-based oracle developed autonomously by Ostium, with node operation and data aggregation handled by Stork Network; for crypto assets, it uses Chainlink Data Streams. The cleverness of this design lies in the fact that oracle metadata (bid-ask spreads, market trading time flags, etc.) is only written on-chain when a trade needs settlement, reducing Gas fees while maintaining sub-second latency responses.

For liquidity provision, Ostium designed a unique OLP Vault model. Liquidity Providers deposit USDC into market maker vaults and receive fungible OLP tokens. The key innovation is that the vault only settles trader P&L when the independent liquidity buffer is insufficient, meaning LPs are not the default counterparty to trades, significantly reducing directional risk. The fee distribution mechanism is also carefully designed: 30% of opening fees, plus 100% of liquidation rewards and negative carry fees from under-collateralization, are allocated to OLP holders. Users can also choose to lock their deposits (up to 365 days) for a "Lock Boost" to receive a larger share of fee distribution.

In its liquidation mechanism design, Ostium uses a hyperbolic funding rate and skew-based opening fees to dynamically suppress one-sided positions. 100% of liquidation rewards are allocated to the LP vault, ensuring aligned incentives for timely liquidations. The entire perpetual contract engine is matched and settled on the Arbitrum chain, with no proprietary off-chain sequencer, guaranteeing decentralization.

Ostium Labs' founding team showcases a rare combination of cross-domain expertise. CEO Kaledora Kiernan-Linn holds a BA in Neuroscience from Harvard University, minored in Statistics, interned at the world's largest hedge fund, Bridgewater Associates, collaborating with Co-CIO Bob Prince on commodity research, and also worked on growth stock valuation research at McKinsey's Berlin office and Verdad Advisers. For her innovative contributions to bringing RWA perpetual contracts on-chain, Kaledora was selected for Forbes' 30 Under 30 list in Finance for 2025.

Co-founder and CTO Marco Antonio Ribeiro is currently pursuing a degree in Engineering Sciences and Economics at Harvard University (currently on leave). He also has work experience at Bridgewater Associates, serving as an Investment Associate on the commodities team, focusing on macro strategies and global market analysis. Marco has notable academic and technical achievements, winning the 2019 Harvard Hackathon UC Challenge, a Bronze Medal at the 30th International Biology Olympiad, and an Honorable Mention at the 50th International Physics Olympiad. He is also a co-founder of the Harvard Venture Club and served as President of Erevna, a non-profit for student economic research.

The two founders met at Harvard and began building Ostium in a Cambridge hacker house during the period of volatile commodity prices following the Russia-Ukraine conflict. Their frustration at not being able to easily access small-scale futures positions inspired the innovative concept for the synthetic perpetuals model.

Ostium Labs completed a $3.5 million Seed round on October 6, 2023, the company's only publicly disclosed funding round to date. This round was co-led by renowned venture firms General Catalyst and LocalGlobe, with participation from Susquehanna International Group (SIG), Vessel Capital, DeFi Alliance, and others. The angel investor lineup was also strong, including former Coinbase CTO Balaji Srinivasan, LedgerPrime CIO Shiliang Tang, Nick van Eck, Neel Somani, and other well-known industry figures. Notably, the company has not disclosed a specific valuation nor conducted additional equity or token funding rounds.

According to the latest on-chain data analysis, the Ostium protocol shows steady growth momentum. As of September 15, 2025, the protocol's Total Value Locked (TVL) reached $44.37 million, and cumulative trading volume surpassed $17.8 billion. In terms of user activity, there were 845 daily active users in the past 24 hours, 2,225 weekly active users over the past 7 days, and 903 monthly active users.

Regarding revenue performance, Ostium Labs' cumulative revenue is $4.48 million, with recent 30-day revenue at $722,500, and a TVL of $52.9 million. The platform has effectively driven user growth through a continuous 24-week points program, demonstrating strong development potential in the niche of RWA perpetual trading.

Ostium has not yet issued a native token, and the team has not confirmed specific token release plans. The current incentive mechanism primarily relies on a weekly points program (at least 500,000 points weekly), rewarding trading, liquidity provision, and referrals, which the community widely interprets as a potential prelude to a token airdrop.

In its product development roadmap, Ostium progressed from a private alpha in Q4 2024, having rebuilt its core tech stack due to oracle limitations to support long-tail RWAs. On March 18, 2025, the protocol launched a public beta on Arbitrum, providing staged access to over 80,000 waitlisted users. Upcoming milestones include gradually expanding the asset list (oil, copper, platinum, Hang Seng Index, etc.), completing third-party audits and formally launching the mainnet, and introducing a second vault to separate market-making and settlement functions.

5. Satori Finance ($2.76 Million)

Founded in 2021, Satori Finance has carved out its niche in the competitive DeFi derivatives landscape through its unique hybrid architecture. The platform employs a "off-chain order aggregation + on-chain settlement" technical solution, achieving execution efficiency comparable to centralized exchanges while maintaining decentralized characteristics. The platform supports leverage of up to 25x and is currently deployed successfully on over 14 blockchain networks, including Ethereum, zkSync Era, Arbitrum, Base, BNB Chain, Scroll, and Polygon zkEVM.

The core of Satori Finance's technical innovation lies in its hybrid order book model design philosophy. The platform provides execution speeds close to CEXs through its off-chain order aggregation and matching mechanism, while ensuring transparency and decentralization through on-chain settlement. This design involves deep collaboration with an external market maker network to build a central limit order book system with deep liquidity. In terms of fee structure, Satori Finance shows significant competitive advantages, with its V2 Maker/Taker fees as low as 0.02% and 0.04% respectively.

Satori Finance's founding team possesses deep experience in both traditional finance and the cryptocurrency industry. Co-founder and CTO George Wu previously worked as a derivatives trader in equities, rates, and commodities at leading global market maker Optiver for four years, laying a solid foundation for the platform's technical architecture and risk management systems. Co-founder and CEO Rahim Noorani brings extensive investment banking and venture capital experience, having worked as an Analyst at Goldman Sachs and later as an investor at Scale Ventures, providing crucial guidance for the platform's business strategy development.

Regarding financing, Satori Finance successfully completed a $10 million Seed round in May 2022, securing support from top-tier institutions in the crypto investment space. This round was co-led by Polychain Capital and Blockchange Ventures, with participation from Jump Crypto, Coinbase Ventures, Portal, Acala, Astar, Parallel, Clover, and other notable investors. It is especially worth mentioning that Polkadot co-founder Gavin Wood also participated in this round as a strategic advisor.

Based on the latest on-chain data, Satori Finance shows steady growth in trading volume. The platform's 24-hour perpetual contract trading volume reached $211 million, its 7-day volume was $1.402 billion, and its 30-day volume hit $5.75 billion, with cumulative historical trading volume breaking the $97.123 billion mark. In terms of Total Value Locked (TVL) distribution, the platform's total TVL is $2.23 million, with the zkSync Era chain holding the largest share at $1.31 million.

The platform's revenue growth trajectory is even more remarkable. Starting from $10,400 in fee revenue in Q3 2023, it reached $1.15 million by Q2 2025, with total revenue now at $2.76 million.

This article spotlights five high-revenue, yet un-tokenized Decentralized Perpetual Exchanges (Perp DEXs), focusing on their protocol revenue, technical features, and growth potential. These projects demonstrate genuine profitability amidst intense competition in the sector.

edgeX: The High-Performance Contender

edgeX set a new revenue record for Perp DEXs in September 2025, with cumulative revenue reaching $49.47 million, solidifying its position as the second-highest revenue generator in the industry. In the last 30 days alone, the platform generated $20.46 million in revenue. Built on StarkWare's StarkEx zk-rollup technology, it boasts the capacity for 200,000 orders per second with sub-10ms matching latency. Its mobile experience is exceptional, featuring integrated MPC wallet technology for seamless onboarding. Incubated by Amber Group, which provides market-making support, edgeX has a strong focus on expanding in Asian markets. A Token Generation Event (TGE) is anticipated in Q4 2025.

Paradex: The Multi-Derivative Platform

Incubated by the institutional liquidity platform Paradigm, Paradex has accumulated $9.74 million in revenue. Its key feature is supporting a variety of derivatives, including perpetual contracts and options, all within a unified account. It has implemented a highly competitive zero-fee model for most UI traders. Paradex has already published its tokenomics, leading to strong community anticipation for a token launch. It is built on a custom Starknet-based L2 blockchain, enabling high throughput and customizable fee models.

Extended: The Seamless Cross-Chain Innovator

Extended's estimated cumulative revenue stands between $6-10 million. Its standout innovation is a "front-end EVM, back-end Starknet" design, allowing users to trade directly using MetaMask and other EVM wallets without complex bridging, seamlessly integrating multiple chains. The team has strong backgrounds from companies like Revolut. The project is backed by top-tier investors, including StarkWare itself. A successful migration to Starknet was completed in August 2025.

Ostium: The RWA Perpetuals Specialist

Focused on synthetic perpetuals for Real-World Assets (RWA) like stocks and commodities, Ostium has accrued $4.48 million in revenue. It employs a unique dual-oracle architecture and an OLP Vault model designed to reduce risk for Liquidity Providers. The founding team has impressive backgrounds, including experience at Bridgewater Associates, and the CEO was featured in Forbes' 30 Under 30 list. Backed by investors like General Catalyst, Ostium runs on Arbitrum and has not yet confirmed any token plans, though an ongoing points program fuels airdrop speculation.

Satori Finance: The Multi-Chain Hybrid Exchange

With cumulative revenue of $2.76 million, Satori Finance employs a hybrid off-chain/on-chain architecture. It supports over 14 blockchains and offers competitive fee rates. The team has traditional market-making experience from firms like Optiver. The project is backed by renowned VCs including Polychain Capital and Jump Crypto.

All these projects have not yet issued tokens but are preparing for potential airdrops through points programs, showcasing their differentiated advantages in technological innovation and business models.

Summary

Behind Aster's hype, the entire Perp DEX sector is experiencing unprecedented competition. From technological innovation to user experience, and from asset diversity to ecosystem integration, projects are seeking their own paths to differentiation.

However, one of the most critical metrics is revenue data. Based on revenue, these projects have already demonstrated real revenue-generating capability.

To provide a comprehensive view of the current landscape, we've identified the top 5 un-tokenized and most profitable Perp DEXs, examining how they've found their niche and their origins.

(Note: This analysis primarily filters and assesses projects based on protocol revenue. Well-known Perp DEXs like Lighter, while having strong trading volumes and user activity, are not included here due to their fee models—such as charging early closing fees instead of direct trading fees—making consistent revenue calculation difficult.)

1. edgeX ($49.47 Million)

edgeX refreshed the revenue record for the perpetual DEX sector in September 2025, with cumulative total revenue reaching $49.47 million, firmly securing the industry's second-place spot. In the past 30 days alone, the platform generated $20.46 million in revenue, a staggering 147% increase compared to its Q2 quarterly revenue of $8.29 million. This performance not only puts edgeX on track for an annualized revenue of $250 million but also captures an estimated 15-20% market share in the fiercely competitive perpetual DEX space, establishing itself as a PERP revenue giant second only to Hyperliquid.

Technically, edgeX is built on StarkWare's StarkEx zero-knowledge proof rollup technology, achieving a capacity of 200,000 orders per second with matching latency below 10 milliseconds—a performance metric that challenges the technical moat of centralized exchanges. More notably, edgeX demonstrates a competitive advantage in liquidity depth surpassing its peers. Within a 0.01% spread, edgeX's BTC trading pair can support positions up to $6 million, a figure that exceeds Hyperliquid's $5 million, Aster's $4 million, and Lighter's $1 million, establishing its depth advantage for medium-sized trades.

Regarding mobile experience, edgeX stands out. Its latest v2.9 mobile app integrates Privy MPC wallet technology, allowing users to start trading without memorizing complex seed phrases, significantly lowering the barrier to DeFi entry. The app also supports one-click USDC/Arbitrum top-ups, real-time push notifications for limit order execution, and professional trading features like one-click position reversal. This design philosophy, combining CEX-level user experience with DeFi security, has earned edgeX broad acceptance in mobile-first Asian markets.

edgeX's success is underpinned by its strong team background and strategic incubation support. As one of the first projects incubated by Amber Group in July 2024, the edgeX team brings together seasoned professionals from top-tier institutions like Morgan Stanley, Barclays, Goldman Sachs, and Bybit, with over 7 years of exchange operation and product development experience. Amber Group, a global digital asset company managing approximately $5 billion in assets, provides professional market-making support and deep liquidity, a key factor enabling the platform to achieve depths exceeding $10 million in a short time.

In its global expansion, edgeX places special emphasis on developing Asian markets, particularly South Korea. During Korean Blockchain Week 2025, it hosted multiple community events, including the "edgeX CONNECTS ALL" Seoul Community Night and live trading competitions, garnering high attention and participation within the Korean DeFi community. This localization strategy, coupled with multilingual support and a mobile-first product design, has helped edgeX gain a foothold in the competitive Asian market.

Based on community expectations, the Q4 2025 TGE is anticipated to bring substantial returns for points holders. Assuming a 20-35% token allocation, the estimated value per point could range between $370 and $870. This expectation has driven explosive growth in platform user numbers and trading volume, with deposit growth even reaching 1000% in July.

From an investment perspective, edgeX has demonstrated rare self-sustaining capability. Its $49.47 million cumulative revenue comes entirely from real trading fees, not token inflation or external subsidies. This sustainable business model, combined with its leading advantages in technology, user experience, and market expansion, solidifies its position.

2. Paradex ($9.74 Million)

Paradex was incubated by the crypto institutional liquidity platform Paradigm (not the venture capital firm of the same name) and is built on the Paradex Network, an Ethereum Layer 2 blockchain based on the Starknet Stack, positioned for high-performance decentralized trading and asset management.

Although the incubator is not the well-known top crypto VC Paradigm but a similarly named institutional liquidity platform, it is still noteworthy. Paradigm was founded in 2019, serving institutions like hedge funds, market makers, and family offices, with extensive experience in crypto derivatives like options. Initially, its workflow involved handling OTC matching, delegating execution, clearing, and settlement to exchanges like FTX. At its peak, it held a 30% share of the global crypto options market, raising $35 million at a $400 million valuation co-led by Jump Crypto and Alameda Research.

However, after FTX's collapse, Paradigm, as a partner, was significantly impacted, experiencing a rapid decline in trading volume. It subsequently launched Paradex to rebuild its ecosystem.

Leveraging its years of research in derivatives markets, Paradex's hallmark is supporting perpetual contracts, perpetual futures, perpetual options, and spot trading—all unified within a single account where any asset can be used as collateral, supporting isolated, cross, and portfolio margin modes.

In terms of fee structure, Paradex has implemented a highly competitive zero-fee model. Since September 10, 2025, the platform offers a completely fee-free experience for UI traders on all perpetual markets (excluding BTC and ETH), with 0% maker fees and 0% taker fees. For API traders, the platform charges 0% maker fees and 0.02% taker fees, a strategy that has effectively boosted platform trading activity.

By building a private Starknet instance, the team developed and deployed the blockchain using the Cairo programming language within a short 6-month development cycle. This customized solution offers significant advantages, including custom fee models, throughput rivaling centralized exchanges, and efficient batch order processing.

For asset management, the Paradex Vault allows users to obtain LP tokens representing shares and can integrate with mainstream DeFi protocols like Pendle, Morpho, and Aave. Vaults support both active trading and passive yields from Vault Trading Funds (VTF). Some LP tokens may eventually be used directly as collateral for more on-chain strategies. Furthermore, Paradex's integrated lending markets allow users to borrow directly using the same account, creating combined investment portfolios for collateral.

Paradex has already published its tokenomics, and community anticipation for a token launch is exceptionally high. The future platform token, DIME, is intended for uses including paying transaction fees, fee discounts, staking, liquidity mining rewards, and governance/voting participation.

In terms of market performance, Paradex's cumulative revenue has reached $9.74 million, with $1.28 million in revenue over the past 30 days. Trading data shows a 30-day volume of $9.32 billion and a cumulative trading volume of $83.6 billion, with a TVL of $92.74 million, demonstrating steady market performance.

3. Extended (Estimated $6-10 Million)

As an emerging force in the perpetual DEX arena, Extended has achieved remarkable financial performance within just over a year. Based on its cumulative trading volume of $20.635 billion and a standard fee structure, Extended's estimated cumulative revenue is between $6-10 million, with 30-day revenue estimated at $1.5-2.5 million. Although the platform is not yet tracked for revenue on major data aggregators like DefiLlama, this estimate is relatively conservative and aligns with industry benchmarks, based on a 0.025% taker fee and 0% maker fee (with high-volume users eligible for rebates up to 0.02%).

The platform's most notable innovation is its seamless "front-end EVM, back-end Starknet" integration design. Users can trade directly using EVM wallets like MetaMask without needing to install a Starknet wallet or perform complex cross-chain bridging. Deposits and withdrawals are available on six major EVM chains—Arbitrum, Ethereum, Base, BSC, Avalanche, and Polygon—while all trade settlement occurs on Starknet. This design not only aggregates roughly 80% of the DeFi liquidity from the EVM ecosystem but also provides users with a near-frictionless cross-chain trading experience.

Extended's migration to Starknet, launched on August 12, 2025, stands as one of the most successful technical upgrades in DeFi history. The migration occurred in three phases over about a month, requiring no manual fund withdrawals from users, as everything was migrated automatically. In the first phase, both systems ran parallel, but points were only accrued on Starknet, effectively incentivizing early user migration. The second phase switched StarkEx to reduce-only mode, and the third phase completely shut down StarkEx and force-closed all remaining positions.

Extended's success is largely attributable to its strong founding team background. CEO Ruslan Fakhrutdinov previously served as Crypto Business Operations Lead at Revolut and was a McKinsey consultant, bringing extensive crypto operations and strategic consulting experience. The CTO was the architect for four crypto exchanges, including the recently launched Revolut Crypto Exchange (Revolut X), while the CBO was a former Principal Engineer at Revolut Crypto and a core contributor to the Corda blockchain. The team's core motivation stemmed from user pain points observed during their time at Revolut: retail users entering the crypto market during the 2021 bull run faced both a poor DeFi experience and the risks of centralized exchanges (like the FTX collapse).

Extended completed a $6.5 million Seed round on April 30, 2024, attracting top-tier investment firms and renowned angel investors from the Web3 space. The lead investor, Tioga Capital Partners, is a European venture firm focused on Web3 investments, known for supporting outstanding European blockchain entrepreneurs. Co-investors included Brussels-based Semantic Ventures, fintech and Web3-focused Cherry Ventures, and StarkWare itself participating in a dual role as a technical partner. The angel investor lineup was equally notable, including Lido co-founder Konstantin Lomashuk and several former Revolut executives.

4. Ostium ($4.48 Million)

Ostium Labs is a decentralized protocol focused on synthetic perpetual contract trading for Real-World Assets (RWA), founded in 2022 by Kaledora Kiernan-Linn and Marco Antonio Ribeiro. The platform is built on the Arbitrum blockchain, offering users highly leveraged on-chain trading services (up to 200x) for traditional assets like stocks, commodities, forex, and indices.

The protocol employs a dual-oracle architecture: for real-world assets, it uses a pull-based oracle developed autonomously by Ostium, with node operation and data aggregation handled by Stork Network; for crypto assets, it uses Chainlink Data Streams. The cleverness of this design lies in the fact that oracle metadata (bid-ask spreads, market trading time flags, etc.) is only written on-chain when a trade needs settlement, reducing Gas fees while maintaining sub-second latency responses.

For liquidity provision, Ostium designed a unique OLP Vault model. Liquidity Providers deposit USDC into market maker vaults and receive fungible OLP tokens. The key innovation is that the vault only settles trader P&L when the independent liquidity buffer is insufficient, meaning LPs are not the default counterparty to trades, significantly reducing directional risk. The fee distribution mechanism is also carefully designed: 30% of opening fees, plus 100% of liquidation rewards and negative carry fees from under-collateralization, are allocated to OLP holders. Users can also choose to lock their deposits (up to 365 days) for a "Lock Boost" to receive a larger share of fee distribution.

In its liquidation mechanism design, Ostium uses a hyperbolic funding rate and skew-based opening fees to dynamically suppress one-sided positions. 100% of liquidation rewards are allocated to the LP vault, ensuring aligned incentives for timely liquidations. The entire perpetual contract engine is matched and settled on the Arbitrum chain, with no proprietary off-chain sequencer, guaranteeing decentralization.

Ostium Labs' founding team showcases a rare combination of cross-domain expertise. CEO Kaledora Kiernan-Linn holds a BA in Neuroscience from Harvard University, minored in Statistics, interned at the world's largest hedge fund, Bridgewater Associates, collaborating with Co-CIO Bob Prince on commodity research, and also worked on growth stock valuation research at McKinsey's Berlin office and Verdad Advisers. For her innovative contributions to bringing RWA perpetual contracts on-chain, Kaledora was selected for Forbes' 30 Under 30 list in Finance for 2025.

Co-founder and CTO Marco Antonio Ribeiro is currently pursuing a degree in Engineering Sciences and Economics at Harvard University (currently on leave). He also has work experience at Bridgewater Associates, serving as an Investment Associate on the commodities team, focusing on macro strategies and global market analysis. Marco has notable academic and technical achievements, winning the 2019 Harvard Hackathon UC Challenge, a Bronze Medal at the 30th International Biology Olympiad, and an Honorable Mention at the 50th International Physics Olympiad. He is also a co-founder of the Harvard Venture Club and served as President of Erevna, a non-profit for student economic research.

The two founders met at Harvard and began building Ostium in a Cambridge hacker house during the period of volatile commodity prices following the Russia-Ukraine conflict. Their frustration at not being able to easily access small-scale futures positions inspired the innovative concept for the synthetic perpetuals model.

Ostium Labs completed a $3.5 million Seed round on October 6, 2023, the company's only publicly disclosed funding round to date. This round was co-led by renowned venture firms General Catalyst and LocalGlobe, with participation from Susquehanna International Group (SIG), Vessel Capital, DeFi Alliance, and others. The angel investor lineup was also strong, including former Coinbase CTO Balaji Srinivasan, LedgerPrime CIO Shiliang Tang, Nick van Eck, Neel Somani, and other well-known industry figures. Notably, the company has not disclosed a specific valuation nor conducted additional equity or token funding rounds.

According to the latest on-chain data analysis, the Ostium protocol shows steady growth momentum. As of September 15, 2025, the protocol's Total Value Locked (TVL) reached $44.37 million, and cumulative trading volume surpassed $17.8 billion. In terms of user activity, there were 845 daily active users in the past 24 hours, 2,225 weekly active users over the past 7 days, and 903 monthly active users.

Regarding revenue performance, Ostium Labs' cumulative revenue is $4.48 million, with recent 30-day revenue at $722,500, and a TVL of $52.9 million. The platform has effectively driven user growth through a continuous 24-week points program, demonstrating strong development potential in the niche of RWA perpetual trading.

Ostium has not yet issued a native token, and the team has not confirmed specific token release plans. The current incentive mechanism primarily relies on a weekly points program (at least 500,000 points weekly), rewarding trading, liquidity provision, and referrals, which the community widely interprets as a potential prelude to a token airdrop.

In its product development roadmap, Ostium progressed from a private alpha in Q4 2024, having rebuilt its core tech stack due to oracle limitations to support long-tail RWAs. On March 18, 2025, the protocol launched a public beta on Arbitrum, providing staged access to over 80,000 waitlisted users. Upcoming milestones include gradually expanding the asset list (oil, copper, platinum, Hang Seng Index, etc.), completing third-party audits and formally launching the mainnet, and introducing a second vault to separate market-making and settlement functions.

5. Satori Finance ($2.76 Million)

Founded in 2021, Satori Finance has carved out its niche in the competitive DeFi derivatives landscape through its unique hybrid architecture. The platform employs a "off-chain order aggregation + on-chain settlement" technical solution, achieving execution efficiency comparable to centralized exchanges while maintaining decentralized characteristics. The platform supports leverage of up to 25x and is currently deployed successfully on over 14 blockchain networks, including Ethereum, zkSync Era, Arbitrum, Base, BNB Chain, Scroll, and Polygon zkEVM.

The core of Satori Finance's technical innovation lies in its hybrid order book model design philosophy. The platform provides execution speeds close to CEXs through its off-chain order aggregation and matching mechanism, while ensuring transparency and decentralization through on-chain settlement. This design involves deep collaboration with an external market maker network to build a central limit order book system with deep liquidity. In terms of fee structure, Satori Finance shows significant competitive advantages, with its V2 Maker/Taker fees as low as 0.02% and 0.04% respectively.

Satori Finance's founding team possesses deep experience in both traditional finance and the cryptocurrency industry. Co-founder and CTO George Wu previously worked as a derivatives trader in equities, rates, and commodities at leading global market maker Optiver for four years, laying a solid foundation for the platform's technical architecture and risk management systems. Co-founder and CEO Rahim Noorani brings extensive investment banking and venture capital experience, having worked as an Analyst at Goldman Sachs and later as an investor at Scale Ventures, providing crucial guidance for the platform's business strategy development.

Regarding financing, Satori Finance successfully completed a $10 million Seed round in May 2022, securing support from top-tier institutions in the crypto investment space. This round was co-led by Polychain Capital and Blockchange Ventures, with participation from Jump Crypto, Coinbase Ventures, Portal, Acala, Astar, Parallel, Clover, and other notable investors. It is especially worth mentioning that Polkadot co-founder Gavin Wood also participated in this round as a strategic advisor.

Based on the latest on-chain data, Satori Finance shows steady growth in trading volume. The platform's 24-hour perpetual contract trading volume reached $211 million, its 7-day volume was $1.402 billion, and its 30-day volume hit $5.75 billion, with cumulative historical trading volume breaking the $97.123 billion mark. In terms of Total Value Locked (TVL) distribution, the platform's total TVL is $2.23 million, with the zkSync Era chain holding the largest share at $1.31 million.

The platform's revenue growth trajectory is even more remarkable. Starting from $10,400 in fee revenue in Q3 2023, it reached $1.15 million by Q2 2025, with total revenue now at $2.76 million.