Every airdrop post will have at least one mention of a perp DEX, and it gets tiring.

While it has overtaken the entire meta, I still don’t have the motivation to continue trading on them.

If you’re a bad trader (like me), it’s time to skip it and look for another opportunity:

Perps is a completely different ball game than just holding spot tokens.

It’s not just adding leverage to trading, there are many new mechanisms that we need to understand, including:

• Funding rates

• Auto-deleveraging (ADL)

• Maintenance margin

Everything seems fine during normal market conditions without extreme volatility.

But the Oct 11 crash showed me how things start to break in these extreme scenarios:

• SLs didn’t trigger because there wasn’t liquidity

• Positions getting liquidated, even at 2x leverage

• Cross margin wiped out the portfolios of many traders

All the protection measures kicked in, which triggered a liquidation cascade (even without a major dump).

I’m grateful that I didn’t have any positions open during this period, as it would have caused considerable stress.

Even experienced traders were liquidated during the crash, which shows how unpredictable it can be.

And the reason why we’re taking more risks than we’re comfortable with is because of this:

I remember how many risk assessments I had to go through before I could trade options on a stock exchange.

It was so tedious, and I didn’t feel like trading it even when I was approved.

But crypto has made leverage so accessible, as long as you have a wallet:

Immediate access to trading up to 40x leverage, which preys on our gambling tendencies.

We have access to larger capital than we actually have, which sounds great in theory because we can make good returns, even when starting out from almost nothing.

But at the same time, leverage amplifies our losses, and we can lose our entire portfolio on a perp DEX.

Leveraged trading has become so mainstream that we look ‘stupid’ for not using it.

Especially when everyone else is making good returns.

We’ve been conditioned to think that it’s so easy to get a 10x or 100x trade in crypto.

Especially when everyone flexes their PnLs to trigger dopamine responses in the rest of us.

But we don’t even know if they are real since anything can be photoshopped.

Crypto decentralised access to the casino which preys on our gambling tendencies.

And most of us either wins big or loses badly when trading perps:

So many posts on the timeline make you feel bad for not farming perp DEXes.

KOLs flex their points and volume traded, and this induces FOMO in the rest of us.

Even when you’re not sure of how to trade (like me), you think it’s the ‘only’ way to get airdrops.

Some may even take more risks than they’re comfortable with to get the airdrop, but the allocation they receive may not cover all the fees they burn.

As more and more participants start to farm a perp DEX, it becomes -EV to farm them for points.

These are PvP systems with a limited number of points being distributed each week.

It gets harder to earn them because point distributions are done retroactively based on the overall activity.

So burning fees in the hope of getting more points is not worth it, unless you’re able to make a profit from your trading activity.

This could be a reason why Hyperliquid did so well because some (like silly me) were busy spamming volume on LogX and Orderly while barely doing much there.

I’ve stopped farming perp DEXes becahse I’m a bad trader and will lose money by trading frequently.

I probably could spend more time trying to learn how effective trading, but it takes up way too much time:

Maybe I’m doing it wrong, but trading perps takes up too much of my time.

Even while delta-neutral strategies seem like a risk-free and easy way to farm perp DEXes, there are a lot of nuances required to do it right:

• Getting the same entry and exit prices on both platforms

• Monitoring the funding rates to make it worth holding the position open

• Managing liquidations and margin used

• Transferring funds between exchanges to have enough collateral

I’ve tried opening a few positions and realised that it’s just not for me.

A lot of these technicalities are not shared by KOLs when they want to shill delta-neutral strategies.

Time is the worst asset to burn, because it cannot be earned back.

And I see perp DEXes as a huge time sink because there are too many factors to consider and monitor.

Maybe I’ll be the biggest fool when the TGE is out, but I don’t see a point in trading on multiple perp DEXes at the same time (apart from the airdrops):

I’m likely not the target audience for a perp DEX, but I don’t see a reason why we need so many of them.

I can’t find anything unique for most of them, and they all look almost the same, with a chart and the trade options.

In the past cycle, GMX and dYdX were major players, but both have faded in prominence with the rise of new platforms.

With the ‘success’ of Aster (and Lighter), everyone started launching their own perp DEX (including Justin Sun).

But I have zero motivation to explore the new ones, if they’re going to look and feel almost the same.

Everyone else and their family wallets are all doing the same actions, so it’s a waste of time trying to outcompete them.

Especially if I’m burning fees in hopes of the token.

I will skip grinding out in this meta, because I want to focus on other things:

I’m a horrible trader and it will stay that way.

FOMO made me trade on the wrong perp DEXes (Orderly and LogX), and I got burnt out because I kept incurring losses.

I don’t see a point in farming volume on perp DEXes anymore because it’s a race to the bottom.

Just like other campaigns on MM and Rainbow:

It becomes a competition of who is willing to burn the most fees.

And it doesn’t make sense for me to continuously lose money in the hopes of getting a good future airdrop.

But it doesn’t mean that I plan to skip perp DEXes entirely.

I’ll just do whatever I can, like making small trades whenever there are big market movements.

Trading is just one way to get rich in crypto, and we don’t need to be a good trader to be successful here.

There are many routes, including just exploring anything new and sharing our experiences.

Farming perp DEXes burns me out, so I’m doing this instead to build wealth: