How to trade US stocks using 100x contracts on Perp DEX?

The US stock perpetual futures have become a new investment direction for smart money. The three major platforms, trade.xyz, Ostium, and Lighter, provide up to 100 times leverage, supporting trading 24/7. This article will deeply compare the trading mechanisms, risk control designs, and actual performances of each platform. (Previous context: The crypto market has entered a Bear Market; let's see what major events the mainstream Perp DEXs have been up to recently?) (Background: The “invisible hand” of Perp DEXs: How centralized capital manipulates decentralized markets?) Money always flows to where there is more money, and liquidity always seeks deeper liquidity. The market capitalization of Bitcoin is $1.7 trillion, while the total market capitalization of the US stock market exceeds $50 trillion. Tech giants like Apple, Microsoft, and Nvidia each have market capitalizations that can crush half of the entire crypto market. An increasing number of smart crypto investors seem to have reached a subtle consensus: trading crypto is really not as good as trading US stocks. The US stock market is deeply tied to the global economy, geopolitics, and technological innovation; its volatility and topicality are far richer than any single cryptocurrency. This level of global attention is something that Meme coins and altcoins will never reach. Major Perp DEXs in the crypto industry, such as Hyperliquid, Trade.xyz, Ostium, and Lighter, have already launched US stock perpetual futures trading. Combining on-chain perpetual contracts, this financial tool familiar to the crypto market has made the US stock market even more exciting and appealing. After all, in the traditional finance world, ordinary people face numerous obstacles to trading US stocks: opening overseas brokerage accounts, waiting for lengthy approvals, enduring limited trading hours, and accepting leverage limits of 2 or at most 4 times. But now, the rules of the game are being rewritten. Perpetual contracts are combining with the US stock market in an unstoppable manner. And the US stock perpetual futures may be the next key investment direction for smart money. This article will delve into the core mechanisms of the three platforms: Trade.xyz, Ostium, and Lighter, comparing their differences in trading experience, risk control, and data performance. Which DEX has more stocks and stronger leverage? Let's first look at a few basic questions traders care about: the types of stocks supported, the available leverage multiples, and the fee structure. trade.xyz is the first perpetual DEX deployed based on the Hyperliquid HIP-3 protocol and is the largest perpetual DEX on HIP-3, launched in October 2025. Its biggest innovation is achieving 24/7/365 US stock trading, focusing on US stock indices (XYZ100) and individual stock perpetual contracts. It is currently in a growth mode with trading fee reductions of ≥90%, and the actual taker fee is only about 0.009%. The team is relatively mysterious, mainly comprising members from the Hyperunit team (@hyperunit), operating in an anonymous or low-key manner, and has not disclosed detailed founder information. There are community rumors that the Hyperunit team comes from Hyperliquid. There has been no external financing yet, as it is a Pre-TGE project. Related reading: “$2 billion trading volume in 10 days, another hit from Hyperliquid.” As shown in the figure, trade.xyz currently supports 11 types of US stock assets, with most stocks offering 10 times leverage, while the index product XYZ100 (tracking the Nasdaq) can go up to 20 times. The trading mode uses the CLOB model. The overall fee structure is also relatively friendly: under the current growth mode, the fee discount is ≥90%, with actual fees: taker ≤0.009% (about 9 cents /1000 dollars), maker: ≤0.003%. Lighter is a custom ZK-rollup perpetual trading platform based on Ethereum, officially launched in early 2025, known for its zero trading fees and provable fairness. The platform uses zero-knowledge proof technology to verify all order matching and settlement processes. The US stock trading feature was just launched on November 26. Founder Vladimir Novakovski has a strong background; he is a Russian immigrant, a gold medalist in American math and physics competitions, and joined Citadel as a trader after graduating from Harvard at 18, with 15 years of experience in financial technology. He co-founded the AI social platform Lunchclub (raising $30 million). Lighter just completed a $68 million Series B funding round in November 2025, with a valuation of $1.5 billion, led by Founders Fund (Peter Thiel) and Ribbit Capital, with other investors including a16z crypto, Lightspeed, Coatue, and other top institutions. As shown in the figure, Lighter supports 5 types of US stock assets, all with a uniform leverage of 10 times. The trading model used is also the CLOB model. In terms of transaction fees for US stock trading, Lighter adheres to its biggest selling point and feature: 0 fees, with retail investors having 0% taker and maker fees. For high-frequency trading and market maker users, the fees are Maker 0.002%, Taker 0.02%. In addition, Lighter will also calculate the funding rate, capped at ±0.5% per hour, based on the premium TWAP. Ostium is an open-source decentralized perpetual futures exchange built on Arbitrum, focusing on real-world asset (RWA) trading, including US stocks, indices, commodities, and forex. Its core features include up to 200 times leverage. Ostium Labs was founded in 2022 by former bridgewater fund employees, and the two founders are Harvard classmates. On October 6, 2023, it completed a $3.5 million seed funding round, led by General Catalyst and LocalGlobe, with participation from well-known institutions like Balaji Srinivasan, Susquehanna International Group (SIG), GSR, and others. Currently in the Pre-TGE stage, it operates a points system to reward active users. As shown in the figure, Ostium has the most comprehensive variety of US stocks, currently supporting 13 types of US stock assets. The leverage multiples are also relatively aggressive, varying depending on the liquidity and trading volume of different assets. Mainstream tech stocks like Apple, Amazon, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia, and Tesla support leverage up to 100 times. Crypto-related stocks like Coinbase, Robinhood, MicroStrategy, SBET, Circle, etc., support 30-50 times leverage. Unlike the CLOB model of the first two, Ostium uses the Arbitrum AMM pool-to-pool model for its trading mode. In terms of fee structure, the opening fee is fixed at 0.05%, with no closing fee; oracle machine fees are charged $0.10 each time…