Dialogue with Aster, Lighter, and Helix: What is the business approach and future landscape of Perp DEX?

Written by: Xianrang

On November 14, members of the Lighter, Aster, and Helix teams jointly held an online roundtable to discuss the future landscape of the on-chain perpetual contract market. During the session, guests talked about the different operational strategies of various PerpDEXs, their distinctive features and future layouts, and also provided insights into the development of the Perp market. This article is a written record of the roundtable, containing a lot of valuable information, and we recommend everyone to read and share it.

Host: Tonight we are going to discuss a very important topic, which is the business strategy and future landscape of PerpDEX. We will focus on several core topics, such as the structural dilemmas of the current PerpDEX track, how on-chain Perp and on-chain finance map to the real market, and the logic behind that. In addition, we will also discuss how various project parties can address issues of user growth, liquidity, and long-term user retention.

Today's guests are:

1. Ken—Helix Core Contributor

2. Amber—Aster BD Head

3. Mr.block—Lighter Core Contributor

The first topic today is: What is the core advantage of on-chain PerpDEX that is the hardest for competitors to replicate? Why?

Amber——Aster BD Head:

This question is very interesting. From the nature of PerpDex's products, everyone is actually working on trading infrastructure, and liquidity is undoubtedly the most critical part. The so-called advantages of PerpDEX mainly lie in the smoothness of trading and the depth of the liquidity pool. For Aster, we hope to stand out in several aspects.

First, we have adopted an order book and a full-chain trading model, allowing users to choose based on their needs—do you want to execute complex strategies like a professional trader, or do you prefer to perform simple operations with ease?

For the latter, they can use the up to 1001x leverage provided by Aster and an easy-to-operate trading model. This is our first featured mechanism: offering two trading models, allowing users to choose the suitable product based on the experience they desire.

Secondly, we made early arrangements in terms of privacy. We launched a feature called “Hidden Orders,” which is very practical for many large investors. If they do not want their order information to be fully disclosed, they can use Hidden Orders.

Of course, the hidden orders have not yet fully realized their potential, as our own public chain has not been officially launched. The next important direction is to launch an independent public chain specifically for order book services. At that time, trading information will be both transparent and auditable while maintaining privacy. Whether large holders or ordinary users, if they do not want their positions or order information to be exposed to others, they can trade under the premise of protecting privacy, while the entire system still retains data auditability.

Therefore, allowing users to trade in a privacy environment is currently a significant differentiator and advantage of Aster compared to other PerpDEX.

Mr. Block Chris - Core Contributor of Lighter:

When it comes to technical differences, each company has its unique aspects, such as the dark pool mentioned earlier. However, I believe the core aspect is to examine the “DNA” of each project. Aster's DNA is Binance; without Binance, Aster would not be as large as it is today.

The DNA of Hyperliquid is its supporting community; while the DNA of Lighter comes from Peter Thiel's Founders Fund and Ribbit Capital, as well as Haun Ventures and Robinhood.

Therefore, when retail investors choose which PerpDex to participate in, aside from the product itself, the most important factor is to look at its DNA, which is also the biggest difference among these three DEXs.

Another significant difference is whether a Token has been issued. Currently, the core players that haven't issued tokens are Edgex and Lighter. Therefore, retail investors tend to favor platforms that have not yet issued tokens when selecting their “mining” targets. The current trading volume data may also be inflated, as everyone is frantically increasing the volume.

In comparison, the data from Aster and Hyperliquid is more authentic, as they have already gone through the phases of trading mining and token issuance. Therefore, to truly predict who will emerge victorious in the end, I think we need to wait until June or July next year, taking into account the changes in market cycles to see clearly.

I personally experienced the entire DeFi Summer and witnessed the competition among all DEXs at that time, including Uniswap, Balancer, and Curve, as well as many Uniswap fork projects like Pancakeswap, etc. I feel that the competitive landscape of PerpDex now is similar to that of the DeFi Summer back then. Hyperliquid has succeeded, and everyone wants to follow suit.

If Hyperliquid hadn't succeeded back then, but instead Polymarket had, then everyone here today might not be working on PerpDex, but rather on prediction markets. So, this once again highlights the importance of timing, location, and human factors.

Ken——Core Contributor of Helix:

I am a core contributor to Helix, which is a PerpDEX deployed on the Injective chain.

Returning to the question itself, if I were to say what Helix's core advantage is that is the hardest to replicate, I believe the key lies in the fact that Helix is not just a simple perpetual contract DEX, but rather built on the high-performance and modular public chain of Injective. On Helix, in addition to cryptocurrencies, stocks, commodities, foreign exchange, and various RWA assets can all be traded, which provides a truly unified multi-asset trading experience.

Furthermore, Helix also leverages Injective's RWA module to support the launch of various innovative financial derivatives. For example, we have recently opened trading exposure related to Pre-IPO and private equity markets, including OpenAI and SpaceX. This is essentially unique among current on-chain trading platforms, and even in some centralized platform systems, such products are scarce. Helix perfectly fills this gap.

In contrast, other DEXs or trading platforms may still focus on a single vertical track. To truly replicate a system like Helix—one that combines the matching speed, depth, and liquidity of centralized trading platforms with a fully on-chain transparent multi-asset trading engine—it not only technically requires a high-performance blockchain as the underlying architecture, but also needs to adopt a modular design to support rapid iteration and flexible on-chain integration of diverse assets.

This model, which integrates an extreme trading experience with a broad and deep range of assets, combined with an experience close to CEX level and end-to-end transparency, collectively forms Helix's long-term advantages that are difficult to replicate. It also makes us believe that Helix has the ability to lead the evolution of the next generation of on-chain financial systems.

Host Moonlight: Thank you to the three guests for the wonderful discussion. I see a clear consensus: the competitive barriers of on-chain perpetual contract platforms are no longer limited to product functionality itself, but also include mechanism design, liquidity, market structure, and a comprehensive advantage formed by continuously listening to the community and iterating optimization.

Next, we would like to delve into a topic. Have major projects started to support RWA assets? As we all know, RWA is a very hot track in this cycle. How do you view the role and importance of RWA in reshaping the DeFi ecosystem?

Ken—Helix:

Helix currently supports various trading markets related to RWA, covering stocks, commodities, foreign exchange, and other non-cryptocurrency assets. On Helix, perpetual contracts for stocks and commodities are typical representatives of the native migration of traditional financial markets onto the blockchain. In these RWA markets, Helix still maintains good liquidity and depth, which makes it one of the few multi-asset trading platforms currently on the chain.

From Helix's perspective, the RWA track has considerable long-term development potential. There are a large number of users globally who wish to trade traditional financial instruments but are constrained by regulations or geographical limitations—such as investors interested in trading Apple or Tesla stocks, or users interested in Pre-IPO assets like OpenAI and SpaceX. They all hope to participate in the RWA market.

Another case is that Helix launched the first derivative market tracking the rental price index of NVIDIA H 100 graphics cards a few months ago. This fully reflects Helix's concept of “putting all assets on-chain.” We do not want RWA to be limited to stocks, but rather hope to expand it to a more diversified range of financial derivatives. Looking ahead, we hope Helix can become the preferred platform for decentralized commodity or foreign exchange trading.

Amber—Aster:

For Aster, we have already launched tokenized stocks, including multiple mainstream underlying assets such as Apple and Tesla, as well as gold (XAU) and other underlying assets.

We are always trying to list more traditional financial assets because for Aster, it is not just a PerpDEX, but a one-stop trading platform across the entire chain. Therefore, asset diversity is crucial, and RWA is the core cornerstone.

From my personal perspective, on-chain stocks and RWA assets significantly lower the trading threshold for users. Once these assets are on-chain, accessibility will be greatly enhanced, and both the assets themselves and the markets they target will gain broader liquidity.

In addition, for certain specific RWA assets, they inherently possess real yield potential. This is particularly important in DeFi — what we often refer to as “real yield.” Users who experienced DeFi Summer may remember that everyone was frantically chasing high returns, only to later realize it came at the cost of overleveraging token value. However, assets like RWA, which have actual underlying yield support, can inject real yield sources into the DeFi sector once they are on-chain and are expected to become incremental assets for the next phase of DeFi.

From Aster's perspective, we have been actively seeking and promoting the integration of various types of RWA assets. At the same time, we place great emphasis on the compliance and security of asset listings, ensuring that users' transactions do not encounter any issues. Therefore, we continue to explore the diversification of RWA and stock-type asset listings, striving to expand the boundaries of on-chain finance in a robust manner.

Host Moonlight: Thank you for sharing, this is indeed fantastic! Building a one-stop trading platform undoubtedly brings great convenience to users. RWA assets, especially the US stocks and gold mentioned by the teachers, are becoming new traffic entrances and differentiated growth points in the current Perp DEX field. Next, we would like to delve into a question:

Liquidity is the lifeblood of all trading platforms. In the current market environment, many people believe that the rhythm of this bull market is difficult to grasp. We would like to ask the teachers, what specific strategies or mechanisms do you have to attract and retain deep liquidity in the long term that you can share with the audience present?

Ken—Helix:

Liquidity is absolutely core to any trading platform. Helix's approach is to combine the depth of liquidity at the ecological level with the platform's own liquidity mechanisms to build a relatively complete system, thereby maintaining depth in the long term.

From an infrastructure perspective, Injective has a built-in exchange module, while Helix is technically deeply integrated with this module. This module comes with a cross-chain order book matching system, giving Helix a natural advantage in liquidity matching. When users trade on Helix Markets, interacting with Injective's Exchange module allows all DeFi projects based on INJ to share liquidity.

In addition, Injective also provides incentive support for liquidity in other ways. For example, Helix directly offers an “Open Liquidity Program” for Injective, which introduces liquidity with depth and programmatic periodic incentives to multiple trading platforms. This mechanism allows Helix to maintain high trading volumes and tight spreads across different market environments, providing traders with a stable trading experience even during increased market volatility.

On top of the ecological liquidity, Helix has also launched its own market-making robot incentive mechanism, aimed at rewarding those market-making robots that maintain liquidity and stability. These robots provide a relatively stable algorithmic liquidity foundation for the platform, and their behavior patterns resemble an incentive for a group of small professional market makers, binding them to the Helix platform long-term, thus helping to maintain overall health.

It is worth mentioning that ordinary users can also participate in this program without any barriers. Just enter the BOT page of “Liquid Pool” on the Helix website or app, hold the corresponding assets, or even a single-sided asset to join, and earn incentives in real-time.

Finally, in the future product roadmap, Helix will launch an important liquidity upgrade plan - which we call the “Mega Vault.” This mechanism will integrate various existing liquidity incentives to build a more structured and transparent reward system, emphasizing returns based on real contributions and utility.

Amber—Aster:

Regarding liquidity, there is a core concept: it cannot be generated solely through short-term subsidies, but needs to be naturally attracted by building a healthy and positive market structure.

Let me give you an example: Aster currently adopts an order book model, relying on professional market makers to provide liquidity. But this is essentially a “chicken and egg” problem—if there is not enough user trading volume, even professional market makers will have concerns when providing liquidity.

Therefore, our core strategy is divided into several levels:

First, activate the “flywheel effect” through early incentives. We provide liquidity incentives for early market makers to help them reduce initial costs, thereby building a foundational liquidity environment for users. When users are attracted by a good trading experience, trading volume increases, and market makers will naturally be more willing to provide better liquidity depth, thus forming a positive cycle.

Second, we provide a powerful trading infrastructure for professional teams. We continuously optimize our native API interfaces and various trading parameters to ensure that our partnered market makers can quote and place orders more efficiently and accurately, thereby providing users with deeper order books and a more stable trading environment.

Thirdly, we aim to design a long-term ecological binding and incentive system. We hope that professional liquidity providers will not only come to trade, but also stay in the ecosystem for the long term. This will be related to the independent public chain we are about to launch—we will design mechanisms that allow professional liquidity providers and all Token holders to participate more deeply in ecological construction. This essentially completes a transformation from “pure liquidity providers” to “ecological identity binders.” Once this identity binding is achieved, as Mr. Block mentioned earlier, users who recognize the platform's “DNA” will stay here for a longer time.

Finally, although our current order book liquidity is still dominated by professional market makers, we are also exploring the launch of new assets and developing a liquidity solution that does not rely entirely on professional teams. Everyone can follow our official Twitter, and we will launch this new solution to the market as soon as possible.

Host Moonlight: Overall, the liquidity construction of PerpDEX has clearly evolved from the early short-term reward model to a more structured and well-developed system design. Next, we would like to ask the experts to elaborate further from the product perspective: Could you provide more details on what new features will be launched in the future to assist traders in operating more conveniently? For example:

Will trading bots be launched, especially smart tools that incorporate AI technology?

Are there plans to develop a copy trading system or portfolio analysis feature?

Will there be significant upgrades in the mobile experience? After all, many users are “mobile users” and it's not convenient to sit in front of the computer for long periods.

Could the teachers please share what new features will be launched next?

Ken——Helix：

Currently, Helix is simultaneously advancing development in multiple product directions, with the core goal always being to provide traders with a more complete and smoother trading experience. For example, our data dashboard, trading bot integration, and portfolio analysis features have now become important components of the Helix ecosystem. We will continue to iterate and optimize these existing modules.

Currently, one of Helix's key development directions is to comprehensively enhance the mobile experience—this was also mentioned by the host just now. We have noticed that an increasing number of users are accustomed to trading anytime and anywhere. Therefore, we have recently invested a significant amount of resources in mobile development, including optimizing page loading and interaction speeds, simplifying interface layers, and ensuring that even on mobile devices, multi-asset trading scenarios can be clearly presented, allowing users to quickly complete opening positions, adjusting positions, and various risk control operations on small screens.

Our goal is very clear: users can complete all position management, market tracking, and order execution on mobile without relying on the PC side. In the future, Helix will also introduce AI technology, enabling the platform to support more efficient AI trading bots and user-defined strategies, providing users with an experience that is no less than any centralized trading platform.

In summary, the primary principle we adhere to has always been consistent: to provide traders with a high-performance, information-dense, and sufficiently convenient on-chain trading experience, accessible from any location and on any device.

Amber——Aster:

First of all, our mobile application has been launched, and everyone can download and use it now. The mobile end has always been a key focus for us.

Secondly, we recently launched the campaign for AI Arena. Currently, numerous developers and teams are building various trading tools based on Aster, especially given the current focus on AI trading strategies. Through AI Arena, we collaborate with ecosystem partners to筛选 and introduce a batch of high-quality AI strategy tools, which users can now use for trading on the Aster platform. We hope that through this collaboration, we can continuously introduce more mature and outstanding products from the ecosystem for traders.

Thirdly, at the product level, the top priority is our independent public chain. It should be noted that this public chain is not a complete ecological public chain, but is designed specifically to serve the order book system. Our goal is to achieve a high-performance trading experience comparable to centralized trading platforms, while ensuring that the data on the chain is fully transparent and traceable. For traders, this means that you can enjoy performance and smoothness that is on par with CEX while fully controlling your own data. This will be the core of our next steps.

Host Moonlight: Currently, a large number of traders still use centralized trading platforms as their main battleground. As Teacher Amber specifically emphasized, the smoothness of PerpDex today is already comparable to CEX. So, what exactly are the reasons that encourage a broader range of users to turn to on-chain trading, or at least allocate a portion of their assets to on-chain?

Ken——Helix：

I believe that for traders who are already accustomed to using CEX for high-frequency trading, transitioning to Helix or other decentralized perpetual contract platforms means gaining complete self-custody and transparent security guarantees without sacrificing the trading experience.

All order placements, position updates, and liquidation actions related to perpetual contracts must be completed publicly on the blockchain. This is crucial, as it means there is no “black box” matching during the trading process, no invisible internal counterparties, and one does not have to bear additional risks. The black swan risks that have existed in some centralized trading platforms or institutions in the past—such as unilateral freezes on withdrawals, regulatory or compliance issues causing platform problems, or operational failures leading to service interruptions, even some large platforms have experienced similar situations—may be bearable for spot trading, but such risks are completely unacceptable for contract trading.

Looking back over the past year in the market, it is not difficult to find relevant cases, whether it is hacker attacks or so-called “pulling the plug” incidents; such cases are quite common. Even if some platforms offer compensation afterward, the process is very lengthy and often fails to cover all losses. For perpetual contract traders, a single spike incident can wipe out profits accumulated over months or even years.

For high-frequency or heavy traders, these risks present real and hidden counterparty risks. The core value of on-chain transactions lies in solving this problem by eliminating single points of trust and failure: users' assets are always kept in wallets under their control, and the transaction and settlement logic is clearly defined and publicly verifiable by smart contracts, preventing the platform from arbitrarily changing user positions or restricting asset withdrawals.

In addition, airdrops and other welfare mechanisms in the on-chain ecosystem provide traders with additional benefits that are difficult to obtain on centralized platforms. On Helix, users can enjoy the security of transparency and self-custody, while also sharing in the potential returns brought about by the growth of Helix and the entire Injective ecosystem.

I believe that the combination of these two aspects—the trading experience comparable to CEX and the unique security and earning opportunities on-chain—is precisely the most attractive advantage of current on-chain trading, as well as the core reason and vision for encouraging everyone to gradually migrate to on-chain.

Amber——Aster：

Ken has already covered many core points, and I would like to add a few more on this basis:

Firstly, from Aster's perspective, we are committed to providing an experience that is almost indistinguishable from centralized trading platforms. The logic behind this is clear: the trading processes of CEX have been highly optimized for user experience, and most users are already accustomed to it. What we are doing is providing users with an on-chain trading platform that does not require KYC and offers a one-stop solution, without sacrificing this smoothness. We hope that when users transition to on-chain, they do not have to do so at the cost of trading efficiency.

Secondly, why should users shift from centralized to decentralized? In addition to the basic advantages of no KYC, asset self-custody, free deposits and withdrawals, and transaction transparency, there is a key point regarding the speed and flexibility of new asset listings. For centralized exchanges, the listing of new assets typically involves a lengthy review process, which is relatively cumbersome. In contrast, decentralized exchanges operate differently— as we have seen, the reason platforms like Uniswap and PancakeSwap continue to experience increasing trading volumes and more users is that they can list new assets more quickly.

The same is true for Aster. We continue to explore ways to accelerate the onboarding process of new assets, allowing users to trade with us even before some assets are listed on centralized platforms. This is one of the reasons why more and more users are starting to pay attention to and use on-chain perpetual contract platforms: you can access emerging assets earlier, and the earlier you participate, the greater the potential opportunity.

Host Moonlight: In my opinion, the future trend may not necessarily be a choice between “on-chain” or “centralized”, but rather a possibility of both coexisting. More and more users will gradually migrate their capital exposure to on-chain. For example, when I first entered the space, I primarily used centralized trading platforms, but after experiencing this cycle, I began to try decentralized platforms, and the experience was excellent. Now, I use both. This may be a viable path for PerpDEX to achieve user growth.

When it comes to growth paths, we must mention how to attract users. In the last cycle, many people achieved considerable returns by participating in airdrops, attracting a large number of users' attention, and even giving rise to professional studios and “hair-collecting groups.” However, users inevitably experience fatigue, especially when faced with “anti-harvesting” situations.

I am curious about how the teachers design the airdrop mechanism to avoid attracting only short-term users looking for quick gains, and instead truly convert rewards and activities into long-term retention of high-quality, highly loyal users?

Ken——Helix:

This is indeed an eternal topic in blockchain projects - how to ensure the fairness of airdrops and incentives. I would like to introduce Helix's current approach to incentive design from two aspects.

First, it is based on the open liquidity incentive program of the Injective blockchain. As long as anyone provides liquidity through the liquidity pool robot on Helix, they can receive corresponding trading incentives. Depending on the activity and market depth of the supported trading pairs, users can view the amount of incentives available in real-time on Helix's liquidity reward dashboard.

Secondly, Helix has also established its own points system, but it is fundamentally different from the common “take and run” model seen in the market. We adopt a multi-round, continuously accumulating “dark accumulation” mechanism, which has several common characteristics: it encourages users to engage in real transactions on Helix, maintain continuous interaction, and even in cases where certain perpetual trading positions are liquidated, as long as users remain active during market fluctuations, they can still earn points.

For Helix, real engagement is far more important than artificially inflated trading volumes. Therefore, we have not deliberately established overly quantitative scoring rules. Once the rules become too straightforward, it is easy to trigger strategic arbitrage, leading to industrialized volume manipulation and monetization behavior. On the surface, the data may seem impressive, but it actually harms the long-term value of the product and ecosystem — users are merely “pretending to use the product” and are not truly retained.

At Helix, we assess the effectiveness of the points program through a comprehensive evaluation of user activity and real trading behavior, focusing more on the quality of participation rather than simply piling up TVL or trading data. Therefore, Helix's points system is designed around real transactions and genuine behaviors, aiming to incentivize, align, and reward those who are truly traders, rather than short-term arbitrageurs.

Amber——Aster:

Regarding incentive design, Aster primarily focuses on two core aspects: behavioral quality and identity binding.

First of all, in terms of behavioral quality, unlike many trading platforms that solely rely on trading volume mining, we do not only focus on the volume metric. We comprehensively evaluate multiple dimensions, such as whether users maintain stable positions and whether there are continuous trading behaviors, among others. Essentially, we observe and recognize each trader's genuine participation on the platform from a more holistic perspective. Behavioral quality itself is the core basis of our incentive system.

Secondly, we emphasize identity binding. What we aim to build is an incentive ecosystem with a value closed loop, rather than a one-time activity. Aster's goal is not only to attract users through events but also to hope to convert users into long-term, high-quality participants through our close interaction and cooperation with the community.

The logic behind this is quite clear: I believe everyone has noticed that since the TGE, Aster's product iteration speed has been very fast, and we are continuously optimizing and updating. Users may initially learn about us through activities like airdrops, but we hope that after actual trading and providing feedback, they can feel that we truly value their voices. By actively responding to user feedback and quickly iterating our products, we hope users can grow alongside Aster.

In fact, some early airdrop holders have already felt this over the past two to three months. I also hope that new users who join us will feel through this close interaction during their participation in the community and activities that we sincerely hope to retain everyone and work together to create an on-chain trading platform that is as good as CEX and truly complete and mature.