Author: CoinGecko

Compiled by: Deep Tide TechFlow

Summary: The core data from CoinGecko's annual report is enough to illustrate the point: the trading volume of DEX perpetual contracts surged by 346% year-on-year, while CEX open interest decreased by 20.8% during the same period, indicating that funds are systematically shifting from centralized to decentralized systems.

This article is more than just a collection of numbers; it clearly explains why this migration happened, why Hyperliquid was able to surpass Coinbase International, and what these platforms are becoming after HIP-3.

The full text is as follows:

In 2025, perpetual contract exchanges—especially decentralized platforms—experienced explosive growth, with total trading volume reaching $92.9 trillion (a year-on-year increase of 64.6%), fundamentally shifting the crypto market from spot trading to a price discovery mechanism dominated by derivatives.

Key points:

DEX perps increased by 346% to $6.7 trillion, while CEX open interest decreased by 20.8%. This represents a large-scale capital migration from centralized to decentralized infrastructure, driven by platforms such as Hyperliquid (ranked seventh globally with a trading volume of $2.9 trillion).
Capital efficiency has driven adoption: Perps allows traders to gain exposure with less capital through leverage, profit in both directions (which will be crucial during the downturn in Q4 2025) and avoid the friction of physical settlement.
HIP-3 enables permissionless listing of any asset with a price source, transforming platforms like Hyperliquid from “crypto exchanges” into 24/7 global financial infrastructure capable of trading everything from commodities to pre-IPO equity.

Why is PERPS growing faster than spot trading?

Chart: Top 5 decentralized perpetual contract exchanges on CoinGecko by 24-hour trading volume as of March 2, 2026

Capital efficiency: Doing more with less money

The fundamental advantage of perpetual contracts lies in capital efficiency. In the spot market, buying $10,000 worth of Bitcoin requires $10,000 in capital, which is locked up during the holding period. In the perpetual market, leverage allows for the same exposure with only a small fraction of the capital, freeing up liquidity for other positions or strategies.

Besides speculation, perpetual contracts also allow market participants to:

Hedging existing positions without selling the underlying assets (which would trigger a tax event); arbitrage spreads across trading venues; expressing directional views without physical settlement; and deploying funds across multiple opportunities simultaneously.

Every dollar in the perpetual market plays a greater role than one dollar in the spot market. For traders, funds, and institutions optimizing capital returns, the balance is tilting towards perps.

Market Maturity: Following the Path of Traditional Finance

The explosive growth of crypto derivatives mirrors a pattern observed in every mature financial market. In traditional finance, the derivatives market is far larger than the underlying spot market, often by 10 to 50 times. For example, the notional value of the interest rate swap market exceeds $400 trillion, while the global bond market is approximately $130 trillion.

The crypto market is simply catching up. As the market matures and more experienced participants enter the market, the ratio of derivatives to spot trading volume continues to widen. The top ten exchanges alone generated $92.9 trillion in perpetual contract trading volume, far exceeding the total spot trading volume of all crypto exchanges combined.

Hedging factors: Maintaining resilience during downturns

Perhaps the most compelling evidence for the value proposition of perpetual contracts emerged during the market downturn in the fourth quarter of 2025. While the spot market contracted and investor sentiment deteriorated, trading volume on the top ten perpetual contract exchanges increased by 64.6% year-over-year.

Why? Because perpetual contracts allow traders to profit in both directions. When prices fall, short positions profit significantly, and hedging activity intensifies. The market's ability to express a bearish view keeps funds active and trading volume high, even when spot buying has dried up.

In traditional pure spot markets, falling prices mean reduced activity. This is evident in the decline of CEX spot trading volume from $2.21 trillion in January 2025 to a low of $0.95 trillion in December.

However, in perpetual markets, fluctuations in any direction represent opportunities. Data from 2025 demonstrates that this dynamic has fundamentally altered the structure of the crypto market.

Chart: Comparison of spot and perpetual contract trading volumes on CEX and DEX

Great Migration: DEX vs CEX

Chart: Top 10 Perp CEX and Perp DEX Trading Volume

Source: CoinGecko 2025 Crypto Industry Report

While centralized exchanges still dominate in terms of absolute size, the real story of 2025 is the rapid rise of decentralized perpetual contract exchanges. Perp DEX saw its trading volume surge by 346%, reaching a record $6.7 trillion for the year.

To get a feel for this leap: in October 2025 alone, the peak month, Perp DEX processed $1.18 trillion in trading volume, more than four times that of January 2025.

Breaking the deadlock in DEX

By 2025, Perp DEX had solved the fundamental usability problem that previously kept users on centralized platforms:

User experience parity: The notion of "clumsy DEX operation" will end in 2025. Hyperliquid and Lighter offer interfaces that are virtually indistinguishable from Binance or Coinbase. Order book depth is sufficient, and execution is nearly instantaneous; ordinary traders no longer feel like they are using a decentralized platform.
Competitive Fee Structures: Early DEXs charged a premium for decentralization. By 2025, competition and technological advancements had brought Perp DEX fees down to par with or even lower than CEX fees. Platforms like Hyperliquid even began offering taker rebates as high as 90%, rivaling the most competitive CEX fee structures.
Scalable Performance: Early blockchain-based DEXs couldn't handle the trading volumes required for serious derivatives trading. The emergence of dedicated Layer 1 chains and optimized rollups has solved this problem. For example, Hyperliquid's custom L1 can process thousands of transactions per second with confirmation times of less than one second—performance comparable to centralized infrastructure.

Divergence in open interest

According to CoinGecko's "2025 Crypto Industry Annual Report," open interest on CEXs decreased by 20.8% in 2025, while open interest on DEXs surged by 229.6%.

Open interest—the total value of open derivative contracts—represents committed capital and conviction. This divergence tells us that traders are not just "testing out" the speed of DEX trading; they are building substantial long-term positions on-chain.

This shift represents a reallocation of capital from centralized to decentralized infrastructure. Once this migration begins, network effects accelerate it. More liquidity attracts more traders, which in turn attract more market makers, further deepening liquidity.

The Rise of Hyperliquid and Lighter

The 2025 perpetual contract exchange rankings reveal significant changes in market structure. Two decentralized platforms have made a strong entry into the top ten, replacing established centralized players:

@HyperliquidX: Ranked seventh globally, with an annual trading volume of $2.9 trillion;
@Lighter_xyz: Ranked tenth globally, with an annual transaction volume of $1.3 trillion.

In 2025, Hyperliquid's trading volume surpassed that of Coinbase International. This decentralized platform, less than two years old, outpaced a publicly traded exchange backed by billions of dollars in capital and years of operating history.

Coinbase International processed approximately $1.4 trillion in 2025. Hyperliquid, on the other hand, processed $2.9 trillion—more than double the former.

Infrastructure is key to success

Hyperliquid's secret to success isn't clever marketing or token incentives, but its infrastructure. The platform has built its own Layer 1 blockchain (HyperCore) specifically optimized for perpetual contract trading.

This architectural decision completely ended the notion that "DEXs are slow." By controlling the entire technology stack from consensus mechanisms to matching engines, Hyperliquid achieved: transaction confirmation in less than one second; zero gas fees for market makers; a throughput of 20,000+ orders per second; and 100% online throughout 2025.

In contrast, Ethereum-based DEXs suffer from network congestion and variable gas costs, while other L2 solutions rely on external infrastructure. Hyperliquid's vertical integration delivers a user experience indistinguishable from centralized exchanges, while retaining the security guarantees of complete decentralization.

Lighter followed a similar path, albeit with different technical implementations. The conclusion is clear: to compete with centralized exchanges, DEXs must control the fate of their own infrastructure.

Beyond Encryption: Hyperliquid's HIP-3 Revolution

In late 2025, Hyperliquid implemented HIP-3 (Hyperliquid Improvement Proposal 3), fundamentally changing its market structure.

Unlicensed listing

Previously, opening a new perpetual marketplace required validator approval—a semi-centralized process. HIP-3 introduced a permissionless perpetual marketplace deployment mechanism.

Any builder can now create a perpetual market for any asset with a reliable price source. No tokens required, no permissions required, and no listing fees.

The immediate impact was explosive. Within weeks, a perpetual market for assets that had never been traded on-chain before appeared on the platform.

A bridge connecting traditional finance

By February 2026, the impact of HIP-3 has become increasingly clear. Platforms like Hyperliquid are no longer just "crypto derivatives exchanges," but are becoming global financial market infrastructure.

The current perpetual market on Hyperliquid includes:

Commodities: perpetual contracts for gold and silver that track COMEX futures; crude oil and natural gas; agricultural products (wheat, corn, soybeans).
Equity: Pre-IPO companies such as SpaceX and OpenAI; synthetic exposure to major technology stocks; stock index perpetual contracts (S&P 500, Nasdaq 100).
Alternative assets: prediction markets (election results, economic indicators); sports betting derivatives; weather derivatives.

This expansion means that Perp DEX is becoming the infrastructure for 24/7 global price discovery.

A market that never closes

Traditional financial markets will close—the New York Stock Exchange closes at 4 p.m. Eastern Time, and the CME futures market ceases trading Sunday evening. This will create friction, information gaps, and opportunity costs.

A blockchain-based perpetual market never closes. While traditional markets go offline, on-chain markets continue to operate, incorporating new information in real time.

Imagine this: Major news breaks on Sunday evening—a geopolitical crisis, corporate bankruptcies, or unexpected central bank moves. Traditional markets won't price this information until Monday morning, potentially creating gaps and misalignments.

Perpetual contracts on platforms like Hyperliquid price information instantly. As liquidity in these markets deepens, they may begin to influence opening prices in traditional markets—on-chain 24/7 prices are becoming a benchmark for traditional markets to catch up to on Monday mornings.

Conclusion: New Frontiers for Perpetual Contracts

The data from 2025 tells a clear story: perpetual contracts have become the dominant force in crypto trading, and decentralized platforms are rapidly closing the gap with their centralized counterparts.

The numbers speak for themselves: the top ten perpetual contract exchanges saw a trading volume of $92.9 trillion; DEX perpetual trading grew by 346%; DEX open interest surged by 229.6%; leading DEXs have replaced major CEXs in the rankings.

With the creation of permissionless markets becoming possible, blockchain infrastructure is achieving performance parity with centralized systems, blurring the lines between "crypto exchanges" and "global financial markets." These platforms are moving towards "on-chain financial markets"—where any asset with a price source can be traded 24/7, fully self-custodied, and with transparent settlement.

The spot trading model—buying and physically settling assets—will persist. However, perpetual contracts will dominate in price discovery, hedging, and efficient capital speculation.

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