Overview of Sui Network Perp DEX: What are the differences between the four major protocols?

The decentralized perpetual contract exchange (Perp DEX) landscape has evolved post-FTX, with daily trading volumes exceeding $30 billion, highlighting strong demand for decentralized derivatives.
Sui Network offers advantages for Perp DEX development, including high performance, low latency, an object-centric data model, zkLogin for seamless onboarding, and sponsored trading to reduce costs.
Key early builders on Sui include Bluefin, Astros (NAVI Protocol), Aftermath Finance, and Typus Finance, each with distinct mechanisms and trading models.

Protocol Comparisons:

Bluefin: Combines off-chain order books with on-chain settlement, achieving low latency (<500ms) and supporting a wide range of assets. Daily trading volume ranges between $40M-$70M, with BTC-PERP dominating (~60%).
Aftermath (testnet): Fully on-chain order book model, currently focused on improving liquidity before a full launch.
Astros (beta): A DEX aggregator + Perp DEX by NAVI Protocol, using an order book mechanism. Beta-stage trading volume hit $300M, likely driven by incentives.
Typus Perp: GMX-style model with a TLP pool (TVL >$700K) and 100%+ APR. Daily volume is ~$200K.

Key Observations:

Order book models dominate Sui’s Perp DEX ecosystem, suggesting alignment with Sui’s architecture or user preference.
Limited asset diversity presents an opportunity, especially in memecoin trading, to boost volume.
Incentive mechanisms may be crucial to attract traders, as Sui’s Perp DEX ecosystem is still nascent compared to EVM/Solana competitors.

The article concludes that beyond technical innovation, compelling incentives are needed to drive adoption and growth in Sui’s Perp DEX space.

Author: 0xShinChan , Crypto KOL

Compiled by: Felix, PANews

The post-FTX era has completely changed the trading landscape, driving a large number of users to decentralized perpetual contract exchanges (Perp DEX). The daily trading volume of these platforms now easily exceeds US$30 billion, which shows that users have a huge demand for decentralized derivatives.

However, the fragmented nature of early Perp DEXs, often affected by UI/UX availability, liquidity depth, and price feed reliability, hindered their widespread adoption. Starting in 2024, the market landscape began to change, marked by the emergence of innovative models such as GMX PVP and dYdX order books. Today, the lending, DEX, and yield trading protocol teams on Sui Network are enriching their product lines, including perpetual contract trading.

Sui’s Advantages in Perp DEX

Sui actually offers several compelling features that make it a strong contender for building a perpetual DEX.

High performance and low latency: Sui’s parallel transaction processing enables high throughput and low latency, which is critical for efficient order matching and smooth trading experience on DEX.
Object-centric data model: Sui's unique data model supports efficient storage and parallel processing of account and asset data.
zkLogin enables seamless onboarding: The zkLogin feature simplifies the user onboarding process, allowing accounts to be created using familiar Web2 credentials, reducing experience barriers for new traders.

Sponsored Trading: Sui’s sponsored trading feature reduces user costs and improves the overall trading experience.

Here are some of Sui's early builders:

Bluefin
Astros powered by NAVI Protocol
Aftermath Finance
Typus Finance GLP Trading Model

Kriya is also about to launch its Perp DEX.

Before we dive into each one, here’s an overall comparison chart.

The following will compare and study the various protocols and analyze their transaction characteristics, protocol mechanisms and performance.

Bluefin

As an established Perp DEX on Sui, Bluefin combines a fast-matching off-chain order book with a secure on-chain settlement engine. The protocol liquidity is managed by professional market makers (MM):

Leveraging Sui's parallel transaction processing capabilities, Bluefin has extremely low order execution latency and fast on-chain final confirmation (less than 500 milliseconds). In addition, it supports almost all perpetual contract assets on Sui, covering the widest range, including $DEEP, $WAL, and $TRUMP.

The 24-hour perpetual contract trading volume on the Bluefin platform is between 40 million and 70 million US dollars, indicating that the platform has high trading activity.
The BTC-PERP trading pair typically accounts for the largest share of daily trading volume (around 60%), followed by SUI-PERP and ETH-PERP.
According to Defi Llama data, the fees generated each year are approximately $4 million.

UI/UX is excellent. Users can use the transaction view function, the interface is clear and contains everything they need. It is worth mentioning that Bluefin's zkLogin integration is powered by Sui. This simplifies the user onboarding process and eliminates the complexity of wallets and mnemonics.

Aftermath (testnet)

Aftermath first launched its Perp DEX testnet in November 2024. It runs entirely on-chain, and unlike many Perp DEXs that rely on off-chain order books for matching, Aftermath puts the entire order book on-chain. Since it is still in the testnet stage, statistics are limited.

Aftermath is more focused on improving liquidity/TVL of its DEX and existing pools. Potential future incentives/official launch of Perp DEX may come later.

Astros (beta)

Astros is a DEX aggregator + Perp DEX built by the NAVI Protocol team. Like Bluefin and Aftermath, NAVI Protocol also uses an order book mechanism in its Perp DEX. Since it is currently in the testing phase, the information and specific mechanism of the cooperative market maker (MM) are not yet exhaustive. Its 24-hour trading volume reached $300 million, which may be driven by its ongoing trader incentive program.

Typus Perp

Typus Finance launched its GMX-style Perp DEX about two weeks ago. According to Defi Llama data, the 24-hour trading volume is about $200,000 and the TVL of the TLP pool exceeds $700,000.

Assets in the TLP pool include $SUI, $USDC, $DEEP, and $LBTC, and the APR is currently over 100%.

Some observations and conclusions

The rise of the order book: Sui’s Perp DEX ecosystem currently clearly favors the order book model, a phenomenon that is reflected both in the protocol design choices and its dominance in trading volume. This suggests that the order book mechanism is either inherently applicable in Sui’s architecture or has market acceptance among its user base.

Asset scarcity and the lure of memes: The range of assets supported by Sui Network Perp DEX is clearly limited, which represents a potential opportunity. If a protocol can quickly embrace the volatile but lucrative memecoin trading space (an area that has a growing cultural foundation on Sui), then taking advantage of the inherent speculative nature of these assets could drive an increase in platform trading volume.

The necessity of the start-up phase and incentive mechanism: Compared with the mature and highly liquid Perp DEX ecosystem on EVM and Solana, Sui's cumulative trading volume and TVL are still in their infancy. Given the existing feature sets and available functions of these alternative chains, attracting traders to the Sui network's Perp DEX may require more than just technical innovation. An attractive incentive mechanism may be the key incentive to attract speculative capital and promote substantial growth in the Perp DEX ecosystem.