The Perps Wars Are Heating Up: Exchanges Battle for Dominance in 2025’s High-Stakes Arena

The fight for perpetual futures supremacy just entered a new, brutal phase. Forget gentle competition—this is a bare-knuckle brawl for liquidity, traders, and the immense fees they generate. The once-clear hierarchy among derivatives platforms is crumbling as challengers deploy aggressive incentives and technological gambits to carve out their slice of the market.

Incentives Unleashed: The New Front Line

Platforms aren't just tweaking fee structures anymore; they're launching full-scale incentive wars. Think massive token airdrops tied to trading volume, loyalty programs that reward market makers with equity-like perks, and referral bonuses that make user acquisition look like a bounty hunt. It's a capital-intensive strategy—burn now, dominate later—that's forcing every major player to re-evaluate their playbook or risk irrelevance.

Tech as a Weapon, Not a Feature

The battle isn't just fought with marketing budgets. Under the hood, the race is on for superior execution engines, lower latency, and more resilient infrastructure during market chaos. The platforms that can offer zero slippage on large orders or guarantee uptime during a volatility spike are building unshakable trader loyalty. It's a silent, technical arms race where a single point of failure can mean a permanent loss of trust.

A Fragmented Future Takes Shape

This escalation signals a move away from a single, dominant leader. The market is fragmenting into specialized niches: one platform for the ultra-low-cost, high-frequency crowd, another for deep liquidity in altcoin pairs, and yet another catering to institutional-grade risk management tools. Traders are the clear winners in the short term, enjoying better prices and more choices—a classic case of competitive markets functioning as intended, at least until the subsidies dry up.

The endgame? Consolidation is inevitable, but not before billions in value are redistributed. The current frenzy of competition—fueled by that timeless mix of greed, innovation, and the desperate fear of missing out—is reshaping the very architecture of crypto derivatives. Just remember, in finance, when everyone is fighting to give you the best deal, someone is almost certainly counting on you being the product. The war is on; pick your side carefully.

Indices

Benchmarks drifted up slowly over the past week: Gold led gains (+3.57%) while the S&P 500 (+1.15%) and Nasdaq 100 (+0.84%) also posted modest advances. BTC bucked the trend, slipping 0.90% despite the broader environment.

Crypto sector indices showed mixed results over the week. On the upside, Solana Ecosystem (+4.4%) led gains, followed by Launchpads (+3.23%), DePIN (+2.23%), Perps (+2.17%), and Modular (+1.7%). DEXs (+1.42%) and AI (+1.07%) also posted modest advances. On the downside, L2s (-8.27%) and Lending (-6.82%) saw the steepest declines, with ethereum Ecosystem (-6.57%) and Crypto Miners (-5.97%) also under pressure.

JTO led the solana Eco index with a +10.30% move, followed closely by DRIFT (+8.10%) as liquid staking and perps narratives found renewed interest. JUP (+4.14%), ORCA (+3.81%), and RAY (+3.40%) also posted solid gains, reflecting strength across the DEX sector. On the lagging end, MPLX (-2.68%) struggled to find footing, and PUMP was the clear underperformer at -5.11%, continuing to bleed as memecoin-launchpad fatigue set in.

Charts for the week

Aave has dominated the DeFi lending space in 2025, capturing 86% of protocol revenue and generating $120.9 million YTD. That said, Aave’s grip has loosened slightly over the year, dropping from 91% market share in January to 86% in December. New entrants HyperLend (launched March) and Jupiter Lend (launched July) now account for a combined 3.4% of the market, while Fluid more than doubled its share from 2.4% to 4.9%, making it the fastest growing competitor among established protocols.

Outstanding loans tell a similar story. AAVE holds $21.3 billion in loans, representing 74.7% of the market, a share that has remained relatively flat since January. The real movement has been among challengers: Morpho grew from 10.6% to 12.8% of outstanding loans, while Spark collapsed from 11.5% to just 4.7%. Fluid nearly doubled its share from 3.6% to 5.0%, and newer entrants Jupiter Lend (2.1%) and HyperLend (0.7%) have carved out small but growing positions.

The downtrend in network revenues has continued, with total weekly revenue dropping 21% to $26.4 million, the lowest in at least a month. Hyperliquid saw the sharpest decline among major chains, falling 40% from $11.8 million to $7.1 million, while Ethereum dropped 38% to $2.2 million. Solana held up better, slipping just 2% to $4.7 million. Tron remained the top revenue generator after Hyperliquid at $6.1 million despite an 11% decline. The only notable gainers were smaller players: Arbitrum (+37%), Polygon (+50%), and BSC (+2%), though these moves represent relatively small absolute amounts.

In August 2025, Hyperliquid saw $396 billion in volume and $121 million in revenue, with trailing 30-day volume peaking at $395 billion and the protocol dominating 80%+ of DeFi perps market share.

Lighter has done $30.9 billion in perp volume over the past seven days and $203.7 billion over the past month, with $1.48 billion in open interest. Aster has seen $26 billion in seven-day volume and $160.6 billion over 30 days, with a larger $7.4 billion in OI. Hyperliquid has fallen behind on weekly volume at $21.5 billion, though it still holds more than double their combined OI at $2.4 billion. With a Lighter airdrop incoming, we’ll see how the landscape shapes up if volumes drop drastically once the points program ends.

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