Overview of Decentralized Perpetual Exchanges

Perpetual exchanges allow users to gain exposure to the price movements of a listed crypto asset without needing to own the actual asset. This is helpful for traders to manage their risks, but there are various considerations when it comes to picking a perpetual exchange to use. For example, centralized perpetual exchanges may subject users’ funds to lockup or, in the worst-case scenario, turn insolvent and cause traders to lose their funds. 

As such, decentralized perpetual exchanges (perp dexes) were built to address this limitation. A key feature of perp dexes is that users can permissionlessly withdraw their funds from the exchange, though not all perp dexes today offer that feature. This research piece will cover some of the top perp dexes by volume and total value locked (TVL), whose daily trading volumes are shown in the charts below.