Key insights
A new phase of DEX competition has transitioned from token incentives to prioritizing speed, leverage, and sustainable infrastructure.
Hyperliquid remains the market leader with over $300 billion in monthly volume, robust liquidity, and increasing institutional participation.
Aster’s expansion is driven by airdrops, Binance-backed credibility, and leverage, attracting professional traders.
Lighter is gaining traction through its Ethereum layer-2 speed, a zero-fee trading model, and an exclusive points-based yield farming system.
Platforms like SushiSwap, PancakeSwap, and Curve utilized yield farming and governance token incentives to draw liquidity. This strategy enabled rapid capital influx, bringing billions onto the blockchain quickly.
Early battles centered around attracting total value locked (TVL) and traders through token incentives, rather than speed, leverage, or institutional-grade infrastructure. Ultimately, Uniswap emerged as the leader, establishing a playbook that included liquidity mining, airdrops, and tokenized participation, forming the basis for the more advanced decentralized exchange (DEX) wars currently happening in perpetuals.
Inside the DEX liquidity battle
Hyperliquid, a DEX built on its own high-performance blockchain, experienced significant growth in 2025. The exchange managed over $300 billion in trading volume around mid-2025, with daily transactions occasionally near $17 billion. Its substantial liquidity and quick execution have garnered attention from active and professional traders.
A major contributor to Hyperliquid’s growth was its points-based rewards program, which bolstered liquidity and user activity, resulting in a substantial airdrop.
Overall, 27.5% of the token supply was distributed to 94,000 addresses, rewarding early and active users. What began as a strategy to encourage trading has evolved into one of the most significant token distributions in recent crypto history, valued between $7 billion and $8 billion.
However, competitors are quickly closing the gap.
Aster is a rapidly emerging DEX on the BNB Smart Chain, positioning itself as a key competitor to Hyperliquid. Trading volumes have occasionally surged into the tens of billions, sometimes exceeding Hyperliquid’s figures. Its association with Changpeng “CZ” Zhao, co-founder of Binance, has attracted considerable market interest.
Meanwhile, Lighter, a new exchange on an Ethereum rollup, has recorded daily trading volumes exceeding $8 billion.
Together, these challengers are transforming what was once Hyperliquid’s clear advantage into a three-way competition for market share.
Calder White, chief technology officer of Vigil Labs — a Silicon Valley startup that recently raised $5.7 million to utilize AI for understanding and trading cryptocurrency markets — notes that the upsurge in trading has varied significantly across platforms.
“Our system indicates that Aster’s growth is highly narrative-driven, with traders recycling capital to boost volumes, while Hyperliquid continues to attract the most natural flow from serious participants. Both Aster and Lighter are using the same points-to-airdrop strategy to enhance liquidity and compete with Hyperliquid for market share,” said White.
Aster’s high-stakes strategy for DEX supremacy
Aster’s momentum stems from its close relationship with CZ, who now advises the project. His involvement has led many to refer to Aster as “Binance’s DEX.” The exchange has introduced tokenized stocks, allowing users to trade major assets onchain with up to 1,000x leverage and plans to launch its own layer-1 blockchain.
This combination has made Aster one of the boldest experiments in DEX design to date.
Aster’s robust airdrop program rewards users for generating trading activity. Season two distributed 320 million Aster tokens, worth approximately $600 million, and concluded on Oct. 5, 2025.
This incentive structure has already resulted in strong activity. Aster recently generated over $20 million in 24-hour fees, positioning it among the top revenue-generating platforms in decentralized finance (DeFi). Speculation is increasing that the team may use part of these funds for token buybacks, which could further enhance Aster’s token value and maintain trader interest beyond the airdrop phase.
Certain participants could earn substantial rewards, ranging from thousands of dollars to potential seven-figure payouts for the most active traders. The scale of these incentives has resulted in high volume across the platform, though it remains uncertain whether users will continue trading once the rewards decline.
Airdrops and exclusivity fuel Lighter’s growth
Lighter has rapidly established itself as one of the more technically ambitious platforms in DeFi. Built on a custom Ethereum layer-2 utilizing zero-knowledge circuits, it supports sub-five-millisecond matching latency, aiming for centralized exchange (CEX) speeds. The platform provides zero trading fees for retail users, while API and institutional transactions incur premium charges.
Lighter has driven swift expansion via its Lighter Liquidity Pool (LLP) program, which has become one of the most enticing yield opportunities in DeFi. The pool currently offers approximately 60% annual percentage yield (APY) on over $400 million in deposits. Access to the LLP is linked to a user’s points balance, granting higher allocation limits to more active traders.
Lighter’s zero-fee model and points system have sparked growing interest among traders. Since its launch, the exchange has captured significant trading volumes, occasionally rivaling Hyperliquid. Much of the anticipation now centers on expectations of an upcoming token launch, rumored to happen later this year.
While the token has yet to materialize, there’s already a thriving over-the-counter market for Lighter points, with points fetching tens of dollars each. Prices have increased from $39 to over $60, with one trader reportedly spending $1 million at $41 each.
One way to gauge a perpetual DEX’s value is by looking at the open interest (OI), which denotes the total value of all trades still open on the platform. Higher OI indicates more real money is active in positions. On Hyperliquid, for instance, $13.2 billion in OI supports a circulating market capitalization of about $15.2 billion.
Lighter holds roughly $2.1 billion in OI. Assuming around 15%-20% of tokens are unlocked at the time of its token launch, this would suggest a circulating market cap of approximately $1 billion-$1.1 billion, with a fully diluted valuation (FDV) near $5 billion-$5.5 billion. With about 12 million points tied to that initial float, each point would be valued at about $83 to $100.
If 15%-20% of the supply is allocated to the community, this could result in an airdrop worth $750 million-$1.1 billion for users—potentially one of the most significant token distributions in DeFi since Hyperliquid’s drop.
Institutional liquidity joins the fray
A noteworthy subplot in this contest is the gradual but significant entry of institutional liquidity. Funds that previously shied away from onchain derivatives due to slippage, latency, or compliance issues are now allocating test capital to these platforms.
Hyperliquid’s speed-focused, transparent framework has attracted increasing interest from professional traders, while Aster’s connection to Binance is capturing significant attention among Asian trading communities.
Lighter, with its sub-five-millisecond execution speed and onchain settlement model, is appealing to proprietary trading firms seeking yield without counterparty risk. The next stage of the DEX wars may hinge less on airdrops and more on which platforms can provide the most dependable infrastructure for serious capital.
Infrastructure vs. narrative: Who will prevail in the long run?
As competition between Lighter, Aster, and Hyperliquid intensifies, Hyperliquid continues to set the standard in onchain derivatives, bolstered by unparalleled open interest, superior execution quality, and expanding institutional interest.
Rather than decelerating, the exchange has intensified its efforts, launching HIP-3, which enables anyone to create a perp DEX on Hyperliquid’s infrastructure, introducing its USDH stablecoin, and quickly listing perpetuals for competing tokens like ASTER to tap into narrative-driven flows.
Hyperliquid has also engaged its community with new reward mechanisms. The Hypurr non-fungible token (NFT) collection, launched on Sep. 28, 2025, rapidly gained popularity, with floor prices around 1,200 HYPE (approximately $55,000 each). The considerable demand for the collection has sparked speculation about upcoming reward rounds and potential updates to the points program.
White highlights that this divergence among emerging DEXs illustrates how significantly incentives can influence markets compared to the stabilizing force of infrastructure.
“Hyperliquid is banking on execution and liquidity, while Aster and Lighter are demonstrating how far incentives can stretch the market,” he remarked.
“The real challenge will be whether traders remain once the airdrop incentives diminish.”
