Searching for the invisible Aster: 5 Perp DEXs that are quietly making money but haven't yet issued a token

Behind Aster 's popularity, the entire PerpDEX market is experiencing unprecedented competition. From technological innovation to user experience, from asset diversification to ecosystem integration, each project is seeking its own differentiated path to breakthrough.

But the most important data is revenue, which shows that these projects have demonstrated real hematopoietic capacity.

In order to gain a more comprehensive understanding of the current status of this track, we have sorted out the five most profitable Perp DEXs that have not yet issued tokens to see how they found their foothold in their respective segments and how they got started.

(It should be noted that this article mainly screens and analyzes projects from the perspective of protocol revenue. Some well-known Perp DEX projects such as Lighter, although they have performed well in terms of trading volume and user activity, are not included in this analysis because they use a zero-fee early liquidation fee charging model, making it difficult to calculate revenue data.)

1. edgeX ($49.47 million)

In September 2025, edgeX set a new revenue record for the perpetual DEX space, reaching $49.47 million in cumulative revenue, firmly securing second place in the industry. In the past 30 days alone, the platform generated $20.46 million in revenue, a staggering 147% increase compared to its $8.29 million in Q2 quarterly revenue. This performance not only puts edgeX on track for annualized revenue of $250 million, but also positions it to capture approximately 15-20% of the market share in the fiercely competitive perpetual DEX market, making it the second-largest PERP revenue generator after Hyperliquid.

In terms of technical architecture, edgeX is built on StarkWare's StarkEx zero-knowledge proof rollup technology, achieving a processing capacity of 200,000 orders per second and matching latency of less than 10 milliseconds. This performance directly challenges the technological defenses of centralized exchanges. More notably, edgeX demonstrates a competitive advantage in liquidity depth over its peers. Within a 0.01% spread, edgeX's BTC trading pairs can support up to $6 million in open interest, surpassing Hyperliquid's $5 million, Aster's $4 million, and Lighter's $1 million, establishing its depth advantage in mid-sized trading.

edgeX stands out in its mobile experience. Its latest v2.9 mobile app integrates Privy MPC wallet technology, allowing users to start trading without having to memorize complex seed phrase, significantly lowering the barrier to entry for DeFi users. The app also supports professional trading features such as one-click deposits for USDC/Arbitrum, real-time push notifications for limit order execution, and one-click position reversal. This design philosophy, combining CEX-level user experience with DeFi security, has earned edgeX widespread recognition in the mobile-first Asian market.

edgeX's success is inseparable from its strong team background and strategic incubation support. As one of Amber Group's first incubation projects launched in July 2024, the edgeX team brings together veterans from top institutions such as Morgan Stanley, Barclays, Goldman Sachs, and Bybit, with over seven years of experience in exchange operations and product development. Amber Group, a global digital asset firm managing approximately $5 billion in assets, provides edgeX with professional market-making support and deep liquidity, which was a key factor in the platform's rapid growth in market capitalization exceeding $10 million.

In its global expansion, edgeX places particular emphasis on developing the Asian market, particularly South Korea. During Korean Blockchain Week 2025, it hosted several community events, including the "edgeX CONNECTS ALL" Seoul Community Night and a live trading competition, which garnered significant attention and engagement within the Korean DeFi community. This localization strategy, combined with multilingual support and a mobile-first product design, has laid the foundation for edgeX to gain a firm foothold in the competitive Asian market.

The community anticipates that the Q4 2025 TGE will generate substantial returns for point holders. Based on a 20-35% token distribution assumption, each point could be valued between $370 and $870. This expectation has fueled explosive growth in platform users and transaction volume, with deposits increasing by 1,000% in July.

From an investment perspective, edgeX has demonstrated a rare ability to generate revenue. Its cumulative revenue of $49.47 million comes entirely from real transaction fees, not token inflation or external subsidies. This sustainable business model is complemented by its leading advantages in technology, user experience, and market expansion.

2. Paradex ($9.74 million)

Paradex was incubated by the crypto institutional liquidity platform Paradigm (no relation to the venture capital firm of the same name) and is built on the Paradex Network, an Ethereum Layer 2 blockchain built on the Starknet Stack. This Layer 2 is positioned for high-performance decentralized trading and asset management.

Although the incubator is not the well-known top crypto VC Paradigm, but the crypto institutional liquidity platform Paradigm of the same name, it is still worthy of attention.

Founded in 2019, Paradigm provides services to institutions such as hedge funds, market makers, and family offices, with extensive research in derivatives trading markets such as crypto options. Initially, its model handled over-the-counter (OTC) matching, while outsourcing on-exchange execution, clearing, and settlement to exchanges like FTX. At its peak, the company held a 30% share of the global cryptocurrency options market and secured a $35 million funding round led by Jump Crypto and Alameda Research at a $400 million valuation.

However, after the collapse of FTX, Paradigm, as a partner, was also greatly impacted. After the trading volume dropped sharply, it launched Paradex to rebuild the ecosystem.

Thanks to its years of research in the derivatives market, Paradex features support for perpetual contracts, perpetual futures, perpetual options and spot trading. All transactions are unified in one account, any asset can be used as collateral, and isolated margin, cross and combined margin models are supported.

Paradex has implemented a highly competitive zero-fee model. Effective September 10, 2025, the platform will offer UI traders a completely free experience with 0% market maker fees and 0% taker fees on all perpetual markets (excluding BTC and ETH). For API traders, the platform charges a 0% market maker fee and a 0.02% taker fee. This strategy has effectively boosted trading activity on the platform.

By building a private Starknet instance, the team was able to write business logic using the Cairo programming language and successfully deploy the blockchain in just six months. This customized approach offered significant advantages, including a custom fee model, centralized exchange-level throughput, and efficient batch order processing.

Regarding asset management, the Paradex Vault allows users to earn LP tokens based on their share of the portfolio and combine them with mainstream DeFi platforms like Pendle, Morpho, and Aave. The Vault supports both active trading and passive income from the Vault Traded Fund (VTF). Some LP tokens can be used directly as collateral in the future to participate in more on-chain strategies. Furthermore, Paradex's integrated lending market allows users to borrow and lend directly from the same account, allowing their portfolios to serve as collateral.

Paradex has now announced its token economics, and the community has extremely strong expectations for its coin issuance. The future uses of the platform coin DIME will include payment for transaction fees, fee discounts, staking and liquidity mining rewards, and participation in governance/voting.

In terms of market performance, Paradex has accumulated $9.74 million in revenue, with $1.28 million in revenue over the past 30 days. Trading data shows a 30-day trading volume of $9.32 billion, a cumulative trading volume of $83.6 billion, and a TVL of $92.74 million, demonstrating solid market performance.

3. Extended ($6 million)

Extended, a rising star in the perpetual DEX space, has achieved impressive financial performance in just over a year. Based on its cumulative trading volume of $20.635 billion and a standard fee structure, Extended's cumulative revenue is estimated to have reached $6-10 million, with approximately $1.5-2.5 million in 30-day revenue. While the platform has not yet achieved revenue tracking on major data aggregators such as DefiLlama, this revenue estimate is relatively conservative and in line with industry benchmarks, given its 0.025% taker fee and 0% maker fee (high-volume users receive rebates of up to 0.02%).

The platform's most striking innovation is its seamless integration of "EVM on the front end, Starknet on the back end." Users can trade directly using EVM wallets like MetaMask, without having to install a Starknet wallet or perform complex cross-chain bridging operations. Deposits and withdrawals can be made on six major EVM chains: Arbitrum, Ethereum, Base, BSC, Avalanche, and Polygon, with all transactions settled on Starknet. This design not only aggregates approximately 80% of the EVM ecosystem's DeFi liquidity but also provides users with a virtually frictionless cross-chain trading experience.

Extended's Starknet migration, launched on August 12, 2025, is one of the most successful technological upgrades in DeFi history. The entire migration process, divided into three phases and lasting approximately one month, was automated, eliminating the need for users to manually withdraw funds. In the first phase, the two systems operated in parallel, but points accumulated only on Starknet, effectively incentivizing users to migrate early. The second phase switched StarkEx to a position reduction-only mode, while the third phase completely shut down StarkEx and forced liquidation of all remaining positions.

Extended's success is largely attributed to the strong background of its founding team. CEO Ruslan Fakhrutdinov, formerly Head of Crypto Operations at Revolut and a McKinsey consultant, brings extensive experience in crypto operations and strategic consulting. The CTO was the architect of four crypto exchage, including the recently launched Revolut Crypto Exchange (Revolut X), while the CBO is the former Chief Engineer at Revolut Crypto and a major contributor to the Corda blockchain. The team's core motivation stems from the user pain points they observed during their time at Revolut: retail users entered the crypto market during the 2021 bull run but faced the dual dilemma of poor DeFi experience and the risks of centralized exchanges (such as the collapse of FTX).

Extended closed a $6.5 million seed round on April 30, 2024, attracting top institutional investors and prominent angel investors in the Web3 space. Lead investor Tioga Capital Partners, a European venture capital firm focused on Web3 investments and renowned for its support of leading European blockchain entrepreneurs, was the lead investor. Co-investors included Brussels-based Semantic Ventures, Cherry Ventures, a fintech and Web3-focused firm, and StarkWare itself as a technology partner. The angel investor lineup was also impressive, including Lido co-founder Konstantin Lomashuk and several former Revolut executives.

4. Ostium ($4.48 million)

Ostium Labs is a decentralized protocol focused on trading synthetic perpetual contracts for real-world assets (RWAs). Founded in 2022 by Kaledora Kiernan-Linn and Marco Antonio Ribeiro, the platform, built on the Arbitrum blockchain, provides users with high-leverage on-chain trading services for traditional assets such as stocks, commodities, forex, and indices, supporting up to 200x leverage.

The protocol utilizes a dual oracle architecture: for real-world assets, Ostium uses a pull-based oracle, with node operation and data aggregation handled by Stork Network; for crypto assets, Chainlink Data Streams is used. The ingenuity of this design lies in the fact that oracle metadata (such as bid-ask spreads and market trading time stamps) is only written to the chain when a transaction needs to be settled, reducing gas costs while maintaining sub-second latency responses.

In terms of liquidity provision, Ostium has designed a unique OLP treasury model. Liquidity providers deposit USDC into the market maker treasury and receive fungible OLP tokens. A key innovation is that the treasury only settles traders' profits and losses when the independent liquidity buffer is insufficient. This means that liquidity providers are not the default counterparty for trades, significantly reducing directional risk. The fee distribution mechanism is also carefully designed: 30% of the opening fee plus 100% of the liquidation reward and rollover fees in the event of insufficient collateral all go to OLP holders. Users can also choose to lock their deposits (up to 365 days) to obtain a "lock-up bonus" to receive a larger share of the fee distribution.

In its liquidation mechanism design, Ostium employs a hyperbolic funding rate and skew-based opening fees to dynamically disincentivize one-way holdings. 100% of liquidation rewards accrue to the limited partner treasury, ensuring incentive alignment for timely liquidation. The entire perpetual swap engine performs matching and settlement entirely on the Arbitrum chain, without a proprietary off-chain sequencer, ensuring decentralization.

Ostium Labs' founding team showcases a rare combination of interdisciplinary expertise. CEO Kaledora Kiernan-Linn holds a bachelor's degree in neuroscience from Harvard University, with a minor in statistics. She previously interned at Bridgewater Associates, the world's largest hedge fund, collaborating with co-Chief Investment Officer Bob Prince on commodities research. She also worked on growth stock valuation research at McKinsey's Berlin office and Verdad Advisers. For her innovative contributions to bringing perpetual contracts for real-world assets to on-chain transactions, Kaledora was named to Forbes' 2025 list of 30 Under 30 in Finance.

Co-founder and CTO Marco Antonio Ribeiro is currently pursuing a degree in Engineering Science and Economics at Harvard University (currently on leave to start a business). He also has work experience at Bridgewater Associates, where he served as an investment assistant in the commodities team, focusing on macro strategies and global market analysis. Marco has outstanding academic and technical achievements, having won the 2019 Harvard Hackathon UC Challenge, a bronze medal in the 30th International Biology Olympiad, and an honorary award in the 50th International Physics Olympiad. He is also the co-founder of the Harvard Entrepreneurship Association and serves as the president of Erevna, a student economic research nonprofit.

The two founders met at Harvard University and began building Ostium in a hackerhouse in Cambridge during the period of volatile commodity prices caused by the Russia-Ukraine conflict. Their frustration with the inability to easily access small futures positions inspired the innovative concept of synthetic perpetual contracts.

Ostium Labs completed a $3.5 million seed funding round on October 6, 2023, the company's only publicly disclosed funding round to date. This round was co-led by renowned venture capital firms General Catalyst and LocalGlobe, with participation from Susquehanna International Group (SIG), Vessel Capital, and DeFi Alliance. The angel investor lineup was equally strong, including former Coinbase CTO Balaji Srinivasan, LedgerPrime CIO Shiliang Tang, Nick van Eck, Neel Somani, and other industry figures. Notably, the company has not disclosed its valuation nor raised any additional equity or token funding rounds.

According to the latest on-chain data analysis, the Ostium Protocol demonstrates steady growth. As of September 15, 2025, the protocol's total value locked (TVL) reached $44.37 million, and its cumulative trading volume exceeded $17.8 billion. In terms of user activity, the protocol had 845 daily active users in the past 24 hours, 2,225 weekly active users in the past seven days, and 903 monthly active users.

In terms of revenue performance, Ostium Labs has accumulated $4.48 million in revenue, with $722,500 in revenue over the past 30 days, and a TVL of $52.9 million. The platform has effectively driven user growth through a 24-week points program, demonstrating strong growth potential in the RWA perpetual trading segment.

Ostium has not yet issued a native token, and the team has not confirmed a specific token release plan. The current incentive mechanism relies primarily on a weekly points program (with a minimum of 500,000 points per week) rewarding trading, liquidity provision, and referral activities. Users generally view this as a potential prelude to token airdrops.

Ostium's product development roadmap began with a private beta phase in Q4 2024. Due to oracle limitations, the core technology stack was rebuilt to support a long tail of real-world assets. On March 18, 2025, the protocol launched a public testnet Beta on Arbitrum, providing phased access to over 80,000 users on a waiting list. Subsequent milestones include gradually expanding the asset list (oil, copper, platinum, the Hang Seng Index, etc.), completing a third-party audit and officially launching the mainnet, and launching a second vault to separate market making and settlement functions.

5. Satori Finance ($2.76 million)

Founded in 2021, Satori Finance has carved out a niche in the competitive DeFi derivatives market through its unique hybrid architecture. The platform utilizes a "off-chain order aggregation + on-chain settlement" technology solution, maintaining decentralization while achieving centralized exchange-level execution efficiency. The platform supports up to 25x leverage and has been successfully deployed on over 14 blockchain networks, including Ethereum, zkSync Era, Arbitrum, Base, BNB Chain, Scroll, and Polygon zkEVM.

The core of Satori Finance's technological innovation lies in its hybrid order book design. The platform's off-chain order aggregation and matching mechanism offers execution speeds approaching those of centralized exchanges, while ensuring transparency and decentralization through on-chain settlement. This design, in close collaboration with an external market maker network, creates a central limit order book system with deep liquidity. Satori Finance demonstrates a significant competitive advantage in its fee structure, with maker and taker fees in its V2 version as low as 0.02% and 0.04%, respectively.

Satori Finance's founding team boasts extensive experience in both traditional finance and the cryptocurrency industry. Co-founder and CTO George Wu spent four years as a stock, interest rate, and commodity derivatives trader at Optiver, a leading global market maker, laying a solid foundation for the platform's technical architecture and risk management systems. Co-founder and CEO Rahim Noorani brings extensive investment banking and venture capital experience, having previously worked as an analyst at Goldman Sachs and later as an investor at Scale Ventures, providing crucial guidance on the platform's business strategy.

In terms of financing, Satori Finance successfully completed a $10 million seed round in May 2022, securing backing from top cryptocurrency investment institutions. This round was co-led by Polychain Capital and Blockchange Ventures, with participation from prominent investors including Jump Crypto, Coinbase Ventures, Portal, Acala, Astar, Parallel, and Clover. Notably, Polkadot co-founder Gavin Wood also participated in this round as a strategic advisor.

The latest on-chain data shows Satori Finance's trading volume is showing steady growth. The platform's 24-hour perpetual swap volume reached $211 million, 7-day volume reached $1.402 billion, and 30-day volume reached $5.75 billion, bringing its cumulative historical trading volume to over $97.123 billion. In terms of total value locked (TVL), the platform's total TVL reached $2.23 million, with the zkSync Era chain accounting for the largest share, $1.31 million.

The platform’s revenue growth trajectory is even more impressive, starting with $10,400 in fee revenue in the third quarter of 2023, reaching $1.15 million in the second quarter of 2025, and currently totaling $2.76 million.