In 2025, OnChain Perps shows the growth of crypto derivatives.
According to Coinbase researcher David Dung, activity in crypto derivatives will increase significantly in 2025 as traders increasingly switch to onchain perpetual futures. By the end of the year, decentralized exchanges were processing more than $1 trillion in sustainable futures volume per month, highlighting the growing role of onchain derivatives markets.
In a post published on X on Monday, Duong said the trend was partly due to the absence of the traditional altcoin season, which led traders to seek higher profits than spot markets. The “unprecedented level of leverage” found in perpetual futures allowed traders to raise relatively small amounts of capital.
Duong said the increase in activity was mainly driven by decentralized trading platforms, with onchain venues such as Aster and Hyperliquid accounting for the majority of volume.
Fixed futures, or PURPs, are crypto derivatives that give traders ample exposure to price movements outside of the expiration date.
According to Duong, equity futures may emerge as the next growth area, as equity derivatives can combine 24/7 access to crypto and the benefit of exposure to major U.S. stocks outside of traditional market hours.
“However, we think perpetual futures are evolving beyond isolated, high-capacity business vehicles and becoming mainstream and integrated frontrunners in DeFi markets,” he said.
The competition between onchain eternal future platforms will intensify
HyperLiquid launched its OnChain Perpetual Futures platform in late 2023 and gained wider interest after adding spot trading in 2024. In July, the platform released a record amount, data from DeFillama shows that the trade was about 319 billion dollars in the month.
Competition in the crypto futures market has intensified over the past year. In September, after the token event and launch, Aster decentralized perpetual futures topped the short-term 24-hour trading volume to $36 billion, more than half of the total DEX activity.
In the year In November, 2022, the onchain perpetual futures exchange founded by tech entrepreneur Vladimir Novakovski raised $68 million in funding after launching its public network.
Over the past 30 days, data from DeFillama shows that onchain perpetual futures have generated about $972 billion in trading volume. In the same period, Liter led business at around $203 billion, followed by Aster at around $171.8 billion and HyperLiquid at around $160.6 billion.
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