Astros Launches and Joins the $1 Trillion Perp DEX Horse Race

A New Contender Emerges in the $1 Trillion Perpetual DEX Race

Perpetual DEXs topped $1 trillion in trading volume last month, spurred by the emergence of new players such as YZi Labs’ Aster which debuted on a blockchain platform earlier in the year. And now on Wednesday, another competitor was unveiled when Astros, a new perp DEX developed on Sui, quietly launched after several months in beta.

Perpetual futures or “perps” are futures contracts or leveraged bets on crypto assets, without the constraints of contract expiry dates. A crypto derivatives firm pioneered perps in 2016. The financial instruments have since exploded in popularity, and by some reports, now command 26% of the entire crypto derivatives market.

(Top 5 Perp DEXs ranked by open interest. / Coingecko)

The surge in demand for perps has created an increasingly lucrative sector and multiple projects are vying for market share in the ecosystem. A platform which launched in 2023, is perhaps the most well-known name in the perp DEX community. Others include Lighter and the aforementioned Aster. This week’s emergence of Astros introduces yet another viable threat to the dominance of existing platforms.

“We’re not just building another perp DEX,” an Astros spokesperson said in a release. “We’re establishing the liquidity backbone that will define Sui’s position in DeFi’s next decade.”