Key takeaways
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A new wave of DEX wars has shifted from token incentives to a focus on speed, leverage and sustainable infrastructure.
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Hyperliquid continues to lead the market with over $300 billion in monthly volume, strong liquidity and rising institutional adoption.
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Aster’s growth is powered by airdrops, Binance-backed credibility and leverage that attract professional traders.
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Lighter is gaining momentum through its Ethereum layer-2 speed, zero-fee trading model and exclusive points-based yield farming system.
Platforms like SushiSwap, PancakeSwap and Curve leveraged yield farming and governance token incentives to attract liquidity. This approach catalyzed rapid capital formation, bringing billions of dollars onchain within a short time.
Those early battles were about who could attract the most total value locked (TVL) and traders through token incentives — not about speed, leverage or institutional-grade infrastructure. The dust eventually settled with Uniswap taking the lead. The playbook it established, including liquidity mining, airdrops and tokenized participation, became the foundation for the more sophisticated decentralized exchange (DEX) wars now unfolding in perpetuals.
Inside the DEX liquidity wars
Hyperliquid, a DEX built on its own high-performance blockchain infrastructure, saw major growth in 2025. The exchange handled more than $300 billion in trading volume around mid-2025, with daily activity occasionally approaching $17 billion. Its deep liquidity and fast execution have helped it gain strong traction among active and professional traders.
One of the key drivers behind Hyperliquid’s strong growth was its ability to boost liquidity and user activity through a points-based rewards program. The effort eventually led to a large airdrop.
In total, 27.5% of the token supply was distributed to 94,000 addresses, rewarding early and active participants. What started as a way to get more people trading has since become one of the most valuable token distributions in recent crypto history. The airdrop is now valued at around $7 billion-$8 billion.
Rivals are, however, catching up fast.
Aster is a rapidly growing DEX built on BNB Smart Chain that has positioned itself as one of Hyperliquid’s main competitors. On some days, reported trading volumes have at times surged into the tens of billions of dollars, occasionally surpassing Hyperliquid’s figures. The project’s connection to Changpeng “CZ” Zhao, co-founder of Binance, has also drawn significant attention from the market.
Meanwhile, Lighter, a new exchange built on an Ethereum rollup, has reported daily trading volumes surpassing $8 billion.
Together, these challengers are turning what was once Hyperliquid’s clear lead into a three-way fight for market share.
According to Calder White, chief technology officer of Vigil Labs — a Silicon Valley startup that recently raised $5.7 million to apply AI to understand and trade cryptocurrency markets — the apparent surge has very different underpinnings across platforms.
“Our system shows that Aster’s growth is very narrative-driven, with traders recycling capital to increase volumes, while Hyperliquid continues to carry the most organic flow from serious participants. Both Aster and Lighter are relying on the same points-to-airdrop playbook to bootstrap liquidity and activity to compete with Hyperliquid for market share,” said White.
Aster’s high-stakes play for DEX dominance
Aster’s momentum comes from its close ties to CZ, who now advises the project. His involvement has led many online 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. It also plans to launch its own layer-1 blockchain.
The combination has turned Aster into one of the most daring experiments in DEX design to date.
Fueling that rise is Aster’s massive airdrop program, which rewards users for generating trading activity. Season two distributed 320 million Aster tokens worth about $600 million and concluded on Oct. 5, 2025.
The incentive model has already translated into strong activity. Aster recently generated over $20 million in 24-hour fees, placing it among the top revenue earners in decentralized finance (DeFi). There’s also growing speculation that the team may be using part of those earnings for token buybacks. If true, that move could further boost Aster’s token value and help sustain trader interest beyond the airdrop period.
Some participants stand to earn significant rewards, ranging from thousands of dollars to potential seven-figure payouts for the most active traders. The scale of these incentives has driven strong volume across the platform, although it remains to be seen whether users will continue trading once the rewards taper off.
Airdrops and exclusivity drive Lighter’s rise
Lighter has quickly established itself as one of the more technically ambitious stacks in DeFi. Built on a custom Ethereum layer-2 with zero-knowledge circuits, it supports sub-five-millisecond matching latency. The goal is to approach centralized exchange (CEX) speeds. The platform offers zero trading fees for retail users, while API and institutional flows face premium charges.
Lighter has driven rapid growth through its Lighter Liquidity Pool (LLP) program, which has become one of the most attractive yield opportunities in DeFi. The pool currently offers around 60% annual percentage yield (APY) on more than $400 million in deposits. Access to the LLP is linked to a user’s points balance, giving higher allocation limits to more active traders.
Lighter’s zero-fee model and points system have fueled growing speculation among traders. Since its launch, the exchange has recorded substantial trading volumes, at times rivaling Hyperliquid. Much of the excitement now centers on expectations of an upcoming token launch, widely rumored to take place later this year.
While there is no token just yet, there’s already a bustling over-the-counter market for Lighter points, with points being sold for tens of dollars each. Prices have climbed from $39 to over $60, with one trader reportedly spending $1 million at $41 each.
One of the easiest ways to value a perpetual DEX is by examining open interest (OI), which represents the total value of all trades still open on the platform. The higher the OI, the more real money is sitting in positions. On Hyperliquid, for example, $13.2 billion in OI supports a circulating market capitalization of about $15.2 billion.
Lighter currently holds about $2.1 billion in OI. Assuming roughly 15%-20% of tokens are unlocked at the time of its token launch, this would imply a circulating market cap of around $1 billion-$1.1 billion and 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 roughly $83 to $100.
Should 15%-20% of the supply be allocated to the community, that would translate into 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 enters the chat
A growing subplot in this battle is the gradual but notable entry of institutional liquidity. Funds that once avoided onchain derivatives, citing slippage, latency or compliance concerns, are now allocating test capital to these platforms.
Hyperliquid’s speed-focused, transparent design has attracted growing interest from professional traders, while Aster’s Binance-linked narrative is drawing significant attention across Asian trading communities.
Lighter, with its sub-five-millisecond execution speed and onchain settlement model, is drawing interest from prop-trading firms looking for yield without counterparty risk. The next phase of the DEX wars may depend less on airdrops and more on which platforms can offer the most reliable rails for serious capital.
Infrastructure vs. narrative: Who wins in the long run?
While competition between Lighter, Aster and Hyperliquid keeps heating up, Hyperliquid still sets the benchmark in onchain derivatives, supported by unmatched open interest, strong execution quality and growing institutional traction.
Instead of slowing down, the exchange has stepped up its efforts, introducing HIP-3, which allows anyone to launch a perp DEX on Hyperliquid’s rails, launching its USDH stablecoin and moving quickly to list perpetuals for rival tokens like ASTER to capture narrative-driven flows.
Hyperliquid has also kept its community engaged through new reward mechanics. The Hypurr non-fungible token (NFT) collection, launched on Sep. 28, 2025, quickly became a hit, with floor prices hovering around 1,200 HYPE (roughly $55,000 each). The collection’s strong demand has fueled speculation about future reward rounds and potential updates to the points program.
According to White, this split among emerging DEXs shows how far incentives can move markets compared to how much infrastructure can stabilize them.
“Hyperliquid is betting on execution and liquidity, while Aster and Lighter are showing just how far incentives can stretch the market,” he said.
“The real test will be whether traders stay once the airdrop music fades.”