Traders reassess perp DEX risk as HFDX volume continues to climb

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DEX perpetuals hit $7.9 trillion in 2025, pushing traders to reassess asset safety as HFDX highlights financial risks posed by centralized custodians.

Summary

• On-chain perpetuals hit $7.9t in 2025 as traders shift from custodial risk toward non-custodial platforms like HFDX.
• After January’s crash, traders increasingly favor HFDX’s non-custodial perpetuals with fully on-chain pricing and settlement.
• HFDX is gaining traction as DeFi traders seek transparent, oracle-priced perpetuals without surrendering asset custody.

In 2025, the perpetual futures market on decentralized exchanges reached $ 7.9 trillion in total volume, the largest year ever for on-chain derivatives in crypto. The phenomenal growth of the perpetual futures market has made people take a closer look at the financial safety of their assets and where the parties hold their funds. Platforms such as HFDX are joining the conversation about the realities of financial risks posed by centralized custodians. 

Coming out of the massive market crash in January, it is clearer that it’s made traders re-evaluate who takes their financial responsibility. The response to the massive market crash in January has not been to take a step back, but instead to move towards non-custodial perpetual platforms at record levels. HFDX sits at the center of this shift, offering a trading architecture designed for users who refuse to hand over their keys just to open a position.

A trillion dollar month rewrites the playbook

Monthly perp DEX volumes first crossed the $1 trillion mark in October 2025 and maintained that level through December. For context, the entire segment processed just $4.1 trillion across all of 2024. The speed of this transition caught even seasoned analysts off guard. Perp DEXs now command roughly 26% of the total crypto derivatives market, up from single digits just 12 months prior.

BitGo’s $2 billion IPO and Copper’s early-stage listing talks signal that crypto infrastructure, particularly custody, has become a distinct investable sector. Yet for many retail and crypto-native traders, paying for institutional custody feels unnecessary when decentralized alternatives exist. The message is clear: if the protocol can do what a custodian does without taking your keys, why bother with a middleman?

Why analysts are watching HFDX closely

HFDX enters this environment as a protocol built specifically for traders who want professional execution without custody tradeoffs. Unlike order-book models that rely on centralized market makers, HFDX settles trades against a shared liquidity pool governed entirely by smart contracts. 

Pricing comes from decentralized oracles, and every position, every liquidation, and every fee is verifiable on-chain. This architecture removes the trust assumptions that defined earlier generations of perpetual platforms.

What sets HFDX apart is its Liquidity Loan Note system, which allows capital participants to commit funds in exchange for fixed-term, fixed-rate returns funded by actual protocol activity. These returns come from trading fees and borrowing costs, not inflationary token rewards. 

The protocol makes no guarantees, and all participation carries risk tied to market conditions and smart contract execution. For traders and capital providers alike, transparency is the point: you can audit where the yield comes from.

Here is why experienced traders and analysts are paying attention to HFDX:

• Full self-custody throughout the trade lifecycle, with no platform-held funds
• Transparent oracle-driven pricing with no reliance on centralized market makers
• Liquidity Loan Notes offering structured, fixed-rate returns from real protocol revenue
• Smart contract execution across all trading, liquidation, and settlement functions
• No inflationary token incentives masking unsustainable economics

The road ahead

The perp DEX sector is no longer experimental. With monthly volumes routinely exceeding $1 trillion and institutional frameworks finally catching up, the question for traders has shifted from whether to use decentralized perpetuals to which protocol best fits their risk profile. HFDX offers a clear answer for those who prioritize verifiability, self-custody, and yield tied to real economic activity. The market is watching.

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