Katana Perps revolutionizes onchain trading: acquisition of IDEX and launch of the perpetual futures platform

Katana, a DeFi blockchain born from the incubation of Polygon Labs and GSR, has announced a double move set to redefine the onchain trading landscape: the acquisition of IDEX, one of the first and most influential decentralized exchanges, and the official launch of Katana Perps, a perpetual futures platform designed to integrate spot trading and derivatives in a single onchain environment.
This strategic move comes at a crucial time, with global markets increasingly leaning towards always-on solutions and U.S. regulation opening up opportunities for perpetual futures on crypto assets.

The Importance of an Integrated Structure

The acquisition of IDEX represents the first major initiative under the leadership of the new CEO, Matthew Fisher, who has taken the helm of Katana with a clear vision: to own a larger share of the trading infrastructure and its related revenues.
Fisher, already a key player in partnerships with giants like OKX and Binance, has led Katana’s expansion strategy, aiming to consolidate the platform’s position in the DeFi sector.

“When I became CEO, I decided that Katana needed to own a larger portion of its stack and the associated revenues.
The acquisition of IDEX and the launch of Katana Perps are the first steps in this direction,” stated Fisher. “With always-on markets becoming the new standard for real-time price discovery and regulation paving the way for onchain perpetuals, the infrastructure needs to be ready now. This is what we are building.”

The growth of always-on markets and the role of perpetuals

The market context is changing rapidly. The U.S. regulators are outlining a path to allow perpetual futures on cryptocurrencies, marking a potential turning point for onchain derivatives. Simultaneously, trading activity is shifting towards 24/7 open markets, where price discovery occurs in real-time, without the limitations of traditional hours.

A striking example of this transformation occurred during the so-called “Iran shock” in March, when oil futures trading on Hyperliquid reached $7.3 billion on March 13, precisely while traditional markets were closed. This episode highlights how decentralized and always-active platforms are becoming essential tools for price discovery in situations of global volatility.

Katana Perps: a platform for the future of trading

With the launch of Katana Perps, the platform introduces advanced features such as leveraged trading, directional exposure, and integrated liquidity within a unified trading environment. The goal is to provide an infrastructure capable of supporting both institutional workflows and the needs of crypto-native users, while ensuring efficiency and accessibility.

The platform stands out for its ability to integrate spot liquidity, routing, and derivatives into a single decentralized stack, promoting continuous markets and more efficient capital allocation. This approach addresses the growing demand for advanced onchain trading tools, in a context where perpetuals are rapidly gaining ground compared to centralized exchanges.

The Numbers of a Growing Sector

The data is clear: in January 2026 alone, the volume of DEX perpetuals reached $739.48 billion, with decentralized platforms capturing 10.2% of the total crypto perpetual futures trading, a significant increase from 2% two years earlier.
The acquisition of IDEX and the launch of Katana Perps position Katana as one of the leading players capable of meeting this growing demand, offering an increasingly integrated and high-performance onchain trading environment.

The Technological Legacy of IDEX at the Service of Katana

Founded in 2017, IDEX was the first DEX to combine a high-performance matching engine with onchain settlement, becoming the most active decentralized platform on Ethereum until 2019, both in terms of trading volume and number of transactions.
The experience and technology developed by IDEX—nearly a decade of live exchange infrastructure—will now underpin Katana Perps, enabling greater execution capacity and deeper liquidity as the platform grows.

A Shared Vision for the Evolution of DeFi

The new phase of Katana has also been enthusiastically received by Marc Boiron, CEO of Polygon Labs, who emphasized: “Matthew has been instrumental in building Katana as we know it today. This new phase reflects both the strength of the foundations already laid and the growing demand for increasingly advanced onchain trading infrastructure.”

Katana, thanks to innovative mechanisms such as Vault Bridge, Chain-Owned Liquidity, and concentrated protocol distribution, aims to maximize value for active users by offering deep liquidity and sustainable yields. The decisive approach to DeFi infrastructure allows for greater capital efficiency and a superior user experience compared to traditional blockchain models.

Towards a New Era of Global Trading

The acquisition of IDEX and the launch of Katana Perps represent a decisive step towards greater integration of the onchain trading stack, precisely as perpetual futures continue to capture market share from centralized exchanges and traditional market structures evolve towards global and continuous trading models.

In a world where macro risk no longer waits for market opening hours, the ability to offer always-on markets and advanced trading tools becomes increasingly central. Katana positions itself as a protagonist of this transformation, ready to lead the sector towards a new era of efficiency, transparency, and accessibility in decentralized trading.

For more information, you can visit the official Katana website:
katana.network.