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Our lead PRO analyst, Martin, is pounding the table on perp DEXs right now.

ICYMI: Perpetual DEXs are platforms where you can trade perpetual futures (contracts that let you bet on the price of an asset going up or down, with no expiry date) entirely onchain.

And Martin’s fired up about them for two big reasons: 

To give you an idea of just how ‘stupid’ the economics are - look no further than Hyperliquid…

They’re doing $1B in annualized revenue with 99% net margins and just 12 employees!

That's $83M in revenue per employee.

Goldman Sachs? Roughly $1M per employee (83x less efficient).

CME Group (the biggest centralized derivatives exchange on the planet)? They run at about 50% margins.

All with thousands of employees, compliance departments, and clearing infrastructure that require hundreds of millions a year just to keep the lights on…

The efficiency of perp DEXs put them (perp DEXs) in a completely different category of business. 👇

Ok, but… how?

Because smart contracts do the work that entire departments would normally do at traditional firms. Margin calculations, liquidations, trade settlement - it all runs automatically.

So when trading volume doubles, headcount doesn't - nothing changes on the cost side. 

Every new dollar of revenue flows almost entirely to the bottom line.

Which naturally raises the question: why don't the big guys just… copy it?

It’s really quite simple: they can’t. 👇

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In the U.S., the Commodities Exchange Act requires that execution, clearing, and settlement happen across separate legal entities. 

A single platform can't legally do all three.

Perp DEXs do all three inside a single smart contract, automatically & instantly.

The very thing that makes them so efficient is exactly what U.S. law says traditional exchanges aren't allowed to do.

So to compete, an incumbent like CME would need to lobby for a complete rewrite of the legal framework governing an entire asset class. 

We're talking a multi-year regulatory fight with no guaranteed outcome - where the centralized exchanges come bearing a knife, and regulators come packing a revolver.

Then layer in the distribution angle, and things get reeeal interesting…

Traditional exchanges control who builds on their infrastructure. Perp DEXs don't.

Hyperliquid uses something called "builder codes"... 

Which essentially allows any developer anywhere in the world to build a front-end, an integration, or a whole new app on top of the protocol and earn a cut of trading fees for doing it.

Think of it like a permissionless affiliate program for trading infrastructure. Every new builder extends the protocol's reach without requiring a single thing from the core team.

And the flywheel is working. 

Builder codes already account for about 10% of Hyperliquid's volume:

On top of that, Hyperliquid rolled out something called HIP-3, which lets anyone create a perpetual futures market for any asset. Equities, commodities, interest rates, you name it.

So… 

All while the incumbents are handcuffed by regulation, and the onchain growth engine is open to anyone with a keyboard.

(As we said at the top: the economics are absolutely stupid and the growth story has barely even begun.)

… so what are Martin’s picks of ‘the Perp DEX litter’?

Right now, it’s Hyperliquid (HYPE) and Lighter (LIT).

And if you want to know exactly why he’s bullish on them, what weights he’s putting behind each allocation and get a deeper understanding of the opportunities in the perp DEX space: 

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