![my image 5 - The Ultimate Perp DEX Tier List [19 Projects Ranked] Project](https://airdrops.io/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/my-image-5.png "The Ultimate Perp DEX Tier List [19 Projects Ranked] Project Airdrop 1")
Table of Contents
![my image 5 - The Ultimate Perp DEX Tier List [19 Projects Ranked] Project](https://airdrops.io/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/my-image-5-1024x414.png "The Ultimate Perp DEX Tier List [19 Projects Ranked] Project Airdrop 2")
Perp DEXs are the hottest narrative right now, it’s a trillion dollar industry by itself. Everyone’s looking for the ‘next Hyperliquid‘ and with more than 15 Perp DEXs running points programs at the moment, it can be difficult to decide on which ones to farm.
To guide you through the Perp DEX landscape, this article provide a detailed tier list of projects worth paying attention to, ranking them based on what matters to both airdrop farmers and traders.
For each project on the list, we highlight whether a points program is active, if an airdrop is confirmed, the remaining percentage of the token supply for the community and the funding they have received.
Tips for Farming Perp DEX Points
Before we get started with the tier list, here are some generic tips for farming Perp DEXs:
- Push trading volume consistently
- Choose some projects from this list and trade there every week to earn points. Try not to miss a single week and place a minimum of 2-3 trades per week. Farming Perp DEXs is mostly about cumulative volume, so you want to build up as many trades as possible over an extended period of time.
- Try to avoid opening and closing positions very quickly (keep trades open for at least 10-15 minutes) to avoid being marked as a sybil/wash trader.
- Make use of different order types
- There’s a difference between market orders (buy/sell at the current price) versus limit orders (adding liquidity to the order book to buy or sell at a specified price).
- Limit orders are more beneficial for execution and earning points. Since you’re adding liquidity to the exchange with limit orders, as a user you’re providing more value to the Perp DEX by making the bid/ask side of the order book deeper.
- Trade new markets/markets with lower volume or open interest
- Trade newly listed markets for a potential points boost. Sometimes certain assets are weighted more heavily, but there also may be hidden boosts/points allocated to newly listed markets. Trade new assets within the first few days or first week to take advantage of this fact.
- Volume is the amount traded, so if you bought and sold a position of $10,000 of a BTC perp, then your total volume is $20,000.
- Open interest refers to the outstanding amount in open positions, i.e., it would be $10,000 as long as the position is open, then 0 once you close the position.
- Since trading volume (and open interest) are usually the main determinants of how many points you can earn from Perp DEXs, opening positions in markets with lower volume or open interest is likely to result in more bang for your buck.
- Example: the BTC market has $6B volume and $2B in open interest. But let’s assume there’s another market that has just $10M in volume and $5M in open interest. Then it’s much easier to earn points from the latter, since a $100K position accounts for a higher percentage of the open interest for the smaller market as compared to BTC.
- The flip side is that it can be more difficult to trade lower-cap assets as there’s less liquidity, the price action may be more chaotic, and so on.
- Use vaults for passive point earning opportunities
- If you don’t want to risk your funds leverage trading, then deposit funds into liquidity provider vaults for a passive points earning option.
S-tier Perp DEXs
Farm these like your life depends on it
Hyperliquid
- Airdrop confirmed?: No
- Points?: No
- Remaining supply for community: 42.88%
- Funding: Self funded
Hyperliquid is the clear market leader in the Perp DEX meta – with the largest open interest out of all Perp DEXs and the largest TVL. It’s also a special case in this list, since it’s not just a perp DEX but also a high-performance Layer 1 blockchain. The perp DEX has a fully on-chain order book offering perpetual swaps with up to 50x leverage, spot trading and pre-launch contracts (HyPerps) with 3x leverage.
A whopping 42.88% of the HYPE supply is still remaining for the community although it’s not clear how these will be distributed yet, it’s likely there will be another airdrop for power users sometime in the near future. From the first HYPE airdrop, 4% was unclaimed while 38.88% was allocated to “Future Emissions & Rewards”, so almost half of the supply is yet to be distributed! This haul of HYPE tokens is worth close to $19 billion at the time of writing, making Hyperliquid an essential target for airdrop farmers.
Over 180 different markets, mostly crypto focused Crypto with quick listings of newly launched tokens. One unique aspect of Hyperliquid are the HyPerps: these provide exposure to pre-TGE tokens with limited leverage and are upgraded to regular perps following TGE (where leverage is then increased as spot price oracles can be utilized for the newly launched token).
However, Hyperliquid is lacking in TradFi market breadth when compared to some competitors on this list. Currently, traders can get leveraged exposure to gold through the PAXG perp with up to 5x leverage or get spot exposure through Tether’s XAUt (which can then be bridged to HyperEVM to earn yield via venues like HyperBeat).
The upcoming launch of HIP-3 will dramatically increase the range of tradable markets though, such as:
- Unit is working on bringing Tesla and other US equities on chain
- Ventuals will bring pre-IPO markets to Hyperliquid
Pro tip: There are many 2-in-1 airdrop opportunities for Hyperliquid by using alternative front-ends like Lit, Based and Dexari which are all running their own points programs. By using these projects, you not only build volume on Hyperliquid and qualify for a potential round 2 HYPE airdrop, but you also position for native airdrops from these projects.
Hyperliquid ecosystem projects to farm
Lighter
- Airdrop confirmed?: No
- Points?: Yes
- Remaining supply for community: Unknown
- Funding: N/A
Lighter is widely considered as the strongest competitor to Hyperliquid and the project recently announced backing from the Founders Fund, necessitating a S-tier ranking. Season 1 of the points campaign just ended and the public stage is now here, where anyone can join without a code. A new points season is upcoming and will run until the end of 2025, so it’s still quite early in our view to start farming. There is tough competition though, with Lighter second only to Hyperliquid in terms of open interest.
A-tier Perp DEXs
Projects that are very good opportunities with confirmed airdrops or significant backing
Avantis
- Airdrop confirmed?: Yes – $AVNT
- Points?: Yes
- Remaining supply for community: 38.5% (4% for Season 3, plus 34.5% for community post-Season 3)
- Funding: $12M
Built on Base, Avantis provides perpetual trading for Real World Assets (RWAs) and cryptocurrencies with zero fees and up to 500x leverage. The Zero Fee Perpetuals feature is interesting for farmers, as no fees are paid on losing trades while you only share a small percentage of your profit for winning trades.
Season 3 started September 3rd, 2025 and has a clear end in sight (February 28th, 2026). Along with the confirmed allocation for users (4% in Season 3 and 34.5% for community post-Season 3), it makes sense to prioritize trading on Avantis, especially if you have been farming Base. There’s also a passive option to farm points by depositing into the Avantis vaults, offering up to 32% APY at the time of writing.
One of the biggest reasons for buzz around Avantis is the backing from the Founders Fund, which holds significant amounts of BTC and ETH and has backed other notable crypto projects like LayerZero and OpenSea. The roadmap is also looking solid, with plans to integrate Pendle for yield-earning collateral, a dedicated layer 2 and expansion into sports and prediction markets.
Extended
- Airdrop confirmed?: Yes
- Points?: Yes
- Remaining supply for community: 30%
- Funding: $6.5M
Launched in 2024 by a team of ex-Revolut executives and engineers, Extended focuses on delivering CEX-like trading performance in DeFi, with gas-free trades and up to 100x leverage on perpetual contracts using USDC as collateral. It supports trading across 50+ markets, including crypto and TradFi assets – although the TradFi market breadth is very narrow compared to other projects in this list, such as Ostium.
The roadmap includes integrating a native lending and borrowing market, allowing users to post any supported asset — including yield-bearing ones — as collateral and earn additional yield through the integrated lending layer. After native lending and borrowing, Extended will also add spot trading.
There’s a passive option to earn points for users that are not comfortable trading perpetuals, with the Extended Liquidity Provider vault currently offering an APR of 12% and there’s only around 2,150 depositors.
Pro tip: There’s also a Tester Discord role to farm limited to only 200 – which might provide a multiplier for the airdrop!
Ethereal
- Airdrop confirmed?: No
- Points?: Yes
- Remaining supply for community: Unknown
- Funding: N/A
Ethereal is an Ethena-powered perp DEX with USDe collateral, which will soon launch it’s mainnet alpha enabling users to trade with self-custody while also earning yield on their balance. The platform is currently on Arbitrum, but there’s a planned migration to Converge chain. With over $1.2 billion in pre-deposits, this project has been one of the community favourites and the large TVL will feed deep liquidity from day one.
The Ethereal Points Program launched with Season Zero on February 13, 2025, and has been running for approximately 32 weeks as of September 25, 2025. Season Zero focused on pre-deposits until August 14, 2025, transitioning to Season One (Epoch 1 onward) with mainnet rollout.
The following epochs will introduce new features:
- Epoch 2: mainnet alpha (waitlist)
- Epoch 3: Public beta: points for trading/holding margin
- Epoch 4: Exotic pairs, lending vaults, community LPs
The roadmap also includes perpetual options, strategy vaults and cross-protocol composability. While Ethereal has not confirmed an airdrop, the backing from cycle-winner Ethena motivates an A-tier ranking.
Paradex
- Airdrop confirmed?: Yes – $DIME
- Points?: Yes
- Remaining supply for community: 46.6%
- Funding: N/A
Paradex is built on StarkNet Layer 2, unifies perpetuals and options spot trading with perpetual options (no liquidations). Offers more than 250 markets with zero fees. There’s a weekly XP pool of 4 million distributed every Friday until February 2026. Season 2 was extended at the end of July 2025 to launch spot trading, dated options, pre-markets and yield bearing synthetic dollars (XUSD).
Season 1 has already distributed 5% of the $DIME token supply, while 15% is dedicated to Season 2. A further 26.6% is dedicated to ongoing community rewards following the airdrop campaign (sometime after February 2026) and 5% is allocated to liquidity programs. With a clear end in sight to the points campaign and a generous allocation remaining for farmers, Paradex is a decent option.
ApeX
- Airdrop confirmed?: Yes – $APEX
- Points?: Yes
- Remaining supply for community: 5%
- Funding: N/A
ApeX has a broad range of markets including crypto perps, spot markets, RWAs and prediction markets. What makes ApeX so promising is the established track record, backing from reputable VCs like Dragonfly Capital and a team with prior experience at the derivatives exchange ByBit. It’s also the most recent points campaign from any project on this list, so if you want to be early as possible, you should be farming ApeX.
Ape Season 1 just recently launched with a confirmed airdrop running until December 22, 2025. There’s also boosts for early participants (trade on ApeX before October 6, 2025) and for perp DEX traders who have a history on other platforms like Hyperliquid and others.
Variational
- Airdrop confirmed?: Yes – $VAR
- Points?: No
- Remaining supply for community: 50% to community
- Funding: $11.8M
With significant funding and an experienced team of market makers and quant hedge funds, Variational is another one to watch closely for now. What makes Variational different to most other Perp DEXs is that it’s a peer-to-peer (P2P) derivatives trading protocol sourcing liquidity from different sources for the best execution. There’s also a loss refund program ongoing where you can earn back any trading losses with a probability of 1-5%.
While there’s no points program, the documentation states that 50% of the VAR token will be distributed to the community. It’s currently in closed beta, so you’ll need to get a referral code from Discord. A community vault is upcoming on the roadmap which will give you the passive option for points farming. Also on the roadmap are: public mainnet release, novel markets such as volatility index perps, baskets, rates perps and the points program launch.
B-tier Perp DEXs
Good opportunities to farm airdrops, pick at least 1-2 projects from this tier to focus on.
Ostium
- Airdrop confirmed?: No
- Points?: Yes
- Remaining supply for community: Unknown
- Funding: $3.5M
Ostium is the shaping out to be the best place to trade RWAs such as stocks, forex and commodities. Hosted on Arbitrum’s layer 2, Ostium provides synthetic perpetuals for both RWAs and crypto with up to 200x leverage.
The Ostium Points Program launched on March 31, 2025, and has been running for approximately 26 weeks as of September 25, 2025. It began with weekly distributions of at least 500,000 points (with occasional multipliers, such as 1 million points in early weeks), resetting every Sunday at midnight UTC. Retroactive points were also allocated to pre-launch users from mainnet, testnet, and pre-testnet phases. 24.5 million points distributed to traders, LPs and referrers so far.
There’s also a passive way to earn points and obtain 27% APR by depositing USDC in the Ostium Liquidity Provider vault. Overall, we think Ostium is one of the most promising Perp DEXs to farm given the team’s experience, the quality of the product and the way they have brought TradFi and crypto together under one roof. But there’s no confirmed airdrop or end date in sight for the points program, so we think it’s optimal to have some exposure to some of the S-tier and A-tier projects first.
Pacifica
- Airdrop confirmed?: No
- Points?: Yes
- Remaining supply for community: Unknown
- Funding: Self funded
Pacifica is built on Solana with a CEX-like experience with a team led by an ex-FTX COO. While there’s a limited number of markets and no certainty on an airdrop, Pacifica’s points program is the one of the most recent on this list and only began in September 2025. So if you want to be early as possible for a Perp DEX points program, you should focus on Pacifica (as well as ApeX and Ethereal). Pacifica have also recently overtaken Jupiter‘s Perps platform to take the top spot for volume on the Solana network.
One of the interesting features of Pacifica is the integration of a market needs and AI trading agent, which can help with trading ideas, analyze your positions, and share market insights. Some of the Pacifica team were previously at AI companies like OpenAI and DeepMind, so expect more emphasis on AI, which would be a key differentiator from other platforms.
Vest
- Airdrop confirmed?: No
- Points?: Yes
- Remaining supply for community: Unknown
- Funding: $5M
Vest is powered by a hybrid order book with a very good range of tradable markets, including new IPOs so you can trade companies as soon as they go public. A recent example is the Gemini crypto exchange stock GEMI. However, there’s limited liquidity verses established competitors.
Pro tip: set notifications for Vest on X and go long or short new IPO markets as soon as they are live. IPOs are often mis-priced (typically overpriced), so these new launches provide good trading opportunities.
A total of 26 million Vest points have been distributed so far. Recently switched to an ongoing points program away from a seasons model. Like Ostium, there’s also a passive option to farm points by depositing USDC into the Vest Liquidity Provider vault. At the time of writing, the VLP provides the best stablecoin yield of 120% APY.
While past integrations like the 2.5 million $ZK token allocation (fully distributed to the community in June 2024) show a history of rewards, there has been no mention of a points to token conversion. While points systems in the crypto ecosystem often lead to airdrops, Vest has only hinted at rewards without specifics. But given Vest are carving out a niche for themself with listings of stocks and pre-IPO markets, we think this is one project that is under-farmed and is likely to do well if it can maintain its differentiation from other Perp DEXs on this list.
EdgeX
- Airdrop confirmed?: Yes
- Points?: Yes
- Remaining supply for community: Unknown
- Funding: Undisclosed
EdgeX is an orderbook based perps DEX incubated by Amber Group, one of the major players in crypto market making. The team also has experience at Binance and EdgeX received funding in August 2025 from KuCoin ventures (amount undisclosed). The points program began in June 2025, so it’s fairly early to start farming now, with weekly points distribution on Wednesdays. Just over 4.6 million points have been distributed so far, but there’s no end date in sight to the points program and no confirmed airdrop yet.
Compared to other Perp DEXs, there’s a clear weighting for different actions: while mostly geared to trading volume (60% weighting), 20% of the points are also allocated to referrals and ambassador contributions and a further 20% to events/participation. In terms of popularity and difficulty to farm, it’s quite high as the platform is second only to frontrunners Hyperliquid, Lighter and Aster in terms of open interest, suggesting serious volume is required to earn a decent amount of points.
There’s also a EpicSer NFT that guarantees an airdrop allocation, which requires you to be active in edgeX’s Discord. The EpicSer Discord role and NFT were previously awarded for various competitions winners and there’s still 173 left to be minted.
Reya
- Airdrop confirmed?: Yes
- Points?: Yes
- Remaining supply for community: 45%
- Funding: $16M
There’s not as much trading activity on Reya as compared to other Perp DEXs in this tier and the tiers above, so it’s a good option if you have limited capital. With the high funding of $16M and unique features like yield-bearing collateral with rUSD and wstETH, we expect farmers to eat well from Reya Chain Points. The roadmap is ambitious with a plan for a decentralized layer 2 called ReyaChain which aims to compete with players like Hyperliquid in composable finance.
Reya recently confirmed an airdrop in an AMA with their CTO and the TGE is expected in Q4 2025. Plus, there’s 45% of the token supply for the community.
C-tier Perp DEXs
Don’t expect to earn much from farming these projects.
Aster
- Airdrop confirmed?: Yes – $ASTER
- Points?: Yes
- Remaining supply for community: 41.5%
- Funding: N/A
Aster experienced a lot of hype recently and Season 2 has just wrapped up, but the bad UX and inflated trading volumes (DefiLlama recently removed Aster due to inaccurate data) suggests there’s not much to be gained from farming this airdrop.
The main differentiator of Aster is the acceptance of yield-bearing collateral and higher leverage limits compared to others on the list. However, it’s highly saturated and getting any meaningful airdrop might be difficult at this stage despite the large allocation remaining for the community, especially if you’re low on capital.
Perennial
- Airdrop confirmed?: No
- Points?: Yes
- Remaining supply for community: Unknown
- Funding: $12.6M
Perennial could be a sleeper and surprise to the upside, but we’ve ranked it as C-tier because it doesn’t have much traction or adoption so far, trading is limited to BTC, ETH or SOL, and no airdrop is confirmed yet. There’s also no end date in sight for the Petals program and has been active for 92 weeks, which makes it unlikely that this airdrop is going to be a cook.
However, it’s worth considering if you’re already farming Base, as activity on Perennial may count towards a potential BASE airdrop. As Perennial is overlooked, traders with smaller bankroll may want to make it as part of their main focus.
Valhalla
- Airdrop confirmed?: No
- Points?: Yes
- Remaining supply for community: Unknown
- Funding: $1.5M
Valhalla is currently in the testnet phase and has an upcoming points program, which makes it an ideal target for farmers who want a zero cost opportunity. While an airdrop is not confirmed, trading on testnet and referring friends may make you eligible for points and in turn a possible future airdrop.
There’s also Discord roles to farm for being active and taking part in community events. The project’s documentation states that Valhalla Vaults feature is coming soon, so keep an eye out for that.
GTE
- Airdrop confirmed?: No
- Points?: No
- Remaining supply for community: Unknown
- Funding: $25.94M
With the significant funding and points program, GTE may be one to watch and could rise into higher tiers once there’s more confirmation on a points program or an airdrop (likely once mainnet launches).
For now, it’s a nice complement to farming other Perp DEXs as it’s zero cost and currently on testnet. As well as trying out the testnet and providing feedback, there are a few Discord roles to farm for being consistent trader, sharing quality research in Discord and creating community content.
D-tier Perp DEXs
Perp DEXs with inactive points programs, but they may introduce incentives in the future.
Hibachi
- Airdrop confirmed?: No
- Points?: Yes
- Remaining supply for community: Unknown
- Funding: $5M
Hibachi’s points program ended on September 28th, so with no active points program, there’s no clear incentive to farm the project now. However, it’s worth monitoring for an further points seasons or new trading competitions. Make sure to participate in any new campaigns and keep Hibachi on your radar for future campaigns.
Bullet
- Airdrop confirmed?: No
- Points?: Yes
- Remaining supply for community: Unknown
- Funding: N/A
As with Hibachi, this project is one to watch with no active campaigns at the time of writing and it’s only been deployed to testnet. Built on top of Solana, Bullet was created by the Zeta Markets team, so they have relevant prior experience in the space which is why it’s worth monitoring.
Closing Thoughts
Some closing thoughts on farming Perp DEXs:
- “Sure things“: Avantis, Extended, Paradex, Reya, and Variational all have confirmed airdrops. If you crave certainty, then you should focus on farming these projects.
- Time remaining to farm: ApeX, Ethereal, Pacifica, and Variational are the only ones left where you can be relatively “early”. Avantis and Paradex have the furthest confirmed end dates for their points campaign (both in February 2026), so there’s still time left to farm these. For others, it’s not so clear since there are no end dates for ongoing points campaigns, or there are currently no points campaigns.
- Community allocations: Aster, Avantis, Hyperliquid, Paradex, Reya, and Variational all have more than 40% of their token supply left to distribute to the community. Extended have also confirmed a substantial allocation for the community (30%).
- Funding: Hyperliquid and Pacifica are self funded, so any future airdrops from these projects are likely to be more profitable as there’ll be no token allocations for investors/backers, and will go to the community instead. However, projects with high funding may also be prioritised, especially Avantis, GTE, Perennial, Reya and Variational (all raised $10M+).
