Perp DEX volume cools after the earlier high-turnover phase
BlockBeats reported on Aug. 7 that, according to TradingBeats monitoring, Perp DEX has moved out of its earlier high-turnover phase. Total market volume over the past seven days fell about 13.7% week over week. The current 30-day volume is around $498.2 billion, down 63.4% from the roughly $1.36 trillion peak seen in October last year.
The sharpest drop came from crypto perpetuals. Comparing the four-day windows of June 22 to 25 and Aug. 3 to 6, Hyperliquid’s average daily crypto contract volume fell from $5.988 billion to $3.058 billion. Lighter dropped from $1.666 billion to $1.111 billion. GRVT’s weekly average daily volume was about 59.1% lower than before, while dYdX was down about 43.2%. On Ethereum and Solana, weekly Perp volume fell 26.8% and 22.5%, respectively.
The drop in trading demand also fed through to market-making returns. Hyperliquid HLP assets fell 21.8% from June to about $215 million, while Lighter LLP dropped 19.9% to $80.62 million. HLP’s 30-day return was only about 0.018%, leaving the strategy vault’s performance close to flat as its capital base shrank.
Wintermute, a well-known crypto market maker, also received a U.S. broker-dealer license on Aug. 7 and is preparing to expand into Wall Street market making.
Liquidity has not left the platforms
The data does not point to a broad pullout of funds from the platforms. Over the same period, Hyperliquid Bridge balances rose from $5.773 billion to $5.94 billion, up 2.9%. Lighter Bridge balances increased by about 2.0% as well.
That leaves a different picture: the current problem for Perp DEX appears to be weak trading demand rather than a simple exit of liquidity.
Traditional assets are taking a bigger share of volume
The small area still showing growth is traditional assets. Trade.xyz’s average daily volume increased from $3.888 billion to $5.134 billion, up 32.1%, offsetting about 42.5% of the decline in Hyperliquid’s crypto contract volume. Across crypto and traditional-asset contracts, Trade.xyz’s share of volume rose from 39.4% to 62.7%, a gain of 23.3 percentage points.
Stocks and other traditional assets are reshaping Hyperliquid’s internal volume mix, but not enough to reverse the broader retreat across the Perp DEX sector. As crypto trading demand cools, equities have become one of the few areas still absorbing incremental volume.