Hyperliquid has strengthened its position at the top of the decentralized perpetuals market, clearly separating itself from competitors like Aster and Lighter over the past week.
According to data compiled by CryptoRank, Hyperliquid processed approximately $40.7 billion in perpetual futures trading volume over the last seven days, outpacing Aster’s $31.7 billion and Lighter’s $25.3 billion.
The gap highlights a decisive shift in trader preference toward a single dominant venue rather than fragmented liquidity across multiple platforms.
Open Interest Concentration Signals Structural Advantage
The divergence becomes even more pronounced when looking at open interest. Hyperliquid currently holds around $9.57 billion in open interest, a figure that exceeds the combined open interest of several major decentralized perp exchanges.
By comparison, the rest of the market is spread across multiple venues:
- •Aster: $2.73 billion
- •Lighter: $1.42 billion
- •Variational: $1.32 billion
- •edgeX: $1.2 billion
- •Paradex: $0.67 billion
This concentration suggests that traders are not merely cycling capital to capture short-term incentives. Instead, they are choosing to park leveraged positions on Hyperliquid, signaling confidence in its liquidity depth, execution quality, and risk infrastructure.
What the Data Implies for Perp DEX Competition
The current structure points to a “winner-takes-most” dynamic emerging within decentralized perpetuals. High open interest indicates longer-held positions, tighter spreads, and deeper order books, factors that tend to reinforce dominance once scale is achieved.
While Aster and Lighter continue to post substantial volumes, the data shows Hyperliquid increasingly functioning as the primary risk venue for on-chain leveraged trading, rather than just one option among many.
If this trend persists, competition in the perp DEX sector may shift away from raw incentive programs and toward differentiated execution, reliability, and capital efficiency, areas where Hyperliquid currently holds a measurable lead.