Inventory of 9 Perp DEX projects that are expected to be airdropped in 2026
author:Fiyalkin, Encrypted KOL
Compiled by Felix, PANews
Original title: Inventory of 9 Perp DEX projects that are expected to be airdropped in 2026
Recently, crypto KOL fiyalkin has compiled a list of Perp DEX projects that are likely to launch tokens in 2026, including brief descriptions, key data, and more. These projects are all in the early stages of development, and no tokens have yet been issued. Details of the content are as follows.
1. Variational
Variational is a decentralized peer-to-peer (P2P) derivatives trading protocol built on Arbitrum. It focuses on on-chain trading, settlement, and settlement of broad derivatives such as perpetual contracts, options, and futures.
Several applications have been developed based on the Variational Protocol, including Omni for simple perpetual contract transactions and Pro for advanced traders and institutions.
Unique technology stack:
Zero fees for all position transactions, and only $0.1 processing fee for deposits and withdrawals
Loss Refund: When users close a loss-making trade on the Omni platform, there is a 2-4% chance of getting the full loss back immediately.
Broad market coverage: Omni supports emerging markets such as RWA and volatility (485 markets in total)
Ample Liquidity: Omni's liquidity management system integrates liquidity from CEX, DEX, DeFi, and OTC channels.
The program's points program went live less than a month ago. Early traders have shared 3 million points, and 150,000 points will be distributed every week. There are currently around 3.3 million points in circulation, which is still a very early stage considering that credit programs usually last about six months.
Currently, Variational Agreements have an open contract (OI) size of $670 million; daily trading volume of $1.5 billion; and 12,000 weekly traders.
Additionally, Variational raised $11.8 million between 2024-2025 from institutions such as Coinbase, Dragonfly, and Bain Capital Ventures.
2. Ethereal
The Perp DEX platform Ethereal is deeply integrated with Ethena Labs' synthetic dollar USdE to build a “one-stop DeFi application” with USdE as the core.
Furthermore, Ethereal is the first DEX with margin to earn daily returns, and users can earn profit on their margin even while holding open positions, so every trade can generate compound interest.
Ethereal is deployed as an EVM application chain and is configured as follows:
Settle with Arbitrum One
Arbitrum execution environment
Celestia data availability
Currently, Ethereal's open positions amount to 45 million US dollars, daily trading volume is about 80 million US dollars, and the total number of traders is 8,000.
3. Hibachi
Hibachi is a privacy-focused trading platform. It received a $5 million seed round in March 2025 from Dragonfly, Electric Capital, and Echo. Team members are from Citadel, Tower Research, IMC, Meta, Google, Hashflow, etc.
Hibachi has now launched social networking features, upgraded chart annotation features, etc. Since the beta was released in June last year, the cumulative trading volume has exceeded 6.7 billion US dollars, daily trading volume has reached 7 million US dollars, open contracts (OI) have reached about 1.5 million US dollars, and there are more than 2,000 daily active traders. It has launched a new points system, and no tokens have been issued yet.
4. Cascade
Cascade is a new 24/7 broker offering a perpetual market covering cryptocurrencies, US stocks, and private equity assets with zero transaction fees. Currently, some invited depositors can access the platform and is expected to open to the public in early 2026. The platform will initially provide more than 10 sustainable markets, and the product lineup will be gradually expanded in the future.
The project has raised $15 million from investors including Polychain Capital, Variant, Coinbase Ventures, and Archetype, and has partnered with Arbitrum, Base, Chainlink, and Pyth Network.
5. Pacifica
Perp DEX platform Pacifica is built on Solana and aims to combine the speed of CEX with the transparency and non-custodial security of DeFi. Pacifica was founded in January last year and is fully self-funded (self-funded) with no venture capital. Team members are from companies such as Binance, FTX, Coinbase, and NFTPerp, as well as financial institutions such as Jane Street and Fidelity, and AI companies such as OpenAI, DeepMind, and ByteDance.
The current size of Pacifica's open positions (OI) is approximately $71 million, with a daily trading volume of $600 million, and a total of 33,000 traders.
6. Extended
Extended is a Perp DEX built by the former Revolut team to integrate cross-asset staking, unified margin, Perp, spot, and borrowing into one app. In addition to cryptocurrencies, Extended also offers RWA/ TradFi markets such as the Euro, S&P 500, etc. with USDC as collateral.
Extended has been launched on the Ethereum L2 network Starknet mainline, supporting more than 50 trading pairs and up to 100x leverage. The open contracts (OI) have reached about 200 million US dollars, the daily trading volume is about 1.5 billion US dollars, and the number of daily active users has reached 4,200.
Currently Extended has raised $6.5 million with investors including Tioga Capital, Semantic Ventures, StarkWare, etc.
7. Nado
Nado is a high-performance central limit order book (CLOB) DEX platform built on Ink L2 (an EVM compatible L2 network launched by Kraken), developed by the former Kraken team, and combines CEX-level speed with DeFi unmanaged security to provide a unified trading experience for spot, perpetual contract, and capital markets.
Key features of Nado:
Trade the spot and perpetual contract markets: Supports mainstream currencies such as BTC and ETH, and perpetual contracts can have up to 20 times leverage.
Nado Engine: The core of Nado is a high-performance off-chain sequencer and on-chain risk engine, with settlement via Ink L2. New transactions instantly enter the order book with a delay of 5-15 ms and are settled in batches on-chain.
Unified margin: A user's entire investment portfolio is used as collateral for spot, perpetual contracts, and currency markets in a unified margin account.
Money market: Deposits automatically earn profits, use flexible collateral such as wETH or USDT0 for margin borrowing, and easily achieve rapid revolving positions through spot margin trading.
Low fees: Single side fees are as low as 1.5 basis points, pending order rebates can reach up to -0.8 basis points, and increase in levels according to transaction volume. The more transactions, the lower the fees.
Currently, Nado's open positions (OI) amount to about 90 million US dollars, daily trading volume is 500 million US dollars, and the number of daily traders is about 2,000.
8. TradeXYZ
TradeXYZ is a Perp trading platform focused on RWA and traditional financial assets, built on Hyperliquid L1's HIP-3 protocol and developed by the Unit.xyz team to enable a 24/7 global capital market where “trade any asset anytime, anywhere.”
The maximum leverage multiples it supports are as follows:
Silver: up to 20x
XYZ100 (tracking Nasdaq futures): up to 25x
EUR/USD & USD/JPY: up to 50 times
Currently, TradeXYZ's open positions (OI) amount to about $221 million, and the daily trading volume is approximately $570 million.
9. Reya
The Reya trading platform is an on-chain exchange built on Ethereum and provides institutional-level execution. It has received $19 million in funding from Robot Ventures, Coinbase, CoinList, etc.
Reya is based on Ethereum and uses innovative ZK Rollup technology, designed specifically for transactions:
Speed: Trade execution time is less than 1 ms
Security: Verifiable order execution and settlement is achieved through ZK-proofs, and executed transactions are settled on Ethereum
Reliability: No single point of failure, Rollup design with multiple rotating L2 nodes
Currently, the size of Reya's open positions (OI) is about $22 million, with a daily trading volume of $550 million, and the total number of traders is 7200.
Twitter:https://twitter.com/BitpushNewsCN
Compare the TG exchange group:https://t.me/BitPushCommunity
Compare TG subscriptions:https://t.me/bitpush
