Key conclusions

• The recent wave of DEX wars has moved away from token incentives and focused on speed, leverage, and sustainable infrastructure.

• Hyperliquid continues to lead the market with over $300 billion in monthly volume, sturdy liquidity and growing institutional adoption.

• Aster’s growth is driven by airdrops, Binance-backed credibility and leverage that attract professional traders.

• Lighter is gaining momentum thanks to Ethereum’s Layer 2 speed, zero-fee trading model, and exclusive points-based yield system.

Platforms such as SushiSwap, PancakeSwap, and Curve have used yield farming incentives and governance tokens to attract liquidity. This approach enabled capital to be raised quickly, bringing billions of dollars into the supply chain in a low period of time.

These early battles were about who could attract the highest total value locked (TVL) and traders through token incentives – not speed, leverage or institutional-grade infrastructure. The dust finally settled and Uniswap took the lead. The playbook she developed, covering liquidity mining, airdropping, and token participation, has become the basis for the more sophisticated decentralized exchange (DEX) wars that now rage constantly.

Inside the DEX liquidity wars

Hyperliquid, a DEX built on its own high-performance blockchain infrastructure, saw significant growth in 2025. Around mid-2025, the exchange handled over $300 billion in trading volume, with daily activity at times reaching $17 billion. Its deep liquidity and rapid execution have helped it gain a sturdy position among lively and professional traders.

One of the key drivers of Hyperliquid’s sturdy growth was its ability to boost user liquidity and activity through its points rewards program. The effort ultimately led to a vast drop.

A total of 27.5% of the token supply was distributed to 94,000 addresses, rewarding early and lively participants. What started as a way to get more people to trade has since become one of the most valuable token distributions in recent cryptocurrency history. The airdrop is currently valued at around $7-8 billion.

However, rivals are quickly catching up.

Aster is a rapidly growing DEX built on BNB Astute Chain that has established itself as one of Hyperliquid’s main competitors. On some days, reported trading volumes sometimes reached tens of billions of dollars, sometimes exceeding Hyperliquid’s data. The project’s association with Changpeng “CZ” Zhao, co-founder of Binance, also attracted a lot of market attention.

Meanwhile, Lighter, a recent exchange built on the Ethereum stack, has seen daily trading volumes exceeding $8 billion.

Together, these challengers turn Hyperliquid’s once-clear advantage into a three-way battle for market share.

According to Calder White, chief technology officer at Vigil Labs – a Silicon Valley startup that recently raised $5.7 million to apply artificial intelligence to understand and trade cryptocurrency markets – the apparent growth has very different underpinnings depending on the platforms.

“Our framework shows that Aster’s growth is largely narrative-driven, with investors moving capital to increase volumes, while Hyperliquid continues to deliver the most organic flow from serious participants. Both Aster and Lighter rely on the same point-to-drop playbook to increase liquidity and activity to compete with Hyperliquid for share of the market,” White said.

Aster is playing for high stakes for DEX domination

Aster’s dynamism stems from her close ties to CZ, which is currently advising on the project. His involvement has led many people on the Internet to refer to Aster as the “Binance DEX.” The exchange has introduced tokenized shares, allowing users to trade major assets on-chain with leverage of up to 1,000x. This too plans launch your own layer 1 blockchain.

This combination made Aster one of the boldest experiments in DEX design.

Driving this growth is Aster’s massive airdrop program, which rewards users for generating trading activity. Season two distributed 320 million Aster tokens worth approximately $600 million and ended on October 5, 2025.

The motivational model has already translated into great activity. Aster recently generated over $20 million in 24-hour fees, ranking it among the top revenue generators in decentralized finance (DeFi). There is also growing speculation that the team may utilize some of these earnings to redeem tokens. If true, this move could further boost the value of the Aster token and support maintain trader interest after the airdrop period.

Some participants can earn significant rewards, ranging from thousands of dollars to potential seven-figure payouts for the most lively traders. The scale of these incentives has resulted in sturdy volume on the platform, although it remains to be seen whether users will continue to trade when the rewards diminish.

Airdrops and exclusivity are driving Lighter’s growth

Lighter quickly gained a reputation as one of the more technically ambitious stacks in DeFi. Built on Ethereum’s custom Layer 2 with zero-knowledge circuitry, it supports matching latencies of less than five milliseconds. The goal is to achieve centralized exchange (CEX) speeds. The platform offers zero trading fees for retail users, while API and institutional flows are subject to premium fees.

Lighter has driven rapid growth through its Lighter Liquidity Pool (LLP) program, which has become one of the most attractive profit opportunities in DeFi. The pool currently offers approximately 60% Annual Yield (APY) on deposits of over $400 million. Access to LLP is tied to a user’s points balance, which provides higher allocation limits for more lively traders.

Lighter’s zero-fee model and points system have fueled growing speculation among traders. Since its launch, the exchange has seen significant trading volume, at times rivaling Hyperliquid. Most of the excitement now focuses on expectations surrounding the upcoming token launch, which is widely known to occur later this year.

While there is no token yet, there is already a energetic over-the-counter Lighter points market where points are selling for tens of dollars each. Prices rose from $39 to over $60, and one trader reportedly spent $1 million at $41 each.

One of the easiest ways to value a perpetual DEX is by examining open interest (OI), which represents the total value of all trades still open on the platform. The higher the OI, the more real money is in the positions. For example, in Hyperliquid, $13.2 billion in OI provides a circulating market cap of approximately $15.2 billion.

Lighter currently has approximately $2.1 billion in OI. Assuming approximately 15-20% of the tokens are unlocked at token launch, this would mean a circulating market capitalization of approximately $1 billion-$1.1 billion and a fully diluted valuation (FDV) in the vicinity of $5 billion-$5.5 billion. With approximately 12 million points tied to this initial number of points, each point will be valued at approximately $83 to $100.

If 15-20% of the supply is allocated to the community, this will translate into an airdrop of $750-1.1 billion for users – potentially one of the most vital token distributions in DeFi since the Hyperliquid drop.

Institutional liquidity enters the chat room

An increasingly common subplot in this battle is the gradual but noticeable move into institutional fluidity. Funds that once shied away from onchain derivatives, citing slippage, delays or compliance concerns, are now allocating test capital to these platforms.

Hyperliquid’s lucid design with a focus on speed is attracting increasing interest from professional traders, while Aster’s Binance-linked narrative is attracting significant attention from the Asian trading community.

Lighter, with its sub-five millisecond execution speed and onchain settlement model, is attracting the interest of prop-trading companies seeking profit without counterparty risk. The next phase of the DEX wars may depend less on airdrops and more on which platforms can provide the most reliable rails for solemn capital.

Infrastructure vs. Narrative: Who Will Win in the Long Run?

While competition between Lighter, Aster and Hyperliquid continues to intensify, Hyperliquid continues to set the standard in onchain derivatives, supported by unparalleled open interest, high-quality execution and growing institutional traction.

Instead of slowing down, the exchange has stepped up its efforts, launching HIP-3, which allows anyone to run a DEX on Hyperliquid rails, releasing the USDH stablecoin, and quickly moving to perpetual listings for competing tokens like ASTER to capture narrative-driven flows.

Hyperliquid also keeps the community engaged with recent reward mechanics. The Hypurr collection of non-fungible tokens (NFTs), launched on September 28, 2025, quickly became a hit, with floor prices hovering around HYPE 1,200 (approximately $55,000 each). Mighty demand for the collection has fueled speculation about future rounds of rewards and potential updates to the points program.

According to White, this split among emerging DEXs shows how far incentives can move markets compared to how much infrastructure can stabilize them.

“Hyperliquid is all about execution and liquidity, while Aster and Lighter show how far incentives can stretch the market,” he said.

“The real test will be whether investors will stick around when the dump music stops.”