📝 Editor's Note:

Welcome to OurNetwork's latest, part one of a two-part onchain dive into leading derivatives protocols.

In this issue, Nikita Ovchinnik is covering Hyperliquid's surge to $15B in open interest. Chris Grundy is covering the venerable dYdX, Shogun is covering GMX's post-vulnerability comeback, and Alexandra is covering Storm, which is making noise on the TON blockchain.

Let's get into it.

– ON Editorial Team

Hyperliquid | dYdX | GMX | Storm

• Hyperliquid is emerging as the leading onchain perps venue, built on a custom Layer 1 with a centralized exchange-like UX. Open interest reached $15.3B in July and is up 369% year-to-date. Over $5.1B USDC has been bridged in, with inflows accelerating ahead of native USDC and CCTP V2 coming to the platform. The upgrade removes bridging friction and unlocks Circle Mint rails. Phantom Wallet also contributed $2.7B in volume and over 20k users, fueling both institutional and retail traction.

• Phantom's in-app perps integration drove $2.66B in volume, $1.3M in fees, and 20,900 new users to Hyperliquid. That's with no bridging, no signups, just native access. The wallet has become a major source of first-time perps users, showing the impact of embedded UX.

• Bridged USDC to Hyperliquid has topped $5.1B, with usage spiking since May. Native USDC and CCTP v2 are now launching, removing the need for wrapped assets and enabling gasless transfers and institutional on/off-ramps via Circle Mint.

• dYdX is DeFi's pro trading platform offering perps trading of over 220 markets with up to 50x leverage. Annualized funding rates on dYdX were generally positive in H1 2025. Three tickers in particular were notable: FARTCOIN, whose 11 to 72% rates show persistent meme speculation. PancakeSwap's CAKE, whose 106% to -1.37% range indicates large sentiment shifts. And Arweave's AR, whose stable 10 to 31% range suggests healthier price discovery. For all three funding rates have dropped to roughly the mid-teens, signaling cooling speculation across dYdX markets in Q3.

• XRP gained the most market share on dYdX this year, rising from just over 3% of total volume in January to nearly 10% in July. This growth mirrors a volatile price trajectory — a high of $3.3 in January, a drop to $1.5 in April, and a rebound to $3.6 by July.

• dYdX experienced a leadership shift in H1 2025, with ETH growing its share of volume from 28% in January to 37% in July. BTC remained relatively stable around 35% and SOL dramatically declined from 16% to just 6% by mid-year.

• Following a recent disclosed vulnerability in GMX V1 deployment, and the recovery of funds, GMX has slowly reclaimed new highs of $346M in terms of open interest. There's been significant growth in perps trading with new token markets including JUP, DOLO, PUMP.FUN, and HYPE after the GMX Listing Committee expanded markets to 30 new listings. Additionally recent expansion to Botanix is emblematic for moving into the Bitcoin L2 ecosystem.

• Total revenue for GMX has now elevated to new heights of $130.18M, growing on average $14.12M a month, with annualised projected revenue of $72.94M. Of that revenue, 91.6% has been distributed to its protocol users (both liquidity providers and stakers).

• GMX's V2 GM pools have seen significant blended interest from liquidity providers, with ETH-USD, BONK-USD, ATOM-USD, TRUMP-USD, and AVAX-USD outperforming their underlying benchmarks by 20% in the past three months.

• Storm Trade is the leading perpetual decentralized exchange on TON, available both on web and as a Telegram Mini App. After the introduction of Degen Mode in June 2025, weekly trading volume spiked to ~$100M —more than double the Q1 average of ~$40M to $50M. The surge highlights growing user engagement and appetite for leveraged trading.

• Storm Trade’s TVL has remained consistently above $20M throughout 2025, supported by the platform's profit-sharing model. Liquidity providers receive 70% of the trading fees, creating strong long-term incentives and reinforcing deep, protocol-owned liquidity.

• Thanks to a model where LP-supplied liquidity is actively used in trading and rewarded with a share of fees, Storm Trade ranks second in both monthly revenue ($41.6k) and fees generated ($138.9k) among all DeFi protocols on TON.