Sui Network Perp DEX Overview: What are the differences between the four major protocols?

Author: 0xShinChan , Encryption KOL

Compiled by: Felix, PANews

The post-FTX era has completely changed the trading landscape, pushing a large number of users to the decentralized perpetual contract exchange (Perp DEX). The daily trading volume of these platforms now exceeds US$30 billion, which shows that users have a huge demand for decentralized derivatives.

However, the fragmented characteristics of early Perp DEX were often affected by UI/UX (user interface/user experience) availability, depth of liquidity and reliability of price feeding, which hindered its widespread use. Starting from 2024, the market structure began to change, marked by the emergence of innovative models such as GMX PVP and dYdX order book. Today, the lending, DEX and earnings trading agreement teams on Sui Network are enriching their product lines, including perpetual contract trading.

Sui's Advantages in Perp DEX

Sui actually offers several compelling features that make it a strong contender for building a sustainable DEX.

• High Performance Low Latency: Sui's parallel transaction processing enables high throughput and low latency, which is critical to efficient order matching and smooth trading experience on DEX.

• Object-centric data model: Sui’s unique data model supports efficient storage and parallel processing of account and asset data.

• zkLogin enables seamless access: zkLogin features simplify the user’s access process, allowing the creation of accounts with familiar Web2 credentials, reducing experience barriers to new traders.

• Sponsored Transactions: Sui’s sponsored transactions feature reduces user costs and improves the overall transaction experience.

Here are Sui's early builders:

• Bluefin

• Astros powered by NAVI Protocol

• Aftermath Finance

• Typus Finance GLP Trading Model

Kriya is also about to launch its Perp DEX.

Before digging into each one, here is a comprehensive comparison table.

The following will compare and study each protocol and analyze its transaction characteristics, protocol mechanism and performance.

Bluefin

Bluefin, a veteran Perp DEX on Sui, combines a fast-matching sub-chain order book and a secure on-chain settlement engine. Protocol liquidity is managed by a professional market maker (MM):

Leveraging Sui's parallel transaction processing capabilities, Bluefin has extremely low order execution latency and fast on-chain final confirmation (under 500 milliseconds). In addition, it supports nearly all perpetual contract assets on Sui, covering the widest range, including $DEEP, $WAL and $TRUMP.

• The Bluefin platform's 24-hour perpetual contract trading volume is between 40 million and 70 million US dollars, indicating that the platform's trading activity is high.

• BTC-PERP pairs usually account for the largest share of daily trading volume (about 60%), followed by SUI-PERP and ETH-PERP.

• According to Defi Llama data, the cost incurred is about $4 million per year.

Excellent UI/UX. Users can use the transaction view function, the interface is clear and contains all the required content. It is worth mentioning that Bluefin's zkLogin integration is supported by Sui. This simplifies the user’s introductory process and eliminates the complexity of wallets and mnemonics.

Aftermath (test network)

Aftermath first launched its Perp DEX testnet in November 2024. It runs entirely on the chain, and unlike many Perp DEXs that rely on the chain order book matchmaking, Aftermath puts the entire order book on the chain. As it is still in the test network stage, statistics are limited.

Aftermath focuses more on improving liquidity/TVL of its DEX and existing fund pools. Potential incentives for the future/official release of Perp DEX may take place later.

Astros (beta)

Astros is a DEX aggregator + Perp DEX created by the NAVI Protocol team. Like Bluefin and Aftermath, NAVI Protocol also uses the Order Book mechanism in its Perp DEX. As it is currently in the beta phase, information and specific mechanisms on cooperative market makers (MMs) are not yet detailed. Its 24-hour trading volume reached $300 million, which may be driven by its ongoing trader incentive program.

Typus Perp

Typus Finance launched its GMX-style Perp DEX about two weeks ago. According to Defi Llama data, the 24-hour trading volume is about $200,000, and the TVL of the TLP pool exceeds $700,000.

Assets in the TLP pool include $SUI, $USDC, $DEEP, and $LBTC, while APR is currently over 100%.

Some observations and conclusions

The rise of order book: Sui's Perp DEX ecosystem is currently clearly inclined toward order book model. This phenomenon is reflected not only in the choice of protocol design, but also in its dominance in transaction volume. This shows that the order book mechanism either has inherent applicability in Sui's architecture or is market-recognized by its user base.

Asset scarcity and the temptation of meme: Sui Network Perp DEX supports significantly limited assets, which represents potential opportunities. If a protocol can quickly embrace the volatile but lucrative memecoin trading field (which has an ever-evolving cultural foundation in Sui), then leveraging the inherent speculative nature of these assets may drive the rise in platform trading volume.

Initial stage and the necessity of incentive mechanisms: Compared with the mature and highly liquid Perp DEX ecosystem on EVM and Solana, Sui's cumulative trading volume and TVL are still in its infancy. Given the existing feature set and available functions of these alternative chains, it may be necessary to attract traders to turn to Sui Network's Perp DEX, which is not just technological innovation. An attractive incentive mechanism may be the key incentive to attract speculative capital and promote the significant growth of the Perp DEX ecosystem.

Related reading: A list of the three major Perp Dex mechanisms: Hyperliquid vs. Jupiter vs. GMX