The core contradiction of Perp DEX: technological Decentralization encounters capital monopoly, how giant CEXs hunt the DeFi market through the "changing vests" game.

On the surface, the Perpetual Futures Decentralized Exchange (Perp DEX) builds a "decentralized" technological defense with its smart contracts execution, on-chain transparency, and user self-custody. However, delving into its economic model and governance structure reveals deep-rooted traps of power concentration.

This article reveals the brutal reality of the Perp DEX market being implicitly monopolized by a few capital players, professional market makers, and CEX giants. Taking Hyperliquid as an example, its "double standard" intervention in the JELLY and XPL events clearly indicates that the platform's own financial security always takes precedence over the principles of Decentralization. Moreover, through cases like the Aster/StandX layout of mainstream CEX systems and another CEX, EdgeX, it demonstrates how centralized exchanges (CEX) avoid regulation by incubating related projects under the "decentralized" label while achieving ecological hunting of the DeFi market. The competitive core of the Perp DEX track has shifted from ideology to "executing efficient centralized capital strategies under a decentralized framework."

The Trap of Power Concentration: Governance and Liquidity of Capital-Monopolized Perpetual Futures DEX

Although the Perp DEX claims to be governed by the community, its power core has been controlled by a few large holders from the very beginning:

• Centralized Token Distribution: Most governance tokens are concentrated in the hands of the founding team, early investors, and VCs, making the so-called "democratic governance" a mere expression of the will of a few large holders.
• Liquidity Monopoly: The lifeline of the platform—liquidity—is highly monopolized by professional market makers and institutional LPs. Ordinary users find it difficult to challenge the institutional "Matthew Effect" advantage due to high proposal costs and fierce competition in fee sharing, making democracy an illusion.
• Oligopolistic market structure: By 2025, the concentration of the Perp DEX market is astonishing: the four major platforms Hyperliquid, Aster, Lighter, and edgeX together control 84.1% of the market share. This oligopolistic structure is not a result of natural selection, but rather a product of capital screening and bias, which greatly stifles the survival space for new projects.

The Invisible Hand: The Interest Game Revealed by Hyperliquid's "Double Standards"

The two classic intervention cases of Hyperliquid clearly reveal the selective trade-offs between "Decentralization" and "self-interest" on the Perp DEX platform:

JELLY event's lightning intervention

• Nature of the incident: JELLY token is facing price manipulation, directly threatening the platform's liquidity and users' treasury funds.
• Platform response: lightning fast. Validator nodes bypassed the normal process, quickly reached an emergency consensus, forced the closure of profitable orders and shut down the controlled accounts.
• Intervention logic: The platform explains it as "protecting the platform users' treasury funds".

XPL indifference to the event

• Nature of the event: The manipulator profited over 46 million dollars through a short squeeze, causing a loss of approximately 60 million dollars for short position users. The platform's treasury was not damaged.
• Platform attitude: indifferent. Official response "Hyperliquid blockchain is operating normally as designed," the clearing mechanism is executed according to the public protocol, and the protocol has not generated any bad debts.
• Intervention Logic: Ignore. Platform losses have not occurred, and user losses are considered "market risk."

Double Standards Benefit Calculation

This completely different approach exposes a clear formula for calculating interests: threatening the platform's treasury (JELLY) triggers intervention; merely harming user interests (XPL) triggers neglect. The security of the platform's funds is always the top priority, and the principle of Decentralization is just an ornament when it does not threaten core interests.

Protocol-Level Privileges and Liquidity "Shadow Central Bank"

The Hyperliquid protocol treasury (HLP) mechanism is the highest embodiment of institutional monopoly on liquidity:

• Absolute Monopoly of TVL: Hyperliquid's total TVL reaches 512 million USD, of which HLP accounts for 429 million USD, constituting 84% of the total, making it the platform's "shadow central bank."
• Advantages of the Privilege Mechanism: Clearing monopoly: HLP enjoys a unique backup clearing processing right, which not only avoids the risk of platform cascading clearing but also directly distributes the clearing profits to HLP holders.

Structural fee sharing: HLP extracts approximately 45% of the fees fixed from the overall trading volume of the platform, providing stable passive income, while ordinary User Vaults do not have this fixed sharing right.

Risk Collective Balancing: HLP achieves risk sharing through a collective fund pool of over $400 million, with stable annualized returns and volatility far lower than BTC.

• Systemic constraints faced by users: In contrast, User Vaults face disadvantages in information acquisition, delays in execution efficiency, and performance fee pressures of up to 10-20%, resulting in most 30-day PnL being negative and TVL accounting for only 16% of the total.

The "Changing Vests" Game and Ecological Predation of CEX Capital

Behind the oligopolistic pattern of leading Perp DEXs is the capital of centralized exchanges (CEX) hunting the DeFi ecosystem through the "changing vests" strategy:

• Mainstream CEX empire's tentacles: In-depth investigation reveals that the popular Aster and PancakeSwap are controlled by the same core operating team. CZ's endorsement of Aster is essentially an internal product promotion of "transferring from left hand to right hand". The team personnel network further shows that the former executives of this CEX are responsible for Aster and StandX respectively, forming a "duopoly" strategy aimed at diversifying regulatory risks and achieving full market coverage.
• Other Centralized Exchange layouts: EdgeX: A startup project by former executives of a Centralized Exchange, with a technical route that resonates with a flexible coin listing strategy.

Byreal: Inherits the technological accumulation of CEX in the derivatives field, and avoids regulatory risks through Decentralization packaging.

Avantis: Focused on RWA Perptual Futures, in line with US compliance.

• Core Motivation: The core motivation for CEX's layout of Perp DEX is regulatory arbitrage (leveraging the "Decentralization" label), a market share defense battle, and capturing the next generation of DeFi innovation dividends. Through resource sharing, market-making networks, and traffic guidance, they will migrate users from CEX to the associated Perp DEX, achieving a circulation of users within an ecosystem controlled by the same capital group.

Conclusion

The new norm in the Perp DEX industry is "technological Decentralization and centralized power." Leading platforms have toolized the narrative of Decentralization to achieve the dual goals of regulatory evasion and increased efficiency. The so-called Decentralization revolution is evolving into a game of "capital vests" for traditional centralized powers. Future competition will no longer be a battle of ideological beliefs, but rather who can better balance the underlying framework of Decentralization with the operational efficiency of centralization to provide a user experience comparable to that of CEX. Only those platforms that can build credible and sustainable value capture mechanisms, while executing efficient centralized capital strategies under the guise of "Decentralization," will survive and expand in an oligopolistic market.

In an era where user experience transcends ideology, do you think Perp DEX platforms should explicitly acknowledge the nature of their centralized operations in exchange for more transparent governance and fairer liquidity distribution?