A review of recent developments in popular Perp DEX and find the most suitable way to participate

During a period when the market was volatile and capital sentiment was cooling, the Perp DEX sector showed rare resilience. Driven by airdrop expectations and incentive mechanisms, community activity on multiple decentralized contract platforms continues to rise, and daily trading volume remains within a relatively stable range. As users gradually concentrate on cost-effective platforms, this track is screening for truly sticky products in the \"cold market\" and has also become a structural opportunity worthy of focused observation at this stage.

StandX: The trading points activity has been launched on the main network, and a trading competition will be launched soon.

On December 10, StandX issued a document on the X platform announcing that the trading points activity has been launched on the main network. The trading volume on the first day exceeded US$81 million, and on December 16, the trading volume exceeded US$100 million. Users can earn points by depositing DUSD into Perps Wallet, Vaults or actively participating in transactions (interactive link: https://standx.com/).

This event cooperates with Binance Wallet. Users who use Binance Wallet\'s selfless key extended wallet will receive a 10% point bonus, which will last for 4 weeks until January 7, 2026. Points will be backtracked and rewarded for all past transactions since the launch of the main network.

In addition, Justin, a core member of the team, participated in an issue of Chinese AMA in early December. The Oddaily Planet Daily compiled the following points:

Q1: Is there a risk of unanchoring built-in stablecoins (DUSD)? How safe is it?

A1: The DUSD mechanism is safe and fully mortgaged, and the underlying assets are mainstream assets such as BTC and ETH; the current arbitrage strategy of \"spot long + contract short\" is adopted to maintain \"market neutrality\", regardless of the rise and fall of the currency price. The total asset value remains stable in U, only earning capital rates and not assuming the risk of currency price fluctuations.

Q2: What is the difference between Mainnet and the previous Alpha test net?

A2: The Alpha phase uses test coins, which are mainly used to test product functions and issue \"test network points\"; while the main network phase uses real money, and users need to deposit the real USDT for transactions. The current points are \"main-net points\", and their value and weight are different from those of the test net.

Q3: What are the future plans for the project?

A3: StandX is about to launch a trading competition and plans to launch more small-currency contract pairs. At the same time, the team will continue to optimize the product experience, with the goal of making DEX achieve a CEX experience.

Q4: What is the proportion of trading points and deposit points to short positions?

A4: We haven\'t finalized this yet, because we are now separating each stage and each type of points, so it\'s equivalent to each getting its own reward. Then we will finally comprehensively evaluate each type of user and each type of points before airdrop to see a balance between the contribution to StandX products and the overall ecosystem. Only then will we decide what the reward ratio for each project is.

StandX Points Gain Strategy

Method 1: Deposit DUSD to earn tDUSD(1.2 times points). The specific steps are as follows:

● Use USDT/USDC mint DUSD;

● Deposit DUSD into Perps wallet and you can exchange it for tDUSD;

● Every 1000 tDUSD/day =1200 points;

● Non-destructive participation is suitable for newcomers and users who do not participate in the transaction.

Method 2: Provide LPs, and the points rules are:

● DUSD: Each DUSD will earn 1 point per day;

● USDT/USDC: Each USDT/USDC will earn 1.2 points per day.

For example, 1000 DUSD+1000 USDT→2200 minutes/day.

Method 3: Earn points for SWAP transactions (specified trading pairs), and trading volume per 100 DUSD =5 points.

This method of obtaining points is fraught with wear and tear, so \"brushing the party\" will participate carefully.

Method 4: Invite friends, and both parties can get an additional 5% points bonus.

Method 5: Earn points by trading on the StandX main website.

● If you make a profit: the more the income, the more tDUSD, the higher the points;

● If you lose: the loss exceeds 50% of the initial capital, points will still be awarded at 50% of the initial capital.

In addition, the daily trading check-in event is worth participating in, and you will earn 10 points for completing two transactions exceeding US$100 per day.

StandX trading to earn points and Bo token airdrops are still in the early stages. Judging from the daily transaction volume, it is not \"very good\" at present. It is relatively easy to obtain points and worth participating. Even if you don\'t swipe the transaction volume to earn points, you can still save stable coins every day.\"White prostitute\" points.

Aster: Monthly airdrops + regular repurchase and destruction; online transaction matchups between humans and AI

According to the latest data from DeFiLlama, Aster\'s daily transaction volume exceeds the Lighter, which has the highest expectation for recent coin issuance, ranking first in the Perp DEX project.

Perp DEX data

Although Aster has completed TGE, its airdrop activities are still advancing, and are on a monthly basis, with short interaction cycles and clear rewards.

The fourth phase of the token airdrop event is in progress

Currently, the fourth phase of Aster Harvest has been officially launched at 8:00 a.m. on November 10, Beijing time, and will last until 7:59 a.m. on December 22, 2025. This phase will allocate 1.5% of the total supply of ASTER tokens and be distributed equally among six cycles of epochs, with 0.25% allocated per epoch.

The fifth phase of the token airdrop event will start on December 22 and last for 6 weeks.

The fifth phase of the Aster Crystal will start after the end of the fourth phase of the Aster Harvest. The specific details are as follows:

● Duration: 6 weeks (December 22, 2025 to February 1, 2026);

● Allocation ratio: 1.2% of the total supply in the fifth phase (approximately 96 million ASTER units), of which 0.6% can be applied immediately after the event, and the other 0.6% has a three-month lockup period.

In addition, Aster will launch the Aster Chain Test Network at the end of this year, launch the main network on Q1 next year, and launch the token pledge and governance function on Q2.

Accelerate the execution of Phase 4 repurchase, increasing the average daily repurchase scale to approximately US$4 million.

According to the latest announcement released by the ASTER team, the speed of Phase 4 repurchase will be increased under the existing mechanism. The accelerated repurchase scale will increase from the original approximately US$3 million/day to approximately US$4 million/day starting from December 8.

Officials said that this move can more quickly put the Phase 4 handling fees accumulated since November 10 into on-chain repurchase and strengthen support during periods of market volatility. Based on the current fee level, it is expected that the stable execution stage of repurchase will be reached within 8 to 10 days, and the daily repurchase scale will continue to remain within the range of 60% to 90% of the previous day\'s revenue in accordance with the Phase 4 rules.

The team emphasized that all operations are performed transparently on the chain, and the relevant execution wallet address has not changed (address link: https://bscscan.com/address/0x573ca9ff6b7f164dff513077850d5cd796006ff4).

In addition, on December 5, Aster destroyed 77.86 million ASTER repurchased during the S3 season, worth nearly US$80 million.

Aster\'s repurchase address

Launched a trading showdown between humans and AI

On December 9, Aster issued a document on the X platform stating that the trading showdown between humans and AI has been launched. 70 funded human investors are engaged in a trading duel with 30 AI agents run by nofA_ai (each with initial funding of $10,000). The trading showdown time is from December 9 to December 23.

As of now, only 29 of the 100 traders (real and AI) have achieved profits. Among them, only 9 have made more than $5000 - 8 of them are real traders and 1 is AI. The most prominent performer was real-life trader Tippy, with a profit of US$47,000, far ahead.

Human and AI trading earnings chart

Lighter: Coinbase will be launched, but TGE may delay

Since November 11, Lighter announced that it had completed US$68 million in financing. After this round of financing, Lighter\'s company valuation reached US$1.5 billion, Lighter\'s daily trading volume has remained at the forefront of Perp DEX and ranked first for many days. Regarding points for the second quarter, it is officially set to be issued every Friday. Among them, market makers will allocate 50,000 points per week (only advanced accounts are eligible to earn points through market making), and Ordinary trading users will allocate 200,000 points per week. Factors affecting points include: trading volume, open contract volume, account funds, leverage multiple, profit and loss amount, and transaction category, etc., but the specific weights have not been announced yet and are \"blind box\".

On December 13, Coinbase Markets issued a document on the X platform announcing the addition of Lighter to the coin roadmap, which also made community members think that Lighter is not far from TGE.

Coinbase adds Lighter to the roadmap

However, according to feedback from members participating in the Lighter Japan AMA, the TGE time may be postponed to December 24 to January 1 next year. Affected by this news, the probability of \"No\" in the Polymarket platform \"Will Lighter conduct token airdrops this year\" event increased from only 8% on December 16 to 33%.

Polymarket platform \"Will Lighter conduct token airdrops this year\" event In addition, in a podcast interview with The Picking Block that Lighter founder and CEO Vladimir Novakovski attended today, when answering token-related questions, Vladimir said: \"From the perspective of expectation management, this is a marathon, not a sprint. The team and the early community didn\'t actually expect the situation of \'taking off on the first day\'. The more realistic expectation was to start from a relatively healthy position, and then with continued product construction, the overall trend would slowly move upwards. Our goal is obviously not to maximize value on the first day, but to keep it in a healthy state in the current market environment, and then iterate on this basis. We\'ve seen too many tokens go online, jerk, and then go down.\"