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Ondo Finance officially launched its perps DEX trading platform less than a month ago. However, it is slowly cementing its place as a top perps DEX platform, even though its price is lagging.
Because of these factors, the native token, $ONDO, commands a market cap of $1.87 billion even in a bearish market. Its daily perps DEX volume has been growing alongside its Open Interest (OI), suggesting it could soon compete with established platforms.
What’s fueling Ondo’s Perps volume and OI growth?
Ondo’s perps volume has doubled from the launch volume recorded on July 7. The volume rose from $128 million to over $300 million, which is equivalent to more than a 2x increase.
As a result, the cumulative Ondo perps volume hit a new high of $5.996 billion three weeks after its launch.
On July 31, it was fourth among all perp DEXs in terms of the volume of tokenized equities traded, ahead of Lighter [LIT] and AsterDEX [ASTER].
Additionally, its OI hit a new peak level of $74.77 million. This was an indication that Ondo perps DEX was becoming traders’ preferred platform.
Tokenized equities, indices, and commodities fueled the sharp increase in perps volume. They included instruments like Nvidia, Tesla, oil, gold, and the S&P 500 with up to 20x leverage traded 24/7.
For instance, trading of tokenized US oil on Ondo increased by 59.3% over the past 30 days. More assets, like the iShares Systematic Bond ETF, were slowly being added on to the platform.
As a result, these additions may help the price of $ONDO stabilize and move higher. Worth noting, its price remains in a bear market structure, just like the rest of crypto.
Can Ondo challenge Hyperliquid, Aster & Lighter?
All of Ondo’s growth was happening on the backdrop of declining perps and DEX volume for the broader crypto market.
The month of July closed as another red month for on-chain activity. As per DefiLlama, both DEX volume and Perps volume hit new yearly lows, down over 60% from their peaks in October.
In October, most of the popular perps DEXs, like Aster and Lighter, joined Hyperliquid, which was already established.
As Ondo’s perps volume diverged from the trend in the broader crypto market, it posed a serious threat to Aster and Lighter if growth at this speed continues. Eventually, it could challenge Hyperliquid, which has Normalized Daily Volume of $10.74 billion.
Hyperliquid’s volume is almost 6x bigger than that of Aster and Lighter at $1.85 billion and $1.35 billion. Still, it calls for consistent trading on Ondo Finance’s perps product.
Final Summary
- Ondo’s daily perps volume exploded to $300 million per day, with cumulative volume reaching nearly $6 billion.
- Ondo’s perps volume was growing while the whole crypto market was declining, suggesting that Ondo was slowly dominating the perps DEX volumes.