Perpetual futures
- All exchanges
- Hyperliquid
- GMX
- ApeX
- dYdX
ApeX's affiliate structure isn't flat, affiliates can recruit sub-affiliates who earn their own commission, and the primary affiliate earns a further cut on top of that. Here's how the chain actually works.
ApeX's Coinsight-powered AI Summary distills sentiment and news into a one-click market read, genuinely useful context, but it's a research aid, not a signal to trade on blindly. Unrelated third-party sites also use the ApeX name for their own AI bots.
Liquidation triggers on ApeX's mark price, not the price you're watching on a chart, and in fast markets, your actual exit can land worse than your estimated liquidation price. Here's a worked example and a real buffer target.
ApeX Omni skips registration and KYC entirely, but it only supports EVM-compatible wallets, so funds sitting on a non-EVM chain need to move first before you can connect.
ApeX doesn't require you to convert everything to USDC first, eight different tokens can each back your positions directly, converted into margin automatically behind the scenes.
ApeX doesn't eliminate gas costs entirely, it batches transactions through an app-rollup and subsidizes what's left, so trading and account actions feel gasless even though real infrastructure costs still exist underneath.
Adding leverage to a prediction contract introduces a risk Polymarket itself doesn't have: early liquidation. A position that would simply wait out a swing on Polymarket can be forced closed early on ApeX.
ApeX Omni currently settles deposits and withdrawals across five chains, Ethereum, BNB Chain, Arbitrum, Base, and Mantle, with Solana support announced but not yet live. Here's how to move assets correctly.
ApeX advertises up to 100x leverage, but the actual amount available shrinks as your position size grows, a detail that changes what 100x really means for anything beyond a small trade.
Cross (portfolio) margin lets a winning position's unrealized profit cover a losing one's shortfall, convenient for hedged books, but it also means one bad position can pull down your entire account.
You can't attach a stop-loss or take-profit to an order before it fills on ApeX, TP/SL only becomes available once the underlying position already exists under Positions.
There's no market price for a company that isn't public, pre-IPO perpetuals settle against a market-implied valuation estimate instead, and firms like OpenAI have actively voided similar secondary-market exposure before.
ApeX doesn't set its own prediction-market prices, every index price is sourced directly from Polymarket, and settlement is all-or-nothing at 0.999 or 0.001, no partial outcomes.
A stock perpetual on ApeX isn't a share, it's a synthetic contract priced off Chainlink's oracle feed, held in a dedicated Stocks Account that's deliberately isolated from your crypto positions.
ApeX offers both a normal withdrawal and a fast, instant on-chain withdrawal, but fast withdrawals aren't available on every supported chain, and picking the wrong network for your destination is a real, hard-to-reverse mistake.
dYdX's affiliate commission isn't a flat rate, it scales from 30% to 50% based on a trailing 30-day referred-volume window, and there's a real trading-volume requirement before you can even get a link.
Cross $10M in referred volume within a rolling 30-day window and your rate jumps to 50% for the following 30 days, the tier math rewards a recent burst, not lifetime cumulative volume.
dYdX's Python client actually talks to two separate services, a node for submitting orders and a separate Indexer for reading market data, and mixing up which one handles which task is a common setup mistake.
dYdX's liquidation price is a real formula, not a rough estimate, and holding a second position changes the math on your first one, even if they're in unrelated markets.
Bridging a non-USDC asset from Solana, Base, or Polygon into dYdX involves a swap first, Skip Go converts it to USDC on the source chain before the CCTP-to-Noble-to-IBC path even begins.
dYdX doesn't cap leverage with a single fixed number per market, once open interest crosses a defined threshold, your maximum available leverage shrinks automatically as the margin requirement scales up.
Staking DYDX and depositing into MegaVault aren't competing versions of the same product, one pays a modest, stable USDC yield for network security, the other is a variable, at-risk market-making return.
dYdX v4 runs on its own purpose-built blockchain, not a rollup on Ethereum, connecting your wallet generates a separate dYdX Chain address behind the scenes. Here's what that setup actually involves.
MegaVault's yield isn't a fixed rate, it's a blend of vault trading P&L, funding payments, and a 50% trading-fee revenue share that governance can change at any time.
Depositing to dYdX doesn't send USDC directly, it routes through Noble via Circle's Cross-Chain Transfer Protocol first, a detail that explains the wait time you'll actually see.
dYdX's export isn't one file, it's three separate CSVs (Trades, Funding, and Transfers), and missing any one of them leaves a real gap in your tax reporting.
A post-only order isn't a limit order with a label attached, if it would match immediately against existing liquidity, dYdX rejects it outright rather than filling it as a taker order.
Listing a new market on dYdX doesn't require a governance vote anymore, it requires 10,000 USDC deposited into MegaVault and locked there for roughly 30 days, funding the market's own liquidity.
There's no live migration decision left to make, v3 stopped trading on October 28, 2024. Here's what that shutdown actually involved, and what to do if you still hold unclaimed v3 funds.
dYdX's available leverage isn't a fixed number per market, it adjusts with open interest, and the platform's own margin math determines how much smaller your deposit can be than your exposure.
A dYdX market order is submitted as immediate-or-cancel by default, it fills what it can right now and cancels the rest, rather than resting on the book like an unfilled limit order would.
A documented fake dYdX site (dydx[.]click) has already been used to drain wallets, and dYdX's own now-retired v3 site was once compromised to redirect users to a phishing page, this isn't hypothetical.
Running a dYdX validator means more than provisioning a server, starting with v5.0.0, you also need a separate Slinky sidecar process just to fetch the oracle prices the chain depends on.
dYdX's mobile app has built-in liquidation-risk alerts, but the most flexible options are self-hosted, community-built tools that route notifications through Discord, Telegram, or even PagerDuty.
dYdX's stop and take-profit orders can trigger off either the oracle price or the last traded price, and a reduce-only order resizes itself automatically if your position has already shrunk.
Only bonded (actively staked) DYDX counts toward your trading-fee discount, tokens sitting in the unbonding period don't qualify, and the discount doesn't touch maker rebates at all.
dYdX's hourly funding rate isn't a snapshot of the current premium, it's the average of premiums collected over the preceding 60 minutes, calculated fresh at the end of each hour.
Cross margin is dYdX's default, not an optional add-on, every position shares one collateral pool, which means a position in a market you've forgotten about can still change another position's liquidation price.
Unlike some competitor DEXs that only offer mobile access through a wallet's browser, dYdX ships a genuine native app with two distinct trading modes, here's how to pick between them.
Only bonded (actively staked) DYDX counts as a governance vote, the same bonding requirement that unlocks trading-fee discounts also determines whether your tokens have a say in protocol decisions.
A dYdX withdrawal is actually two linked transactions routed through Noble, and it's rate-limited platform-wide, a detail that matters if you're planning to move a large amount out at once.
There's no lockup on MegaVault withdrawals, but there's also no fixed exit price, your withdrawal is processed pro-rata across sub-vaults and can experience slippage depending on conditions at that moment.
GMX now reaches far past its original two chains, native deployments on Botanix and MegaETH, plus Multichain access from Ethereum, Base, BNB Chain, and Solana. Here's what that actually changes.
GMX doesn't offer a hosted trading API, automated trading means running the open-source @gmx-io/sdk against your own wallet and an RPC endpoint. Here's what that setup actually involves.
GMX charges the same fees on both chains, but Arbitrum has meaningfully deeper liquidity and more active participants. Here's what that actually means for you as a trader.
GMX's liquidation check treats price impact asymmetrically, and borrow/funding fees erode your buffer even if price doesn't move. Here's a concrete, numbers-based walkthrough.
A convincing GMX clone site and a genuine referral link look identical at a glance, here's what to actually check before connecting a wallet or trusting a code.
Unlike Hyperliquid's single-gateway bridge, GMX accepts funds from any standard Arbitrum bridge. Here's how to get ETH or USDC there, and what that flexibility trades off.
GMX's position fee isn't a flat rate, it's 0.04% or 0.06% depending on whether your trade balances or worsens the platform's long/short imbalance. Here's the full fee picture.
Not all GM pools carry the same risk, a major-asset pool and a volatile altcoin pool are structurally different bets. Here's how to actually compare them.
GMX pays staking rewards in three forms at once, and 'Claim' and 'Compound' do different things to each. Here's how to actually use the Earn page without mixing them up.
GMX's 'Keep Leverage' toggle changes how a partial close affects your remaining position, get it wrong and your leverage shifts unexpectedly. Here's the mechanics.
A GM pool's advertised APR and its actual risk profile aren't the same thing, a single-token pool and a diversified GLV vault can show similar headline yields for very different reasons.
GMX needs no sign-up, your wallet is your account, the same self-custody model as most perpetual DEXs. Here's how to connect one on Arbitrum, safely.
Vesting even a small amount of esGMX can lock up a much larger GMX or GLP balance, and GMX runs two separate vesting vaults that don't share reserves. Here's the math and the mechanic.
GMX's own export gives you a raw transaction CSV, not a tax report, here's how to pull it and get it into crypto tax software without missing anything.
Pairing a GM pool LP position with an offsetting perp doesn't make you risk-free, it swaps price risk for a different set of costs and rebalancing decisions. Here's the actual mechanic.
GMX has no order book, so a limit order isn't resting anywhere waiting to fill, it's a request a keeper executes once the oracle price is reached. Here's what that changes.
GMX V1 has been sunset since July 2025, this isn't an optional migration anymore. Here's what legacy GLP holders need to do now, including a real exploit-compensation claim.
GMX V1 has been fully retired since July 2025, there's no longer a live migration decision to make. Here's what actually changed for traders, and what still matters if you're new to GMX now.
Multiplier Points reward long-term GMX stakers with a compounding fee boost, capped at 200%, but they burn permanently if you unstake. Here's how they actually work.
Open interest tells you which side of a market is crowded; utilization tells you how much of a GM pool's capacity is already committed. Here's how to read both before you trade.
GMX V2 requires different collateral for longs vs shorts, and allows up to 100x leverage. Here's the mechanics, and why a 2025 exploit still matters to how you think about risk.
GMX prices trades using Chainlink low-latency oracles, not a single exchange's order book. Here's why the number you see can differ from a CEX chart, and what that means.
GM pool LPs earn 63% of trading, borrow, and swap fees on Arbitrum, and take the other side of trader P&L, the same structural risk as Hyperliquid's HLP vault.
GMX's referral discount isn't always 10%, that rate is a tier only affiliates with real weekly volume qualify for. Here's how the tiers and rebates actually work.
GMX lets you attach TP/SL when opening a position, add it after, or set multiple trigger levels on one position. Here's how, and what oracle-price triggering means for you.
Staking GMX earns you a share of protocol fees, plus esGMX and Multiplier Points, but esGMX is locked, not a bonus token you can sell immediately. Here's how it works.
GMX has no official native app, mobile access runs through a WalletConnect-compatible mobile wallet's built-in browser instead. Here's how that actually works.
Vesting esGMX takes a full year and reserves your staked GMX in the process, you can't unstake or sell the reserved amount until vesting ends or is stopped. Here's the mechanics.
Bots trade through an agent wallet, not your main wallet, which can't withdraw funds. Here's how to set one up safely, and what a leaked key actually risks.
Fake Hyperliquid sites use lookalike domains, sponsored search ads, and fake support DMs to drain wallets. Here's the actual pattern, and how to check before you connect.
Avoiding liquidation on Hyperliquid comes down to leverage, margin buffer, and margin mode choice. Here's a practical, numbers-based walkthrough, not vague advice.
Solana, Base, and Ethereum mainnet all need a third-party bridge to reach Hyperliquid, and you have to choose between two different destinations. Here's how.
Builder codes let third-party apps earn a fee on trades they route to Hyperliquid. Here's the approval flow, fee limits, and a costly unit mistake to avoid.
Open interest and historical funding tell you how crowded and one-sided a market is. Here's where to check both, and what they can and can't predict.
Closing or reducing a position on Hyperliquid means placing an opposite order, with a reduce-only flag to avoid accidentally opening a new one. Here's how, and what can go wrong.
Hyperliquid has no sign-up form: your self-custody wallet is your account. Here's how to set one up and connect it safely, step by step.
Running a Hyperliquid vault means trading other people's money with your own capital locked in alongside it. Here's the setup process, and the leader's actual obligations.
Hyperliquid pays referrers 10% of their invitees' taker fees for life, and gives new traders a fee discount. Here's how the program actually works.
Cross margin shares your whole balance across positions; isolated margin caps risk per trade. Here's how to switch between them on Hyperliquid, and what each actually risks.
Hyperliquid only accepts native USDC on Arbitrum through its Bridge2 contract. Here's exactly how to fund your account without sending the wrong token.
Hyperliquid doesn't issue tax forms, you export three separate CSV files yourself and feed them into tax software. Here's the process, and where people get it wrong.
Depositing into Hyperliquid's HLP vault makes you the counterparty to the platform's traders. Here's how the deposit works, and what that actually risks.
Independent analyses report that most retail Hyperliquid traders lose money, while HLP has posted mostly positive historical returns. Here's an honest comparison, not a false equivalence.
HyperEVM lets Solidity apps read and act on Hyperliquid's live order book directly, no oracle needed. Here's how it works, and what that composability actually risks.
A post-only order guarantees you pay maker fees or nothing at all, it never takes liquidity. Here's how limit and post-only orders work, and when they can leave you unfilled.
Hyperliquid's own interface shows your liquidation price but doesn't push alerts as it approaches. Here's how to actually get notified before it's too late.
There is no official Hyperliquid trading app for iOS, and the Android app is a limited test build. Here's what actually works on mobile, and how to avoid a fake app.
Opening a perpetual position on Hyperliquid takes a few clicks, but leverage and liquidation mean the risk is real from the first trade. Here's the mechanics.
A TWAP order splits a large trade into smaller pieces over time to reduce market impact. Here's how Hyperliquid's TWAP works, and where it can still fall short.
The order book shows every resting buy and sell order on Hyperliquid; the depth chart turns that into a shape you can read at a glance. Here's what it actually tells you.
Take-profit and stop-loss orders on Hyperliquid execute automatically at a trigger price. Here's how to set them up, and why the order type you pick changes the outcome.
Staking HYPE unlocks up to 40% off trading fees on Hyperliquid, but it also locks your tokens up and exposes you to validator risk. Here's how it works.
Funding on Hyperliquid moves peer-to-peer between longs and shorts every hour, capped at 4%. Here's where to track it, and why holding through settlement isn't free.
Hyperliquid's spot market lets anyone list a token permissionlessly. Here's how spot trading works, and why 'permissionless' cuts both ways for a beginner.
Sub-accounts let you isolate strategies or risk under one wallet, but they have no private key of their own. Here's how they work and what that means for security.
Withdrawing from Hyperliquid sends USDC to Arbitrum, with a flat $1 fee and a short validator dispute window. Reaching Ethereum mainnet takes a second hop. Here's how.