The Onchain CLOB Landscape
TL;DR
Decentralized exchange (DEX) spot volume has grown to over 20% of centralized exchange (CEX) volume, hitting $450bn+ in January 2025, with onchain central limit order books (CLOBs) emerging as a key infrastructure alongside automated market makers (AMMs) for onchain trading
While AMMs remain crucial for long-tail assets and permissionless trading, CLOB-based DEXs are gaining traction by offering institutional-grade features like precise order matching, lower latency, and advanced order types
Perpetual futures trading has become a sweet spot for onchain CLOBs, with total open interest growing from under $100mn to over $4.5bn, though still far from CEX levels of $50-100bn
The convergence of traditional finance (TradFi) order book mechanics with decentralized finance (DeFi) creates a more robust trading ecosystem that can better facilitate the migration of global capital markets onchain
Introduction
Trading is the cornerstone of the onchain economy, where cryptocurrencies and tokens incentivize network participants to perform valuable activities. Enabling all of this are DEXs which have not just proven product-market-fit but have become core infrastructure that makes it all work 24/7/365.
In the 6+ years since the launch of Uniswap V1, DEX share of CEX spot volume has risen to over 20%, with monthly spot volume hitting over $450bn in January 2025, and likely to rise over the coming years.
While early DEXs like Bancor and Uniswap popularized AMMs with their simplicity and continuous liquidity, emerging platforms are now exploring and implementing other trading mechanisms, including CLOB architectures that offer more granular order management, improved execution precision, and a better overall onchain trading experience.
In this article, we will survey the landscape of current and emerging CLOB-based DEXs and provide an outlook on how we see this space evolving.
DEX Refresh
A DEX is a blockchain-based platform that lets users trade cryptocurrencies and tokens directly from their wallets without relying on intermediaries, leveraging different trading mechanisms like AMMs or CLOBs to facilitate liquidity and pricing.
In terms of the pricing mechanisms, AMMs are currently the most popular. An AMM is typically a smart contract that automatically facilitates token swaps by adjusting prices based on the assets held in a liquidity pool. The most common version, popularized by Uniswap V1, uses a constant-product formula (x * y = k) to calculate the relative price of tokens based on their current balances in the trading pool.
Other DEX implementations are also pushing the boundaries beyond the well-known constant-product AMM model. For example, concentrated liquidity AMMs (CLAMMs) blend order book and AMM dynamics (i.e., Uniswap V3) to offer more granular price control, while dynamic liquidity AMMs (DLAMMs) on Solana (i.e., Meteora) adjust liquidity distribution in real time based on supply and demand dynamics, volatility or other factors, concentrating capital where trading is most active. Additionally, oracle-based platforms (i.e., GMX) incorporate on- and off-chain price feeds to improve pricing accuracy, ensuring onchain prices remain aligned with the broader market.
Onchain CLOBs
A CLOB matches buyers and sellers by aggregating limit orders based on price and time priority, letting traders use market, limit, or stop orders while updating in real time to show market depth and liquidity.
A mainstay in TradFi and CEXs, CLOBs have broken through in DeFi. These protocols bring trustless, onchain order matching that mimics traditional market dynamics while tackling issues like high transaction costs and slow speeds through improved scalability and fee optimization, paving the way for a more transparent and efficient trading landscape.
AMMs and CLOBs differ significantly in capital efficiency and market making.
AMMs use algorithmic pricing, typically via the constant product formula, to enable simple, trustless swaps. They democratize market making by allowing any user to supply liquidity through smart contracts, which makes launching new token pairs quick and user-friendly. However, because liquidity is spread across an indefinite price curve, capital is not always deployed efficiently and providers can face impermanent loss.
In contrast, CLOBs match orders based on price-time priority, supporting advanced order types like limit, stop, and conditional orders. This approach concentrates liquidity around current market prices, leading to tighter spreads and minimal slippage, which is ideal for high-frequency and professional trading. While CLOBs offer superior price discovery and more precise control, they demand more expertise and active management compared to the plug-and-play simplicity of AMMs.
Since EtherDelta’s early success in 2017, onchain CLOBs have evolved significantly, now averaging over $50bn in weekly volume. For context, this is only 11% of global DEX spot volumes and signals that CLOBs still have significant headroom to grow into.
While AMMs have dominated spot trading, onchain CLOBs have found their place enabling trading for perpetual futures. This has been exemplified by protocols like dYdX, Hyperliquid, and Vertex Protocol, just to name a few.
Perpetual futures, or “perps”, are derivative contracts that enable traders to get exposure to price movements without expiration dates, using leverage and cash settlement, while maintaining price alignment with the underlying asset through a funding rate mechanism.
Several factors have driven the rise of CLOBs for onchain perps trading:
Improved blockchain scalability and reduced fees making higher-frequency ordering and matching viable onchain
The growing demand for precise price discovery and advanced order types by participants to manage risks and exposures in volatile markets
Growing liquidity demand from sophisticated trader seeking robust, transparent trading infrastructure beyond what AMMs offer
Collectively, onchain CLOB projects have raised over $230mn in the last couple of years to build new platforms that are attracting institutions and enhance the onchain trading experience
Onchain CLOBs for perps are also rapidly becoming competitive with CEXs.
While CEX perps markets currently hold open interest (OI) in the range of $50–100bn, onchain platforms have seen their OI surge from under $100mn to over $4.5bn in recent months, highlighting substantial room for growth.
This evolving competitive dynamic is further driving decentralized protocols to enhance user experience and offer advanced order types, narrowing the performance gap with established CEXs. As more traders seek the transparency and control of onchain trading, we can expect further capital migration toward decentralized perps, reshaping the overall trading landscape.
Notable CLOB-based Trading Platforms
In this section, we spotlight key current and emerging onchain CLOB protocols. The projects featured were selected based on the top-20 DEXs by recent 24-hour trading volume, according to DeFiLlama, along with a few high-profile emerging DEXs.
(Full disclosure: Flow Traders is an investor in some of the projects mentioned below.)
Bluefin
Bluefin is a decentralized trading platform built on the Sui blockchain, which is known for its high performance and scalability. The platform initially started on Polkadot and Arbitrum before transitioning to Sui, which aligns with Bluefin's focus on user experience and technological advancement. Bluefin has become a significant player in the Sui ecosystem, processing over $50 billion in volume, making it one of the largest protocols on the network. The platform offers both spot and derivatives trading, and its native governance token, BLUE, plays a crucial role in its decentralized governance model.
One of Bluefin's standout features is its use of a CLOB for its trading mechanism. This approach allows for efficient price discovery and execution, providing traders with a reliable and low-slippage trading experience. The integration of Pyth Network's real-time price feeds enhances this mechanism by offering precise pricing, which is essential for calculating funding payments and handling liquidations.
For traders, Bluefin offers several unique aspects that enhance the trading experience. The platform provides zero trading fees on the SUI-PERP market, allowing traders to take leveraged positions with up to 20x leverage at minimal cost. Additionally, Bluefin's integration with Wormhole and Circle's Cross-Chain Transfer Protocol (CCTP) facilitates seamless asset transfers and increased liquidity across multiple blockchains. This interoperability, combined with Bluefin's trading infrastructure and user-friendly interface, positions it as an up-and-coming DEX in the DeFi space.
Drift Protocol
Drift Protocol is a DEX that operates on the Solana blockchain. With nearly $1 billion in total value locked (TVL), Drift is one of Solana's largest DeFi platforms and it has been actively expanding its offerings to include a variety of financial products. Drift Protocol is particularly noted for its innovative approach to decentralized trading, leveraging Solana's high throughput and low latency to offer a seamless trading experience.
Drift Protocol distinguishes itself with several unique attributes that are particularly beneficial for on-chain traders. Firstly, it offers high capital efficiency through its liquidity provisioning mechanisms, which include DAMM (Dynamic Automated Market Maker), DLOB (Decentralized Limit Order Book), and JIT (Just-In-Time) liquidity. These mechanisms allow for deep liquidity and competitive pricing, which are crucial for high-frequency trading and large order execution. The protocol's JIT liquidity has become increasingly dominant, now accounting for 50% of all fills, reflecting the team’s conviction of a broader trend towards JIT-based liquidity solutions.
Furthermore, Drift Protocol has integrated prediction markets into its platform, allowing users to engage in capital-efficient betting on real-world events. This integration expands the scope of tradable assets beyond traditional cryptocurrencies, providing traders with more diverse opportunities to hedge and speculate. The protocol's commitment to innovation and its strategic use of Solana's capabilities make it a compelling choice for traders seeking a robust and versatile DeFi platform.
GRVT
GRVT (pronounced “gravity”) is the world’s first hybrid exchange: a self-custodial CEX and the first fully licensed DEX under a Class M license from Bermuda. This regulatory approval reinforces GRVT as the spearhead to redefine compliant, on-chain trading for both institutions and retail users, bridging the gap between DeFi and regulatory certainty, offering a compliant trading environment that meets the stringent demands of institutional players. GRVT is built as a validium ZK Chain and is part of the Elastic Network powered by ZKsync.
The trading mechanism employed by GRVT is designed to combine the speed and user experience of CEXs with the security and self-custody features of DEXs. It utilizes a hybrid model that leverages off-chain order matching and on-chain settlement. This approach ensures fast and secure transactions while maintaining user control over their assets that mitigates counter party risks. GRVT supports a wide range of trading pairs, including perpetual futures, and offers advanced trading features such as portfolio margining and cross-margining. The platform's infrastructure is built to handle high-frequency trading, with a capacity of processing up to 600,000 transactions per second with less than 2 millisecond latency.
Onchain traders should be aware of several unique aspects of GRVT. The platform adopts a hybrid security model that blends the advantages of CEX security measures with decentralized, trust-minimized solutions, including self-custody via its SecureKey solution in collaboration with Dfns and other non-custodial wallets, smart contract-based withdrawal protection, mitigating DeFi-specific exploits, and CEX-grade security controls with transparent smart contract enforcement.
The Global Token Exchange (GTE)
GTE is the world’s fastest DEX built on MegaETH, a high-performance Ethereum Layer 2 blockchain with over 100,000 transactions per second and latency under 1 millisecond. This infrastructure allows GTE to offer a trading experience that rivals CEXs in terms of speed and efficiency.
GTE employs a hybrid trading mechanism that combines a CLOB and AMM. This approach allows GTE to provide high liquidity and efficient price discovery for both high-volume and niche assets. The CLOB enables market makers to manage liquidity actively, like TradFi, while the AMM supports decentralized swaps. This dual system is optimized for MegaETH's low latency and high throughput, making it possible for GTE to offer real-time order execution and minimal slippage, which are critical for high-frequency trading and institutional-grade transactions.
For onchain traders, GTE presents several unique aspects. It offers a user experience akin to CEXs but with the benefits of decentralization, such as non-custodial control and transparency. GTE's infrastructure is fully on-chain, ensuring composability with other MegaETH projects and eliminating the need for off-chain systems that lack transparency. Additionally, GTE's design minimizes the potential for Miner Extractable Value (MEV) by using a first-come, first-served sequencer and price-time order matching, reducing the risk of front-running and sandwich attacks. These features make GTE an attractive option for traders seeking a fast, secure, and efficient onchain trading platform.
Hyperliquid
Hyperliquid is a decentralized spot and perpetual trading protocol built on its own purpose-built Layer 1 blockchain, designed specifically for high-performance trading with features comparable to centralized exchanges.
The platform utilizes a custom consensus mechanism called HyperBFT, which ensures instant transaction finality and processes up to 200,000 transactions per second with median latency of 0.2 seconds. This architecture enables the platform to deliver exceptional speed and efficiency, making it particularly attractive for high-frequency traders.
The platform employs an on-chain order book mechanism that provides lower slippage and higher transparency compared to traditional AMM models. A key feature of Hyperliquid is its HIP-1 native token standard, which creates on-chain spot order books along with the deployment. The native token standard is similar to ERC20 on Ethereum. New token listings occur through a unique Dutch auction system that runs every 31 hours, with the deployment fee starting high and linearly decreasing to 10,000 USDC if unsold. This auction mechanism has seen significant growth, with recent winning bids reaching as high as $975,746, demonstrating strong demand for listings on the platform.
For onchain traders, several unique aspects stand out: the platform features a community-owned HLP vault system that acts as both market-maker and liquidation vault, where users can open their own vaults and earn a 10% profit share. The platform's auction mechanism limits new token listings to a maximum of 282 per year. Additionally, the platform's HyperEVM compatibility ensures seamless integration with Ethereum-based applications while maintaining the benefits of its high-performance Layer 1 infrastructure.
Paradex
Paradex is a high-performance Layer-2 blockchain built on the SN Stack, featuring a flagship DEX and a native synthetic dollar. The ecosystem is powered by the $DIME token.
The exchange employs a hybrid execution model: its matching engine handles orders off-chain using a price-time priority system, while settlement and risk management occur on-chain. This setup is optimized for low latency and supports a wide range of order types.
For onchain traders, Paradex offers unique benefits. The platform enables trading of any asset using any collateral type, with spot, futures, and options trading all accessible from a unified account. Users can also generate passive income through various vault strategies, multi-strategy vault traded funds (VTFs), and upcoming borrowing and lending markets.
A key innovation is the introduction of XUSD, a delta-neutral synthetic dollar powered by Paradex vaults that generates yield from futures basis trading. XUSD can be used as collateral for trading and vault deposits, enabling yield stacking and addressing the opportunity cost of locked collateral. With a straightforward fee structure that rebates makers and charges minimal fees to takers, Paradex encourages robust liquidity, making it an attractive choice for traders seeking a decentralized yet high-performance trading environment.
SynFutures
SynFutures has established itself as the top derivatives DEX on Base. It currently commands over 60% of all derivatives trading volume on Base and has executed over $260 billion in trading volume since launch.
A key feature of SynFutures is its fully onchain order book matching engine. It provides a transparent and efficient trading environment, which is a significant draw for onchain traders looking for decentralized solutions that mimic TradFi markets. It also offers permissionless listings, enabling any asset to be traded on the platform.
SynFutures launched the Perp Launchpad last year, letting projects to launch perpetual futures trading pairs for any crypto asset. This feature is particularly attractive to smaller communities and meme coin projects, as it helps them engage in leveraged trading without needing a centralized exchange listing. The platform's focus on smaller and emerging assets, along with its innovative Oyster AMM model, enhances liquidity and capital efficiency, making it a compelling choice for on-chain traders.
"Onchain CLOBs are a critical bridge between TradFi and DeFi, offering the transparency and trustless execution that institutional traders demand," says Rachel Lin, CEO and co-founder of SynFutures. "While a number of challenges like liquidity fragmentation, execution speed, gas fees, and MEV persist, rapid advancements in smart contract design, network scaling, and composability are turning these hurdles into opportunities. At SynFutures, our experience shows that as these technical issues are addressed, onchain CLOBs will evolve from a proving ground into a robust financial infrastructure—one that can power innovative derivatives and attract institutional liquidity. We envision a future where TradFi's scale meets crypto's openness, redefining global finance."
Summary of Onchain CLOBs:
Outlook
The emergence of onchain CLOBs represents a crucial bridge between TradFi and DeFi, offering traders and institutions the familiar trading infrastructure they're accustomed to while maintaining the benefits of blockchain technology.
On-chain CLOBs provide essential features that institutions require like transparent price discovery, ability to handle large trade sizes with tight pricing, support for sophisticated order types, and real-time market depth visibility.
While AMMs will continue to play a vital role in DeFi, particularly for long-tail assets and maintaining the ecosystem's open, permissionless nature, the rise of CLOBs signals a maturation of the crypto trading infrastructure that appeals to sophisticated market participants.
As blockchain technology advances with innovations in throughput and latency, fully decentralized CLOB-based DEXs are emerging that can rival the capital efficiency of existing offchain markets while maintaining the core benefits of decentralization.
This convergence between TradFi's battle-tested trading mechanisms and blockchain technology represents a significant milestone in the industry's evolution.
The complementary nature of AMMs and CLOBs, each serving distinct market needs and participant types, creates a more robust and diverse trading ecosystem that can better facilitate the broader migration of global capital markets onto public blockchain infrastructure.
This hybrid approach, combining the best elements of both TradFi and DeFi, positions the crypto ecosystem to better serve both retail and institutional participants while advancing the goal of bringing global trade and capital markets onchain.
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