Paradex

Paradex: How the Starknet Perp DEX Works, Its Fees, $DIME and the 2026 Glitch

Paradex is a decentralized exchange for perpetual futures, options and spot trading. It runs on Paradex Chain, its own application-specific chain built with Starknet technology, and settles to Ethereum ¹². It offers more than 90 markets in crypto, equities, FX and commodities from a single margin account ¹. Its two main differences from most perp DEXs are zero fees for retail orders and private positions: balances and liquidation levels are hidden from the public chain ¹²⁴. Paradex Corp.'s terms bar US and Canadian persons ³.

Facts checked October 23, 2026 15 cited sources No score on this page, no affiliate links

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At a glance

What it is: Perps, dated options and spot DEX with unified margin ¹
Operator (terms): Paradex Corp. and affiliates; English law ³
Network: Paradex Chain, a Starknet appchain posting encrypted state to Ethereum ¹²
Collateral: USDC, bridged from 30+ chains ¹²
Fees: 0% for retail orders. Pro (API) taker 0.035–0.045% before discounts ⁴
Token: $DIME, 1 billion supply, issued by the Paradex Foundation ⁶
Not available to: US persons, Canadian persons, sanctioned persons and territories ³
Value locked: ≈ $26M (DefiLlama, Oct 23, 2026) ¹⁴
Official sites: paradex.trade · app.paradex.trade · docs.paradex.trade ¹⁵
Updated: October 23, 2026

Who runs Paradex

The Terms of Service name the contracting party as Paradex Corp. and its affiliates and apply English law ³. The Paradex Foundation issues the $DIME token ⁶. The Block reports that Paradex was incubated by Paradigm, an institutional crypto liquidity network that is unrelated to the venture fund with the same name ⁷. Paradex's press releases carry a Singapore dateline and a paradigm.co contact address ⁶. The terms we read do not state where Paradex Corp. is incorporated.

How Paradex works

Paradex splits trading into an off-chain part and an on-chain part ¹¹:

Deposit. You bridge USDC to Paradex Chain from Ethereum, Arbitrum, Base, Solana, Starknet or about 30 other chains. Routes include the native Paradex Bridge and third-party bridges such as Hyperlane, Layerswap and Orbiter ¹². You can sign in with an Ethereum or Starknet wallet, or with an email or social login.
Match. Orders are matched on a central limit order book that Paradex runs in its cloud. Risk is checked before matching ¹¹.
Settle. Each fill is sent to Paradex Chain, which checks the margin again. If the chain rejects a fill, it is reversed. Paradex calls this a "trade bust" ¹¹.
Prove. Paradex Chain posts encrypted state updates with zero-knowledge proofs to Ethereum. Anyone can verify the state transitions without seeing individual positions ².

Privacy. Positions, entry prices, profit and loss, and liquidation levels are hidden from other users. The privacy has limits ²:

Orders are visible to the operators of Paradex Cloud.
A "Privacy Council" holds the decryption keys for emergencies.

Retail vs Pro orders. Paradex classifies each order by how it was submitted, not by who the user is ⁵:

	Retail order	Pro order
Submitted via	Web app, or the API with an "interactive" token	Standard API
Speed bump	300 ms delay	None
Rate limit	3 orders per second, 1,000 per day	800 orders per second
Fees	Zero	Pay fees
Other	Queue priority and better-priced "RPI" liquidity	—

Daily maintenance. On weekdays at 04:30 UTC, releases run for about 15 minutes. During that window the exchange first accepts only cancellations, then only maker orders, within ±5 bps of an external fair price ¹³.

Paradex fees

Retail orders pay no trading fees on perps, spot or options. Pro (API) orders pay a volume-tiered taker fee and a small maker fee ⁴. As of October 23, 2026:

Pro tier (14-day volume)	Taker fee
Pro 0	0.045%
Pro 1 (≥ $1M)	0.042%
Pro 2 (≥ $5M)	0.039%
Pro 3 (≥ $10M)	0.037%
Pro 4 (≥ $25M)	0.035%

Maker fee: 0.003% on all Pro maker orders, in effect since July 3 ⁴.
Discounts: Pro takers can stack three discounts ⁴:
- staking $DIME, up to 30%;
- paying fees in $DIME, 40%;
- "FastFills" when matching retail flow, 30%.
Fee floor: discounts cannot take the taker fee below 0.0175% ⁴.

Other costs still apply:

funding payments between longs and shorts on perpetuals;
bridge fees and gas on the source chain when depositing or withdrawing;
price impact and slippage on larger orders.

"Zero fee" does not mean zero cost.

The $DIME token

$DIME is Paradex's ecosystem token ⁶:

Supply: fixed at 1,000,000,000.
Networks: issued natively on Ethereum (contract 0xb32e10022ffbedfe10bc818a1c7e67d9d87e0fa7) and bridged to Paradex Chain, Solana and Hyperliquid.
Uses:
- staking for Pro fee discounts, with a 24-hour unstaking cooldown;
- paying fees;
- trading on a DIME-USD spot market;
- planned use as the gas token for "DimeVM," a smart-contract layer on Paradex Chain.
Buybacks: Paradex says net protocol revenue is used to buy back $DIME or fund growth ⁶.
Launch and airdrop: a January 2026 press release set the token generation event for late February or early March 2026. It allocated 25% of supply to holders of Paradex's XP points at launch, fully unlocked ⁶.

Verify any $DIME contract address against Paradex's docs before bridging or approving it.

Risks and safeguards

Off-chain operator dependence. Matching, pricing and maintenance run on Paradex's own systems. The January 2026 incident (below) showed that an internal error can feed bad prices into liquidations and force a chain rollback ⁷⁸.
Loss allocation. Paradex does not use auto-deleveraging. If its insurance fund runs out, it charges a "socialized loss" percentage on withdrawals made during the shortfall ¹¹⁰.
Emergency controls. "Security lockdown" can block deposits from Ethereum and limit withdrawals. Guardian keys exist for emergencies ⁹. These protect against attacks, but they also mean funds can be frozen.
Audits. Cairo Security Clan audited the core clearing (Paraclear) and vault contracts in May 2025. Paradex also runs a bug bounty ⁹.
Third-party integrations. In January 2026, a compromise of an external trading bot exposed about 57 users' Paradex sub-keys, which Paradex revoked ⁸. Give bots only the minimum permissions they need.
Impersonators. Fake support accounts appeared during the outage ⁷. Paradex lists its official domains in its docs ¹⁵. Never share seed phrases. See crypto phishing.

Incident record

2 outcome unclear

A database migration during scheduled maintenance corrupted price data

Jan 19, 2026outcome unclear

BTC (also ETH and SOL feeds) printed $0, and thousands of positions were liquidated ⁷⁸

Outcome: Chain rolled back to block 1,604,710, cancelling trades, deposits, withdrawals, liquidations and funding in the window. Service restored after ~8 hours. Paradex said user funds were safe
Loss: Liquidated value not disclosed
Recovered or reimbursed: Chain rolled back to block 1,604,710, cancelling trades, deposits, withdrawals, liquidations and funding in the window. Service restored after ~8 hours. Paradex said user funds were safe

Source: theblock.co

Third-party Mithril trading bot compromised

Jan 21, 2026outcome unclear

~57 user sub-keys accessed ⁸

Outcome: Sub-keys revoked and XP transfers paused. Paradex says its core systems were not breached
Loss: Not disclosed
Recovered or reimbursed: Sub-keys revoked and XP transfers paused. Paradex says its core systems were not breached

Source: coin360.com

Hacks in DefiLlama’s public database are also scored as the security record on the Paradex rating page.

Questions about Paradex

Is Paradex available in the US?

No. The terms exclude US persons, meaning US residents and US-organized or US-headquartered entities, as well as Canadian persons. Using a VPN to get around this is prohibited ³.

Is Paradex on Starknet?

It runs on Paradex Chain, a separate appchain built with Starknet's stack. It is not deployed on the public Starknet network itself, and it posts proofs to Ethereum ¹².

Why are retail trades free?

Orders from the app carry a 300 ms delay and low rate limits. In exchange they pay no fees. Fees are charged on high-speed API ("Pro") flow ⁴⁵.

Can Paradex reverse my trade?

Yes, in limited cases. Fills that fail on-chain margin checks are reversed ("busted") ¹¹. In January 2026 a full chain rollback undid several hours of activity ⁸.

Does Paradex have an API and testnet?

Yes. It has REST and WebSocket APIs, a Python SDK, a CLI and a testnet, all documented at docs.paradex.trade ¹.

Where can I see how CoinPulse evaluates Paradex?

See CoinPulse's rating and evidence for Paradex and the perpetual DEX ratings. Other on-chain order-book venues include dYdX and Hyperliquid.