Which perpetual dexs actually stay up
Best measured: GMX — 7.56/10 on the 100% we could measure.
Runner-up: Gains Network — 6.76/10.
Not rankable: 7 of 15 — too little published about them to measure.
Last collection 2026-08-25: probed 252 services, measured 233, over a 90-day window. Collected by our own script, not by hand — the numbers are reproducible, and reproducibly boring.
The ranking
| # | Service | Score | TVL | Audits | Age | Chains | Latency | Status feed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | GMX | 7.56100% | $206.8M | 2 | 3.0y | 4 | 89 ms | none |
| 2 | Gains Network | 6.76100% | $9.7M | 2 | 4.7y | 5 | 76 ms | none |
| 3 | Ostium | 6.58100% | $17.2M | 2 | 2.1y | 1 | 173 ms | none |
| 4 | Jupiter Perps | 6.16100% | $767.6M | 0 | 2.6y | 1 | 164 ms | unknown |
| 5 | Drift | 6.08100% | $642,618 | 2 | 4.7y | 1 | 243 ms | none |
| 6 | Extended | 5.46100% | $121.5M | 0 | 1.5y | 2 | 44 ms | none |
| 7 | dYdX | 4.9382% | $73.1M | 0 | — | 1 | 299 ms | unknown |
| 8 | Synthetix | 4.86100% | $0 | 0 | 2.4y | 3 | 70 ms | unknown |
Every figure carries the date it was taken, on the service’s card below, linked to its open source. Score is out of what we could measure — the % next to it is coverage.
How we scored this
These weights belong to this category alone. Signature measurement here: TVL and audits of the perp venue (DefiLlama) — Perp venues need deep liquidity backing the book and audited engines.
Total value locked (DeFi), on-chain reserves (exchanges) or circulating market cap (stablecoins), from DefiLlama. Capita…
Number of published security audits with links, from DefiLlama's audit field. Not a guarantee — audited protocols still …
Time the service has been live and continuously operating, from DefiLlama's listing date or the documented launch. Survi…
Number of chains the service is deployed on, from DefiLlama. Breadth is resilience and adoption — but only a minor facto…
Median time to first byte from a public endpoint, our own probe, slowest sample discarded, single location. Scored withi…
Whether a public, machine-readable status page exists (statuspage / incident.io / instatus). A service you can audit fro…
Latency in this category is timed at the live interface for every service, so the comparison is like-for-like. We never compare latency across categories — a DEX interface and an exchange API are not the same thing, and pretending otherwise would just reward whoever we happened to probe more cheaply.
The brief also defines FEES and UX (0%, 0%). We don’t publish them: we can’t measure them ourselves, and an estimate dressed as a measurement is worse than a gap. Full methodology
The services
GMX
$206.8M in value locked (DefiLlama). Capital is the market voting with its money — scored on a log scale, so the jump from $10M to $100M counts for more than $10B to $20B.
2 published audits with links (DefiLlama) — read the findings yourself. Audits reduce risk, they do not remove it.
Live 3.0 yr (time since DefiLlama listing (a floor on true age)). Most failures happen young, so time survived is real signal.
Deployed on 4 chains (DefiLlama). Breadth is a minor tie-breaker — a focused single-chain protocol can still be excellent.
Median 89 ms to first byte from the live interface, our own probe, slowest sample discarded, single location. Compared only within this category.
No public status page found. Nothing about its reliability can be verified from outside — including by us.
Status transparency: No public status page found. Nothing about its reliability can be verified from outside — including by us.
Anyone who needs to know when it breaks: no status feed, so you find out it is down by discovering it yourself.
$9.7M in value locked (DefiLlama). Capital is the market voting with its money — scored on a log scale, so the jump from $10M to $100M counts for more than $10B to $20B.
2 published audits with links (DefiLlama) — read the findings yourself. Audits reduce risk, they do not remove it.
Live 4.7 yr (time since DefiLlama listing (a floor on true age)). Most failures happen young, so time survived is real signal.
Deployed on 5 chains (DefiLlama). Breadth is a minor tie-breaker — a focused single-chain protocol can still be excellent.
Median 76 ms to first byte from the live interface, our own probe, slowest sample discarded, single location. Compared only within this category.
No public status page found. Nothing about its reliability can be verified from outside — including by us.
Status transparency: No public status page found. Nothing about its reliability can be verified from outside — including by us.
Anyone who needs to know when it breaks: no status feed, so you find out it is down by discovering it yourself.
Ostium
$17.2M in value locked (DefiLlama). Capital is the market voting with its money — scored on a log scale, so the jump from $10M to $100M counts for more than $10B to $20B.
2 published audits with links (DefiLlama) — read the findings yourself. Audits reduce risk, they do not remove it.
Live 2.1 yr (time since DefiLlama listing (a floor on true age)). Most failures happen young, so time survived is real signal.
Deployed on 1 chain (DefiLlama). Breadth is a minor tie-breaker — a focused single-chain protocol can still be excellent.
Median 173 ms to first byte from the live interface, our own probe, slowest sample discarded, single location. Compared only within this category.
No public status page found. Nothing about its reliability can be verified from outside — including by us.
Status transparency: No public status page found. Nothing about its reliability can be verified from outside — including by us.
Anyone who needs to know when it breaks: no status feed, so you find out it is down by discovering it yourself.
$767.6M in value locked (DefiLlama). Capital is the market voting with its money — scored on a log scale, so the jump from $10M to $100M counts for more than $10B to $20B.
No published audits on DefiLlama. Not proof of insecurity, but an unaudited contract holding funds is a red flag.
Live 2.6 yr (time since DefiLlama listing (a floor on true age)). Most failures happen young, so time survived is real signal.
Deployed on 1 chain (DefiLlama). Breadth is a minor tie-breaker — a focused single-chain protocol can still be excellent.
Median 164 ms to first byte from the live interface, our own probe, slowest sample discarded, single location. Compared only within this category.
A status page exists but publishes no feed we could parse — readable, not auditable. Part of that may be our blind spot (we read three platforms).
Security audits: No published audits on DefiLlama. Not proof of insecurity, but an unaudited contract holding funds is a red flag.
Anyone putting size into it: it holds funds in smart contracts with no published audit. Fine to experiment with, not to trust with a position you cannot afford to lose.
Drift
$642,618 in value locked (DefiLlama). Capital is the market voting with its money — scored on a log scale, so the jump from $10M to $100M counts for more than $10B to $20B.
2 published audits with links (DefiLlama) — read the findings yourself. Audits reduce risk, they do not remove it.
Live 4.7 yr (time since DefiLlama listing (a floor on true age)). Most failures happen young, so time survived is real signal.
Deployed on 1 chain (DefiLlama). Breadth is a minor tie-breaker — a focused single-chain protocol can still be excellent.
Median 243 ms to first byte from the live interface, our own probe, slowest sample discarded, single location. Compared only within this category.
No public status page found. Nothing about its reliability can be verified from outside — including by us.
Status transparency: No public status page found. Nothing about its reliability can be verified from outside — including by us.
Anyone who wants a battle-tested venue. Little value sits here yet, so it has not been stress-tested at scale — early-adopter territory.
Extended
$121.5M in value locked (DefiLlama). Capital is the market voting with its money — scored on a log scale, so the jump from $10M to $100M counts for more than $10B to $20B.
No published audits on DefiLlama. Not proof of insecurity, but an unaudited contract holding funds is a red flag.
Live 1.5 yr (time since DefiLlama listing (a floor on true age)). Most failures happen young, so time survived is real signal.
Deployed on 2 chains (DefiLlama). Breadth is a minor tie-breaker — a focused single-chain protocol can still be excellent.
Median 44 ms to first byte from the live interface, our own probe, slowest sample discarded, single location. Compared only within this category.
No public status page found. Nothing about its reliability can be verified from outside — including by us.
Security audits: No published audits on DefiLlama. Not proof of insecurity, but an unaudited contract holding funds is a red flag.
Anyone putting size into it: it holds funds in smart contracts with no published audit. Fine to experiment with, not to trust with a position you cannot afford to lose.
dYdX
$73.1M in value locked (DefiLlama). Capital is the market voting with its money — scored on a log scale, so the jump from $10M to $100M counts for more than $10B to $20B.
No published audits on DefiLlama. Not proof of insecurity, but an unaudited contract holding funds is a red flag.
No documented launch or listing date to measure age from.
Deployed on 1 chain (DefiLlama). Breadth is a minor tie-breaker — a focused single-chain protocol can still be excellent.
Median 299 ms to first byte from the live interface, our own probe, slowest sample discarded, single location. Compared only within this category.
A status page exists but publishes no feed we could parse — readable, not auditable. Part of that may be our blind spot (we read three platforms).
Security audits: No published audits on DefiLlama. Not proof of insecurity, but an unaudited contract holding funds is a red flag.
Anyone putting size into it: it holds funds in smart contracts with no published audit. Fine to experiment with, not to trust with a position you cannot afford to lose.
$0 in value locked (DefiLlama). Capital is the market voting with its money — scored on a log scale, so the jump from $10M to $100M counts for more than $10B to $20B.
No published audits on DefiLlama. Not proof of insecurity, but an unaudited contract holding funds is a red flag.
Live 2.4 yr (time since DefiLlama listing (a floor on true age)). Most failures happen young, so time survived is real signal.
Deployed on 3 chains (DefiLlama). Breadth is a minor tie-breaker — a focused single-chain protocol can still be excellent.
Median 70 ms to first byte from the live interface, our own probe, slowest sample discarded, single location. Compared only within this category.
A status page exists but publishes no feed we could parse — readable, not auditable. Part of that may be our blind spot (we read three platforms).
Security audits: No published audits on DefiLlama. Not proof of insecurity, but an unaudited contract holding funds is a red flag.
Anyone putting size into it: it holds funds in smart contracts with no published audit. Fine to experiment with, not to trust with a position you cannot afford to lose.
Who we left out, and why
We looked at 15, ranked 8, and could not measure 7.
| Service | Status feed | Why it isn’t ranked |
|---|---|---|
| Hyperliquid | none | 2 of 4 criteria measurable, 16% of this category’s weight — under the 25% a place in the ranking needs. Left unranked on purpose: the less we measure, the fewer criteria there are to dock points on, so a thinly-measured service drifts upward for no reason but our ignorance. |
| Vertex Protocol | none | 2 of 4 criteria measurable, 16% of this category’s weight — under the 25% a place in the ranking needs. Left unranked on purpose: the less we measure, the fewer criteria there are to dock points on, so a thinly-measured service drifts upward for no reason but our ignorance. |
| Aevo | unknown | 2 of 4 criteria measurable, 16% of this category’s weight — under the 25% a place in the ranking needs. Left unranked on purpose: the less we measure, the fewer criteria there are to dock points on, so a thinly-measured service drifts upward for no reason but our ignorance. |
| ApeX Protocol | none | 2 of 4 criteria measurable, 16% of this category’s weight — under the 25% a place in the ranking needs. Left unranked on purpose: the less we measure, the fewer criteria there are to dock points on, so a thinly-measured service drifts upward for no reason but our ignorance. |
| MUX Protocol | none | 2 of 4 criteria measurable, 16% of this category’s weight — under the 25% a place in the ranking needs. Left unranked on purpose: the less we measure, the fewer criteria there are to dock points on, so a thinly-measured service drifts upward for no reason but our ignorance. |
| Paradex | unknown | 2 of 4 criteria measurable, 16% of this category’s weight — under the 25% a place in the ranking needs. Left unranked on purpose: the less we measure, the fewer criteria there are to dock points on, so a thinly-measured service drifts upward for no reason but our ignorance. |
| edgeX | none | 2 of 4 criteria measurable, 16% of this category’s weight — under the 25% a place in the ranking needs. Left unranked on purpose: the less we measure, the fewer criteria there are to dock points on, so a thinly-measured service drifts upward for no reason but our ignorance. |
Head to head
Questions
Why isn’t the biggest name at the top?+
Because we rank on whether a service works and can be checked, not on how big it is. Size is not a criterion here — a large service that publishes no status feed cannot demonstrate its reliability to anyone, and it scores accordingly.
What does "62% measured" mean under a score?+
It is the share of our criteria weight we actually measured for that service. The rest is n/a — we did not measure it, so its weight was redistributed across what we did measure rather than counted as zero. A high score at low coverage is a narrower claim than the same score at high coverage, and we would rather show you that than hide it.
Where do the incident numbers come from?+
From each provider's own status page, which several publish as a machine-readable feed. We compute repair time from their published report and resolution timestamps, and link the source on every figure so you can check it. It is their record — we just do the arithmetic and refuse to round it in their favour.
No affiliate links or paid placements in this section. How this is funded · Methodology