Author: Foresight News

The growth of Perp DEX is largely attributed to token incentives.

Cold starts require incentives; traders, liquidity providers, and order flow channels create value for the market and should rightfully be rewarded. The real discussion is not about whether or not to provide incentives, but in what form they occur and whether the rewards correspond to actual contributions.

Before TGE, platforms typically use points, airdrops, and trading mining to attract current trading volume and liquidity with future token expectations. These mechanisms can quickly acquire users, but the fees users pay are real, while the rewards still depend on future token distribution and market pricing. After TGE, fees begin to be used for buybacks, burns, and staking rewards, and value gradually returns to the ecosystem, but is primarily still mediated through platform tokens.

The issue, therefore, is not the incentives themselves, but whether the incentives overly rely on future expectations. Traders create trading demand and fee revenue; liquidity providers offer depth and execution; wallets, trading terminals, and communities bring ongoing order flow. However, existing mechanisms reward the ability to accumulate points and hold tokens more than who actually keeps the market running.

This is also a key issue that Foresight Ventures discussed during the investment and incubation process of PopDEX: Can the platform establish a more direct and sustainable path for value return, making rewards more closely aligned with real market contributions?

1. Early growth and demand validation under token incentives

1. Why tokens have become the default tool

The cold start of Perp DEX requires simultaneously attracting traders, liquidity, and distribution channels, while early platforms typically lack stable income and are unable to sustain high cash subsidies for long.

Tokens provide a more efficient coordination method: platforms can unify the contributions of traders, market makers, and early participants into future rights, exchanging future value for current trading volume, liquidity, and market attention.

dYdX represents an earlier complete token incentive model. In its initial token supply, 25% was allocated for trading rewards, 7.5% was allocated to historical users, and 7.5% was for liquidity rewards. Trading rewards are calculated based on fee contributions and open interest, while liquidity rewards assess online quoting rates, bilateral depth, bid-ask spreads, and market coverage metrics. Customer acquisition, market making subsidies, and early ownership distribution are thus encompassed in the same token system.

Subsequent platforms have made different adjustments within this framework:

● Hyperliquid combines points, Referral, and HLP, respectively used to attract traders, expand order flow, and establish protocol liquidity;

● Aster: Implements multi-season trading mining, maintaining trading participation and user activity through continuous point cycles and periodic token allocations.

● Lighter reduces trading thresholds through zero fees, setting separate retail points and market maker points, differentiating trading activity from liquidity quality;

These platforms do not solely rely on tokens, but tokens remain the core coordination tool in cold start systems. Its advantage is not just in “issuing rewards,” but in being able to uniformly convert the contributions of different participants into future rights and deferring most customer acquisition and liquidity costs until TGE. The specific mechanisms vary, but the exchange relationship remains fundamentally consistent: platforms first use future rights and early subsidies to acquire current trading volume, liquidity, and market attention.

2. Points do not necessarily attract long-term traders

Point airdrops change not only whether users enter the platform, but also the motivations for why users trade.

Under normal circumstances, traders choosing a platform focus on liquidity, execution stability, fees, asset coverage, and risk management. After point airdrops are introduced, these standards do not disappear, but user decision-making weights will change: aside from the trading experience itself, users will also calculate how many points can be earned for unit trading costs, whether potential airdrops can cover fees and capital occupation, and when rewards will be realized.

This does not mean that users participating in points are not professional traders. On the contrary, many professional traders will also rationally evaluate point returns. The issue is that when points become a significant variable in trading decisions, the trading volume obtained by the platform no longer reflects only product competitiveness but also user pricing of future rewards.

Both types of trading behaviors contribute to trading volume, but their retention logic is different.

One type of trading behavior comes from ongoing product demand: users stay because the platform’s liquidity, execution, costs, and asset coverage can meet trading needs. The other type of trading behavior derives more from reward expectations: whether users continue to trade depends on whether points still hold value, whether airdrops still hold imaginative potential, and whether the investment yields are still valid.

In a previous retail survey conducted by Foresight Ventures on Perp DEX,69% of respondents listed points or airdrops as an important factor in choosing a trading platform, higher than reliability (61%), liquidity and depth (58%), and fees (47%).Points and airdrops have become not just additional rewards outside the product but are now competing directly with reliability, liquidity, and fees, becoming core variables in users' platform selection.

This will change the nature of how platforms obtain order flow. When users initially enter based on reward expectations, the switch costs based on product habits do not exist; rather, a trading relationship needing ongoing subsidies is established.Rewards can lower the threshold for users to enter the platform, but they also lower the threshold for users to leave the platform.

3. TGE is the first stress test of trading demand

However, the data during the points period is not pure. A transaction may stem from genuine market demand or from expectations of airdrops; a new user may form a long-term order flow or may cease trading after completing tasks.

From superficial data, they all belong to growth.

When these different motivations are incorporated into the same token and point system, it becomes difficult for the platform to discern what is ultimately obtained. Therefore, post-TGE data cannot merely focus on rise and fall; three matters are more critical:

● Is the trading volume remaining after rewards exit, or is it sustained by a new round of incentives;

● Is market share increasing, rather than simply following the overall Perp DEX market fluctuations;

● Has the platform entered a stage of natural retention, or is it still in a new incentive cycle?

Note: The table only includes platforms that can achieve unified trading volume and market share metrics 30 days before and after TGE. Aster is excluded from this comparison due to incomplete publicly available data.

What this group of data truly examines is not which platform has higher trading volume after TGE, but which converts the attention brought by airdrops into a continuous trading relationship.

If there is still a new round of points, mining, or subsidies after TGE, the trading volume will still contain incentivized components that cannot simply be equated with demand retention. The real dividing line is when the marginal appeal of reward expectations decreases; whether users are still willing to continue trading based on the platform itself.

In other words, the validation before TGE is whether the platform can attract users; the validation after TGE is whether the platform can retain users. The former can be accomplished by incentives, while the latter ultimately depends on product capability and value distribution mechanisms.

2. Value begins to return, but still revolves around platform tokens

4. From issuing tokens to supporting tokens

After TGE, the incentive mechanism typically shifts from “issuing tokens” to “supporting tokens.” Platforms generally use fee income for buybacks, burns, staking returns, and token discounts. Value begins to flow back, but the distribution basis shifts from trading contributions to token holdings.

This means that traders first create income through trading and then qualify for shared income by purchasing or staking platform tokens. Consequently, the platform needs to maintain two markets simultaneously: a trading market and a platform token market.

The two can reinforce each other but are not always aligned. Professional traders may contribute fees long-term but may be unwilling to bear the additional risk of platform tokens. Thus, the rewards launched gradually encompass not just trading itself but also users' capital investment in platform tokens.

This shift is implemented differently across various platforms. What is truly worth comparing is not only whether there is a buyback but how much income enters the token system, how bought-back tokens are handled, and who ultimately carries this portion of value.

5. Platform tokens expand participation but do not equate to trading demand

Platform tokens can broaden ecological participation, but the address growth they bring does not necessarily translate into contract trading demand. To observe this difference, we conducted a cross-analysis of Hyperliquid's HYPE holding addresses, financial product user addresses, and contract trading user addresses.

The results show that among the three user types, HYPE holding addresses account for 89%, financial product users account for 27%, and contract users only account for 20%; users participating in holding tokens, financial products, and contract trading only constitute a mere 5% of the total.

Further breakdown reveals:

● Among contract users, 62% hold HYPE, but over 70% do not participate in financial products;

● 86% of HYPE holding users have never conducted contract trading;

● 85% of financial product users hold HYPE, but the proportion participating in contract trading is only 19%.

This set of data indicates that platform tokens can lead to broader asset holdings and ecological participation; however, holding tokens, managing finances, and trading do not correspond to the same demand. Holding tokens may stem from asset allocation and price expectations, financial management aligns more with yield strategies, while contract trading directly reflects trading demand and order flow.

When holding addresses, asset scales, and financial users are all counted towards ecological growth, capital participation can easily be misinterpreted as growth in the trading market. Yet for Perp DEX, what ultimately determines market quality remains continuous trading, effective liquidity, and real fee income.

Platform tokens can expand ecological participation, but cannot replace trading demand itself.

6. One platform, two sets of growth goals

When income distribution, fee discounts, and product permissions are all tied to platform tokens, the Perp DEX essentially needs to operate two markets simultaneously: the trading market and the token market. This creates a fundamental tension: Which market does the platform prioritize serving: the trading product itself, or the value cycle established around the platform tokens?

These two sets of goals are not always in sync. The trading market focuses on execution quality, liquidity, and costs, relying on long-term product capabilities; the token market emphasizes demand, rarity, and price expectations, relying on continually creating reasons for token holding.

The risks that arise are not just the spreading of resources but also a shift in evaluation standards. Trading volume, fees, and user growth are no longer solely used to measure whether trading products are healthy; they also begin to support the narrative of token sustainability. What the platform pursues may no longer be just more real trades, but more data that can reinforce token demand.

3. PopDEX: Another answer to incentive mechanisms

From the investment perspective of Foresight Ventures, what is noteworthy about PopDEX is not merely discussing the existence of platform tokens, but rather that the team did not use token expectations as a starting point for growth, nor set token holding status as a necessary prerequisite for trading rights. Instead of aggregating platform value to the platform token first and then redistributing via the token, PopDEX directly starts from real market contributions: Who creates value, and that value should return to whom.

Based on this idea, PopDEX established a100% value return system.

This 100% refers to the allocable value formed by trading fees, not returning every fee directly to traders. Its core lies in: the allocable value formed by trading fees is no longer prioritized to support platform tokens but enters a return framework designed around real contributions.

Within this framework, PopDEX’s value return will cover two categories of participants: ecological contributors and real trading users. The former includes roles like Referrals, Affiliates, trading activities, collaborative campaigns, etc., that continuously bring users, order flow, and market attention; the latter explores a direct, periodic, transparent, and verifiable form of value return based on real trading contributions.

As for what form this portion of value will ultimately be allocated, PopDEX will gradually disclose this in subsequent product phases.

For PopDEX, this is not a denial of existing models but a different attempt at an incentive mechanism: incentives are not only for acquiring growth but can also be a way for the platform to continuously give back to the ecology.

There is no standard answer for how incentive mechanisms should evolve, and the market will ultimately make its judgment. However, we believe that as the Perp DEX industry continues to mature, its incentive mechanisms should not only have a single path but should also be open to more answers.

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