Cancelling TGE and gradually shutting down: Why did StandX leave during the hottest period of Perp DEX? How to translate Recently, more and more projects have been shut down in Crypto, but StandX @ StandX_Official is considered a rather unique one. Most projects involve financing, issuing coins, and experiencing a drop in coin prices, ultimately leading to the cessation of maintenance after the gradual loss of users; StandX, however, chose to end before TGE. Over the past year, Perp DEX has been one of the most crowded entrepreneurial directions in Crypto. Projects such as Aster @ Aster_deX, Lighter @ Lighter_xyz, and Variantal @ Variantial_io have emerged one after another, and the market is constantly searching for the 'next Hyperliquid'. Just as the entire track was still accelerating, StandX chose to stop. one ️⃣ A few months ago, StandX was still rapidly expanding StandX initially focused on the interest bearing stablecoin DUSD, and only shifted its focus to Perp DEX in the second half of 2025. Alpha will be launched in October 2025, and Mainnet will officially open in November. Users can use DUSD as margin to trade perpetual contracts while continuing to receive DUSD returns. StandX has truly started to grow rapidly and has also caught up with the best time of Perp DEX. With the wealth effect of Hyperliquid and Aster, the market is constantly searching for the "next Hyperliquid", and funds and users are flocking to Perp DEX, while StandX is also entering a growth period. After entering 2026, StandX data will grow rapidly. In January, the daily Perp trading volume was approximately $158 million. After the launch of Position Yield in April, OI increased from approximately $25 million to over $100 million. By June 28th, StandX had once surged to the fourth place in daily trading volume for DeFiLlama Perp DEX; In July, it was officially disclosed that there were approximately 235000 users and a daily trading volume of 700 million US dollars. At that time, the team was still expanding and launching products such as Universal Markets, Community Maker Yield, and Community Vault, attempting to move from a regular Perp DEX to a more open derivatives market. No one expected that the project, which was still in its upward phase, would press the end button early when it first entered its golden stage. two ️⃣ Perp DEX is hot, but the mid waist project is becoming increasingly difficult The entire Perp DEX market is still growing, with platforms such as Hyperliquid, Aster, Lighter continuing to compete for users and liquidity, and new projects such as PaperTrade constantly emerging. Liquidity itself is an expensive business: to introduce market makers, subsidize makers, and compete for trading users through Points, rebates, and airdrop expectations. The larger the scale, the higher the cost of continuous investment required. As a result, many projects have recently started to change their mindset and no longer build a complete trading and liquidity system from scratch. For example, TradeXYZ is built directly on Hyperliquid's HyperCore through HIP-3; The recently launched PaperTrade directly reads the price of Hyperliquid BBO and completes the transaction using its own LP. On the other hand, StandX chose to build its own order book and has never had a VC, relying on the team's own funds. How much does it cost to maintain such liquidity at its current scale? three ️⃣ TGE is gone, how do we calculate the previous investment? After not issuing coins, the most direct question is: what about the expected costs paid for points and TGE before? In the past year, many users have incurred transaction fees, slippage, capital fees, and capital occupation costs in order to continue trading points. If tokens are not ultimately issued, these costs will naturally not disappear. Just now, StandX provided a follow-up plan: conducting a one-time DUSD airdrop to the community without locking positions, and including historical participation behaviors such as Pre deposit, Alpha, Mainnet trading, market making, and invitations in the distribution. The official explanation states that in the past, most of the revenue has already been returned to users through SIP-2 and SIP-3, so this time the remaining project revenue will be used for airdrops and supplemented by additional funding from the team. The airdrop inquiry will be open on October 26th, starting from November 1st and ending on December 31st. four ️⃣ In the end The end of StandX does not mean that Perp DEX is not working. On the contrary, this track is still very hot, and new projects are constantly emerging. But StandX provides a rare sample: it is not that it has not produced a product, nor is it completely devoid of users, but rather that it actively chooses to stop after running out of trading volume and achieving a certain scale. Not issuing coins will naturally disappoint many users who have been waiting for a long time. But at least compared to those projects that know there hasn't been much progress, but continue to hang the community with Points, airdrop expectations, and "fast TGE", StandX's handling this time can be considered decent. It did not package a story that had already been decided to end as a TGE and hand it over to the secondary market, but instead used surplus income and team funds to compensate the community, at least leaving StandX with a relatively dignified ending.