The Perp DEX track is in a rise dilemma, and the response to GMX V2 launch is lukewarm.

Recently, the V2 version of a well-known perpetual decentralized exchange has been launched on the mainnet, but the market response has been less than expected. This phenomenon reflects the overall development bottleneck currently faced by the perpetual decentralized exchange (Perp DEX) sector. This article will delve into the current status, rise dilemmas, and the underlying reasons of the Perp DEX sector, and look ahead to potential solutions and development prospects.

From the overall data, the trading volume of the Perp DEX sector is still around 60% of the prosperous period in March. However, the decline in fee income and the number of users is more pronounced, with the daily active users (DAU) remaining at only about 30% of the peak period, which is comparable to a leading platform during the peak. It is worth noting that the current trading volume data largely relies on token incentives, which is different from the earlier growth model based on real user behavior.

A well-known platform currently holds the top position in trading volume, but its trading volume largely benefits from trading incentives. This includes substantial token rewards provided weekly by a certain public chain, as well as the platform's own token issuance. These incentives amount to nearly $600,000 each week, making it a significant investment.

However, despite the rise in trading volume brought by trading incentives, the effect is not ideal when looking at the number of active addresses. Some platforms have trading volumes that are three times that of leading platforms, but the number of active addresses is only about one-third of the latter. If users who are inflating incentives are further excluded, the actual number of real users may be even lower.

Why is it difficult for trading incentives to attract real users? The main reason is that professional teams will inflate the trading volume to a very high level, resulting in a low average incentive level. For example, currently, the trading incentives and fee income of a certain platform series are almost at par, which means that retail investors trading here do not gain much additional profit, making it hard to attract a large number of real users to migrate.

Without attracting real users, it is impossible to achieve healthy natural rise. In this case, the token becomes the most important product. When the market is good, people focus on data and calls; when the market is sluggish, the platform will reveal its actual situation.

The root of this problem lies in the difficulty of identifying "on-chain real users". If an address is simply regarded as a user, it leads to situations similar to those seen on some public chains today: a large number of yield farmers and studios are inflating data. The difference is that the market has sustained profit expectations for Perp DEX, a sector that relies on "real returns" from the start. If these expectations are not met, the token price may drop rapidly.

Since trading incentives are difficult to effectively attract users to migrate, enhancing user experience and lowering entry barriers seems to be a feasible direction. After all, users capable of operating decentralized applications account for only a small portion of the entire cryptocurrency user base. If we can attract users from centralized exchanges, it might be a breakthrough.

For example, the recently popular trading robot track has greatly enhanced the user experience of decentralized exchanges through instant messaging software front-end and hosting models, lowering the threshold and helping ordinary users participate in small-cap token trading. A well-known robot project can maintain around 3000 daily active users steadily even without issuing tokens.

However, the current focus of the robot track is mainly on the Meme and small-cap token sectors, where these tokens have shorter trading cycles and place more emphasis on early opportunities. In contrast, centralized exchanges have a natural disadvantage in these areas. Moreover, in terms of contract trading for mainstream tokens, decentralized finance does not have a significant advantage over centralized exchanges.

In addition to trading bots, the evolution of the usability of decentralized finance wallets is also a direction worth looking forward to. For example, enhancing the trading experience through the model of abstract account wallets. However, such improvements usually take a long time to become effective.

In summary, Perp DEX is currently facing a bottleneck in user growth, with a significant portion of trading volume relying on trading incentives. The main issues include the inefficiency of growth strategies, which cannot achieve real user growth through simple reward measures; on the other hand, user experience and access thresholds are still difficult to lower quickly. In the future, as the infrastructure such as trading bots and abstract account wallets improves, these issues may be alleviated to some extent.

These challenges are quite complex and cannot be solved by a single product upgrade. From the current development of the trading robot sector, it can be seen that projects at the infrastructure level may not necessarily have stronger profitability than service-level projects aimed at consumers. In the context of homogeneous underlying mechanisms, providing good user service and operation may yield greater returns. This is also reflected in the field of traditional financial derivatives trading, where one platform invented perpetual contracts, but the ultimate market winner was another exchange.