Most people know that the most profitable business in the crypto space is contracts.
But can you imagine that a low-key dark horse Perp DEX, which has only been operating for a year, has surpassed Ethereum, Base, and other leading public chains in 24-hour revenue? Extending the timeframe to 7 days, it has trampled over the veteran DeFi players like Uniswap, Jupiter, AAVE, and Lido. It is not only one of the few projects without token issuance on the daily revenue leaderboard but also has the best liquidity depth for buying BTC and ETH within a 0.01% price spread.
This revenue curve's new 'monster' is called edgeX.
Why is the revenue curve so fierce?
Unlike the Hyperliquid we are familiar with, edgeX is a ZK-structured perp dex. The team is incubated by Amber, gathering core members with deep experience in high-frequency trading from Goldman Sachs, Jump Trading, and others. In terms of product form, edgeX is more like a 'full-stack on-chain financial base': in addition to the perp dex, there are also eStrategy (vault) and two other product lines of edgeX chain.
As mentioned at the beginning of the article, the quality of the product is directly reflected in the revenue. Therefore, comparing revenue within the perp dex sector can more directly reveal the ferocity of edgeX.
As a perp dex that has only been operating for a year, edgeX's fee revenue in the past 30 days is $10.53M, far exceeding the $3.85M of veteran GMX and $1.92M of dYdX. In other words, edgeX's revenue is almost more than twice that of GMX and more than five times that of dYdX.
Data Source: DefiLlama
So, how did edgeX break into the top tier of perp dexes through its revenue curve? The answer may lie in trading depth and fees, the two most important and intuitive data points for traders.
In terms of liquidity depth, edgeX currently ranks second among all Perp DEXs. Taking the most core BTC/USDT as an example, within a 0.01% price spread, edgeX's order book can support up to $6M in BTC order volume, surpassing hyperliquid ($5M), Aster ($4M), and Lighter ($1M). Although the overall depth is still slightly inferior to hyperliquid, edgeX has the best depth among Perp DEXs, except for hyperliquid, in the vast majority of tokens. More extended discussions on this can be found in the latest article by edgeX's research lead Dan (Understanding DEX Liquidity: A Comparative Look at Trading Efficiency), which provides a deeper discussion, and I won't elaborate further here.
Additionally, edgeX offers extremely competitive rates for Makers and Takers: Maker is only 0.015%, Taker 0.038%, significantly lower than Hyperliquid's 0.045%. Furthermore, users who register through the ambassador referral link can unlock VIP1 status, and Taker rates can be further reduced to 0.036%, while becoming an ambassador allows for the highest 35% fee rebate—saving on trading costs while continuously accumulating airdrop points.
With such advantages in trading depth and fees, edgeX's moat has naturally formed, driving the growth of the revenue curve. Even though it has not yet issued tokens, it proves that edgeX has the ability for continuous 'token buybacks' and bloodletting for ecological construction.
Interestingly, looking at the overall revenue leaderboard: among the Top 15 protocols (excluding the issuers of stablecoins USDT and USDC), there are only four that have not yet issued tokens but have made it to the frontlines, and edgeX is one of them.
Data Source: DefiLlama
Many friends in the Chinese community may not have heard of this dark horse's name because this perp dex rarely engages in so-called narrative packaging, and its community audience is more concentrated in South Korea and North America.
In other words, this is a clear case of high revenue, low valuation, and still in a token gap period, a rare Alpha.
Currently, edgeX uses edgeX Points as contribution metrics for weekly distribution, with 2.4M already distributed. The ways to earn include trading volume, position holding, vault participation, and invitations, etc. Meanwhile, edgeX's Messenger Ambassador program is underway.
Trading volume can be manipulated, but profit revenue is hard to fake. Whether in traditional finance or the web3 industry, only the genuine 'user willingness to pay' in terms of real money is the most direct validation of 'product sustainability.'
In less than a year, edgeX has made its cash flow into the industry's top 15, which is a curve of extremely high certainty for growth, and perhaps also a very strong certainty alpha. What FDV will it launch at in the next stage, and what returns will it provide to early participants? We can also look forward to that.
