How Perpetual Futures Can Unlock 10X Revenue for Crypto Exchanges?

Table of Contents

Introduction

The perpetual futures market has witnessed unprecedented growth, emphatically eclipsing the spot trading volumes in 2024. The surging perpetual futures trading volumes underscore the increasing appetite for leveraged trading among crypto participants.

MEXC, a leading digital asset exchange, experienced an explosive rise in perpetual futures trading in 2024, moving its market share from 3% to 11%. A compelling opportunity awaits those planning cryptocurrency exchange development or those already running a trading platform. Looking forward to capturing it? Let’s give you more reasons first…

Benefits of Launching a Perpetual Futures Trading Platform in 2025

Unlike traditional spot markets driven by simple buy-and-sell dynamics, the perpetuals engine, fueled by leverage and anchored by a unique funding rate mechanism, operates continuously, 24/7, generating immense trading activity and deep liquidity.

• The Unmissable Trillion-Dollar Opportunity

Multiple sources confirm the sheer scale of perpetual futures activity compared to traditional spot trading:

• Coinbase Institutional Research reported that Bitcoin perpetual futures averaged US$57.7 billion in daily volume on weekdays in Q1 2024, dwarfing the US$18.8 billion observed in the Bitcoin spot market.
• In July 2024, the Digital Chamber of Commerce estimated that the daily trading volume of the overall perpetual futures market, $75-$100 billion, dominates equivalent spot markets by around five times.
• The CoinGecko Annual Report 2024 revealed that the top 10 CEXs recorded a total perpetual futures trading volume of US$58.5 trillion. It was roughly 3.4 times the spot trading volume of US$17.4 trillion on the same exchanges.
• Historical Market Share: The derivatives market, largely driven by perpetuals, has steadily increased its dominance (72.7% in March 2023 vs. 66% in June 2022). Concurrently, the volume of traditional fixed-term futures has significantly diminished relative to perpetuals.

• Significant Open Interest Growth

Open Interest (OI) measures the total value of outstanding (open) futures contracts that have not been settled. It serves as an indicator of market depth, capital commitment, and the level of activity in a derivatives market. The OI in perpetual futures crypto has reached substantial levels, further underscoring their importance:

• CoinGecko: The open interest on the top 10 centralized perpetual trading platforms in 2024 reached a new ATH of US$131 billion on December 9, 2024, quadrupling since the year’s start. Major exchanges like Binance, Bybit, and OKX consistently lead in perpetual open interest, indicating significant trader adoption and capital allocation to these platforms.  
• Decentralized Growth: Even on DEXs, perpetuals are gaining traction, with the top 10 decentralized perpetual futures trading protocols reaching a peak OI of US$6.7 billion in December 2024.

• Driving Trading Volume and Liquidity

A large portion of active traders, including sophisticated retail traders, speculators, hedgers, high-frequency firms, arbitrageurs, and, increasingly, institutional players, gravitate towards derivatives markets for leverage, hedging, and capital efficiency. Exchanges that lack a robust perpetual futures crypto trading offering are effectively choosing to ignore the largest and often most active segment of the trading market. 

This influx of diverse trading activity also significantly boosts overall platform volume compared to spot-only offerings. This heightened activity, in turn, contributes to deeper market liquidity—tighter bid-ask spreads and larger order book depth—making the platform more attractive for all users, especially those trading larger sizes.

• Enhanced Revenue Generation

Ignoring a huge user base during cryptocurrency exchange development ultimately comes down to potentially missing out on substantial trading volume, associated fee revenue, and the network effects that come with attracting highly active users. It also has adverse effects on funding rates and liquidation fees. 

• Competitive Advantage

In a market where derivative volumes dwarf spot volumes, offering a compelling and robust perpetual futures crypto trading suite is no longer just a feature but a critical component of remaining competitive. It signals to the market, particularly to active and professional traders, that the exchange is sophisticated and caters to the dominant form of trading activity. Failing to offer competitive perpetuals means ceding the most active market segment and its associated revenue to competitors.

Top Players Integrating Perpetual Futures Trading

• Binance: Dominates with 340+ futures pairs and $11.3B daily BTC perpetual volume.
• Coinbase: Launched a derivatives arm in 2024, targeting institutional traders with competitive fees.
• Hyperliquid: A decentralized leader using on-chain order books and community-driven revenue sharing.
• SGX: Singapore’s stock exchange is entering crypto with regulated BTC perps for institutions.
• THORChain: Enables cross-chain perpetual futures crypto swaps without wrapped assets, solving interoperability challenges.

Strategies to Succeed with Perpetual Futures Trading Integration

Exchanges must invest heavily in sophisticated technology, including high-throughput, low-latency matching engines capable of handling the demands of derivatives trading, which often involves far more order placements and cancellations than spot markets. Equally critical is the development and maintenance of robust risk management systems for these perpetual futures trading platforms. 

These systems must accurately calculate margin requirements in real-time, manage the liquidation process fairly and efficiently to prevent cascading failures (especially given high leverage), and potentially manage large insurance funds. Furthermore, the regulatory landscape for derivatives is typically more complex than for spot trading, necessitating dedicated compliance resources and potentially legal expertise to navigate varying jurisdictional rules. 

Therefore, while the revenue potential is substantial, achieving it requires significant upfront and ongoing investment in technology, risk management infrastructure, and specialized personnel.

1. Product Design and Features

• Competitive Leverage: Offering leverage levels comparable to market leaders (up to 100x-125x where regulations permit) is often necessary to attract speculators. However, implementing tiered leverage based on position size or the volatility of the underlying asset is a prudent risk management practice.  
• Diverse Trading Pairs: While BTC and ETH are essential, offering a wide selection of perpetual futures crypto contracts on popular altcoins, DeFi tokens, and potentially even trending meme coins or thematic indices can attract a broader user base and increase trading opportunities. Providing both stablecoin-margined (e.g., USDT, USDC) and coin-margined contracts caters to different trader preferences and collateral holdings.  
• Intuitive User Interface (UI/UX): The cryptocurrency exchange software platform must be accessible to traders of varying experience levels. This means offering simplified trading modes for beginners alongside sophisticated charting tools (TradingView integration is standard ), multiple order types, and customizable layouts for advanced users. A seamless and feature-rich mobile application is also crucial. The focus on user experience by platforms like Bybit and OKX highlights its importance.  
• Advanced Order Types and Tools: Beyond standard market and limit orders, offering essential risk management orders like stop-loss, take-profit, and trailing stops is fundamental. Value-added features such as one-cancels-the-other (OCO) orders, post-only orders, and potentially integrated trading bots or copy trading functionality can enhance the perpetual futures trading platform’s appeal.  

2. Liquidity Management

• Deep Order Books: High liquidity is paramount in derivatives trading to ensure efficient execution and minimize slippage, especially for institutional clients or large orders. Attracting reputable market makers is key. This can be achieved through attractive fee structures (e.g., low or negative maker fees), reliable APIs, and potentially dedicated liquidity provider incentive programs.  
• Connectivity and APIs: Providing stable, low-latency, and well-documented APIs is essential for attracting algorithmic traders and market makers who drive significant volume.  

3. Robust Risk Management

This is arguably the most critical element for long-term success and survival in the high-leverage perpetual futures market.

• Effective Liquidation Engine: The engine must use a fair and manipulation-resistant mark price (typically index-based) for triggering liquidations. Processes should be transparent, with clear margin call warnings (where feasible) and mechanisms designed to minimize market impact during liquidations, such as incremental liquidation or using sophisticated algorithms.  
• Insurance Fund: A well-capitalized insurance fund is vital to cover losses when a liquidated position’s collateral is insufficient (i.e., the trader goes bankrupt). This protects the perpetual futures crypto exchange and prevents losses from being socialized through auto-deleveraging (ADL), which is highly unpopular with profitable traders.  
• Risk Limits: Prudent risk controls include setting appropriate initial and maintenance margin requirements, potentially implementing position size limits, and offering tiered leverage that decreases for larger positions.  
• Trader Tools: Empowering traders with easily accessible risk management tools like stop-loss and take-profit orders is crucial. Offering both isolated margin (risk limited to a specific position) and cross-margin (risk shared across the account) provides flexibility.  

4. Competitive Fee Structure

• Maker/Taker Model: Most derivative cryptocurrency exchange developments use a maker-taker fee model. Offering very low, zero, or even negative (rebate) maker fees incentivizes liquidity providers to place passive orders, tightening spreads. Taker fees, paid by those removing liquidity, should be competitive with industry leaders (typically ranging from 0.02% to 0.06% for initial tiers on major perpetual futures trading platforms).  
• Volume Tiers and Native Tokens: Implementing tiered fee structures that reward high-volume traders with lower rates is standard practice. If the exchange has a native utility token, offering fee discounts for paying fees with or holding the token can increase demand for the token and build user loyalty.  

5. Compliance and Security

• Regulatory Adherence: Thoroughly understand and comply with all applicable regulations in the jurisdictions where the cryptocurrency exchange software operates or targets users. This includes robust KYC and AML procedures. Proactive engagement with regulators may be necessary, especially when launching in new or evolving markets.  
• Security Protocols: This includes implementing offline cold storage, multi-signature withdrawal processes, enforcing mandatory 2FA, withdrawal address whitelisting, conducting regular third-party security audits and penetration tests, and maintaining robust internal controls during cryptocurrency exchange development. Publicly demonstrating a commitment to security or conducting proof-of-reserves audits can build user trust.

The Road To 10X Revenue

For exchanges not yet offering perpetual futures crypto or failing to fully optimize their existing offerings, the critical question is no longer if they should engage with this market. But how can they effectively harness this powerful engine? Strategically integrating perpetual futures trading holds the potential to unlock significant revenue growth. 

At Antier, we specialize in developing cutting-edge crypto exchange software solutions fortified with cutting-edge features and in-demand trading modules like perpetual futures trading. Our expertise ensures a seamless, compliant, and robust platform tailored to your business needs. ​

Ready to turn your exchange into a derivatives powerhouse? Contact Antier today to explore how we can help you harness the full potential of perpetual futures crypto.