Monish Muralidharan
4
min read
Aug 28, 2025
Decentralized finance (DeFi) has unlocked a new world of on-chain derivatives trading. Gone are the days when crafting a custom futures or options contract was limited to big institutions. Today, any crypto professional or strategist can create and trade derivatives directly on the blockchain.
In this educational piece, we explore how platforms like Mettalex empower users to build their own on-chain derivatives, and compare Mettalex with the top decentralized exchanges (DEXs) supporting leveraged trading. The landscape of DeFi derivatives is booming, and Yes! You can be part of it.
The Rise of On-Chain Derivatives in DeFi
On-chain derivatives have rapidly evolved as DeFi matures. Derivatives (financial contracts) like futures, options, and swaps- allow traders to speculate or hedge with leverage (borrowing funds to amplify exposure). In traditional markets, these instruments total hundreds of trillions in notional value, and now DeFi projects are bringing similar capabilities on-chain. Notably, decentralized perpetual futures (perps) have exploded in popularity since 2020.
This rise is fueled by the core advantages of DEXs: non-custodial trading (you control your funds), open access (no heavy KYC barriers), and innovative designs that mitigate slippage and counterparty risk. Anyone with a crypto wallet can now participate in sophisticated markets that were once gated to large players. Whether you want to hedge a portfolio or speculate with leverage on an asset’s future price, DeFi protocols have lowered the barriers significantly. Importantly, some platforms even enable users to create new derivative markets for assets of their choice, a breakthrough in financial empowerment.
Empowering Users to Create DeFi Derivatives
A hallmark of the DeFi revolution is permissionless innovation. This means skilled users or developers can launch new markets without needing a centralized exchange’s approval. In practice, creating your own on-chain derivative typically involves defining an underlying asset (crypto, commodity, etc.) and leveraging a DeFi protocol’s framework to issue a synthetic token or futures contract tracking that asset. Several protocols have pioneered this approach:
SynFutures – a derivatives DEX known for permissionless listing. It allows anyone to list and trade a futures market for any crypto asset as long as a price feed exists.
Synthetix – while not fully permissionless, Synthetix’s protocol and its community governance have listed a wide array of synthetic assets (crypto, forex, commodities). New markets are regularly added as long as reliable oracles exist. For example, Synthetix enabled on-chain trading of forex pairs and commodities by issuing “Synth” tokens that track those prices. This paved the way for decentralized futures on assets beyond just Bitcoin or Ethereum.
The ability to create your own derivative on-chain is revolutionary. It means a small commodities trader or a DAO treasury manager can launch a hedge contract for their specific need, be it corn futures or an AI model index, without asking Wall Street for permission. As we’ll see, Mettalex is taking this empowerment to the next level by combining broad asset support with a user-driven trading architecture.
Top 5 Decentralized Crypto Leverage Trading Platforms
Before diving into Mettalex, let’s briefly review five leading decentralized platforms for leveraged trading. These DEXs have pushed the envelope in providing high leverage, deep liquidity, and advanced tools in a non-custodial fashion:
dYdX – The flagship DeFi perps exchange. dYdX offers a pro-grade trading experience with an order-book model and up to 50× leverage on over 200 markets. It has handled more than $1.4 trillion in lifetime volume. making it the largest decentralized derivatives platform by volume. Traders get advanced order types, low fees, and deep liquidity comparable to centralized exchanges.
GMX – The on-chain perpetual swaps powerhouse. GMX is a popular DEX on Arbitrum and Avalanche that lets users trade top cryptocurrencies with up to 50× leverage and zero price-impact trades. Instead of a traditional order book, GMX uses a multi-asset liquidity pool (GLP) and Chainlink oracles to execute trades at the fair market price. This design means no slippage even on large orders, and protection against flash-crash wicks that often trouble leveraged traders. GMX has amassed over $150 billion in total trading volume across its deployments, with a strong track record of fee generation for liquidity providers. It’s known for a simple interface and risk controls that reduce liquidations, making decentralized leverage more user-friendly.
Synthetix (Perps via Kwenta) – The synthetic assets pioneer. Synthetix is a decentralized liquidity protocol that issues Synths – tokens pegged to various assets (crypto, fiat, commodities). By staking its SNX token and other collaterals, users back the liquidity for these synths and can trade them with no direct counterparty. Synthetix’s latest focus is on perpetual futures, which have seen open interest on the platform surge to nearly $288 million at peak. Through front-end dApps like Kwenta, traders can get up to ~10× leverage on Synth futures for assets like BTC, ETH, forex pairs, and more. It continues to add new markets (57 new perps in one quarter) as governance approves price feeds for them, bridging the gap to assets that few other DEXs offer.
Perpetual Protocol – Virtual AMM innovator. Launched in late 2020, Perpetual Protocol (Perp) was among the first Ethereum Layer-2 DEXs for perpetual futures. It supports up to 10× leverage and initially allowed trading on 15+ markets, achieving over $32 billion in volume in its first year. Perp introduced the vAMM (virtual automated market maker) model using a constant product curve for price discovery, but without requiring actual liquidity pools. Collateral goes into a vault, and the vAMM sets prices virtually, which enables leveraged trading without the limitations of Uniswap-style pools. This approach proved effective; at one point, Perpetual Protocol ranked second in cumulative decentralized futures volume (behind only dYdX). Now on Optimism, Perp’s V2 (“Curie”) integrates with Uniswap V3 for greater capital efficiency, continuing the protocol’s tradition of cutting-edge design for on-chain derivatives.
Gains Network (gTrade) – High-leverage synthetic trading. Gains Network’s gTrade platform takes a unique approach by offering synthetic leveraged trading on not just crypto but also stocks, commodities, and forex. By using decentralized price oracles and an over-collateralized DAI vault, gTrade enables huge leverage – up to 150× on crypto, 1000× on forex, and even 50× on equities – all with zero slippage. Traders’ P/L is settled against the vault, so there’s no order book or AMM. This design has attracted a dedicated following; in 2024 gTrade routinely facilitated ~$80M in daily volume on Polygon/Arbitrum vaults. Gains Network demonstrates how far DeFi can go in replicating traditional brokerage features in a permissionless way.
These platforms showcase the breadth of decentralized leverage trading today, from order-book models to AMMs and synthetic vaults. Each has carved out a niche, whether it’s dYdX’s deep liquidity for crypto perps or Gains Network’s extreme leverage on synths. However, most focus on cryptocurrencies or a set range of assets. This is where Mettalex distinguishes itself by opening the derivative space not just to crypto, commodities, Forex, etc., but to all tokenized digital assets like real-world assets(RWAs) and user-defined instruments in a novel way.
How Mettalex Differs in On-Chain Derivatives
Mettalex is a decentralized, blockchain & AI agent-based decentralized exchange with a mission to broaden DeFi’s horizons. Unlike typical crypto-focused derivatives platforms, Mettalex was built to bring different tokenised digital assets on-chain.
Here are key ways Mettalex stands out:
Broader Asset Support (Beyond Crypto): Mettalex enables trading of tokenized commodities, real-world assets, and even AI model predictions – essentially, anything of value can become a reference asset.
Permissionless Market Creation: True to the theme “Create Your Own Derivatives On-Chain”, Mettalex is architected so that anyone can create and participate in derivative markets on the platform. Whether you’re an individual trader or a DAO, you aren’t limited to pre-listed assets. This is a fully permissionless trading experience through AI agents.
Agent-Based P2P Trading: Under the hood, Mettalex has moved away from the typical AMM or centralized order book model. Instead, it utilizes autonomous AI trading agents (powered by Fetch.ai technology) that operate from users’ own wallets. In essence, your agent is your private broker on-chain – it lives under your control and negotiates optimal trades for you. The result is a decentralized exchange experience with zero slippage and unified liquidity, something traditional DEX architectures struggle to achieve.
In comparison with other leverage trading DEXs, Mettalex’s differentiator is clear: it bridges the gap between traditional markets and DeFi. While exchanges like dYdX and GMX excel at crypto perps, Mettalex can list a tin or energy futures contract on-chain. It competes with the likes of Synthetix and UMA in offering tokenized futures, but with an even more user-driven approach (permissionless market creation).