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Almost no perp DEX is fully onchain – and that's by design
And that's not necessarily a red flag
The usual setup: trades and balances live offchain. Some system – DAC, sequencer, validator – batches updates and posts proofs to L1
You want fast fills, not Metamask popups and not stuck transactions
That's how you get speed – someone else runs the orderbook, fills your trades, keeps track of balances and you just hope they do it right
That means somewhere in the stack, you trust someone
– @Lighter_xyz posts zk-proofs to Ethereum but still relies on timely state publishing
– @extendedapp uses a DAC – a small group that signs and posts state roots. They plan to migrate to Starknet, where all data would be stored directly onchain – removing the need for a DAC
– @paradex runs on Paradex Chain. Orders execute offchain, state gets proven and posted to Ethereum. You still need the latest state to exit, so trust assumptions stay similar
Others take a different route – instead of bridging to Ethereum, they build their own chain
– @HyperliquidX has a custom chain with their own validator set. You get speed and low fees, but trust shifts to their infrastructure
– @dYdX v4 runs on Cosmos. It's fully onchain there, with public validators and verifiable data. You can run your own node and verify everything, though you still trust the validator set to operate honestly
That kind of design just isn't feasible on Ethereum. Gas costs and latency make real-time orderbooks impractical
So most perp DEXs compromise – offchain execution, onchain settlement, maybe some proofs in between
Is it trustless? Not really. It's a spectrum – and most lean closer to "trust our infra" than they admit
Is it bad? Depends what you're solving for. If you're a bit of a paranoid, you won't love this setup – but if you just want trades to go through and not think about sequencers and DACs, it works
If you want fast fills and CEX-like UX, that offchain layer is what makes it possible
Just don’t confuse "no gas" with "no trust"
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