The Ethereum network has long been associated with decentralized finance, pioneering on-chain financial tools such as lending protocols and tokenized assets. However, the rapidly growing sector of perpetual futures, or 'perps,' has largely thrived on other platforms. Traders often cite Hyperliquid or Solana as the primary venues for on-chain perpetuals, rather than Ethereum, due to the latter's inability to optimize for extremely fast, low-cost, and high-frequency trading.
According to AJ Warner, chief strategy officer at Offchain Labs, 'Perps require frequent transactions, fast execution, and deep liquidity, making them a natural use case for the Arbitrum platform.' The increasing importance of this distinction is evident as decentralized perpetual exchanges mature and attract institutional attention. Ethereum's security-first architecture made it an ideal settlement layer, but its block times and gas costs have historically made it an expensive platform for latency-sensitive trading applications.