Activity on the decentralized exchange Lighter, which offers perpetual contracts, has sharply declined. According to analysts at CryptoRank, Hyperliquid has regained its leadership in the segment.

Hyperliquid reclaims the perps throne

As Lighter’s airdrop is distributed, the platform’s volumes have started to fade – weekly volume has decreased nearly 3x from its peak. @HyperliquidX has captured the lead and is now ranked 1st by volume and open interest. @variational_io… pic.twitter.com/LChbSdaU8a

— CryptoRank.io (@CryptoRank_io) January 18, 2026

Experts report that Lighter's trading volume over the past week was $25.3 billion, a significant drop from its peak of $74.9 billion in mid-November.

Source: DefiLlama.

At the end of December, the platform conducted an airdrop of LIT tokens valued at $675 million. This event ranked among the top ten largest asset distributions in the industry’s history, according to CoinGecko.

Previously, the platform changed its operational rules by introducing mandatory staking for participation in liquidity pools and revising fees for market makers and HFT traders.

Amid the decline in trading volume on Lighter, Hyperliquid has regained its top position among perp-DEXs. The weekly trading volume on Hyperliquid exceeded $40.7 billion, while another competitor, Aster, reported $31.7 billion.

The total trading volume of decentralized derivatives for January so far stands at $549 billion, still far from the record of $1.3 trillion set in October.

Source: DefiLlama.

Hyperliquid's leadership is also confirmed by open interest over the past 24 hours, which reached $9.57 billion. The combined open interest of other major platforms (Aster, Lighter, Variational, edgeX, Paradex) is around $7.34 billion.

In November, former BitMEX CEO Arthur Hayes predicted a rise in the popularity of perp-DEXs. He believes that by the end of 2026, the pricing of major U.S. stocks will shift from traditional exchanges to on-chain platforms, with the market beginning to focus on perpetual contract charts rather than Nasdaq.