Author: Biteye
Recently, more and more Crypto projects have been shutting down, but StandX @StandX_Official is a relatively special case. Most projects go through fundraising, token issuance, and price declines, and eventually stop maintenance after users gradually leave; StandX, however, chose to end things directly before its TGE.
Over the past year, Perp DEX has been one of the most crowded entrepreneurial directions in Crypto. Projects such as Aster @Aster_DEX, Lighter @Lighter_xyz, and Variational @variational_io have appeared one after another, and the market is still constantly searching for the "next Hyperliquid."
Just as the entire track was still accelerating, StandX chose to stop.
1️⃣ A few months ago, StandX was still expanding rapidly
StandX initially built the yield-bearing stablecoin DUSD, and only shifted its focus to Perp DEX in the second half of 2025. Alpha launched in October 2025, and Mainnet officially opened in November, allowing users to use DUSD as margin to trade perpetual contracts while continuing to earn DUSD yield.
StandX truly began to grow rapidly, and it also caught the best time for Perp DEX.
With the wealth effect of Hyperliquid and Aster, the market began constantly searching for the "next Hyperliquid," and capital and users poured heavily into Perp DEX, allowing StandX to enter a growth phase as well.
After entering 2026, StandX's data grew rapidly. In January, single-day Perp volume was about $158 million; after launching Position Yield in April, OI grew from about $25 million to more than $100 million. By June 28, StandX once climbed to fourth place in DeFiLlama Perp DEX daily trading volume; in July, the official disclosure showed about 235,000 users and $700 million in daily trading volume.
At the time, the team was still continuing to expand, rolling out products such as Universal Markets, Community Maker Yield, and Community Vault, attempting to move from an ordinary Perp DEX toward a more open derivatives market.
No one expected that a project still in its upswing would press the end button ahead of time just as it was entering its golden phase.
2️⃣ Perp DEX is hot, but mid-tier projects are finding it increasingly difficult
The entire Perp DEX market is still growing, with platforms such as Hyperliquid, Aster, and Lighter continuing to compete for users and liquidity, and new projects such as PaperTrade still appearing continuously.
Liquidity itself is an expensive business: you need to bring in market makers, subsidize Makers, and rely on Points, rebates, and airdrop expectations to compete for trading users. The larger the scale, the higher the cost that must be continuously invested.
As a result, many projects have recently begun to change their approach, no longer building a complete trading and liquidity system from scratch.
For example, TradeXYZ directly builds on Hyperliquid's HyperCore through HIP-3; the recently launched PaperTrade directly reads Hyperliquid BBO prices and then uses its own LP to complete trades.
By contrast, StandX chose to build its own order book, and has never had VC funding, relying on the team's own capital. To reach its current scale, how much money would it take to maintain such a liquidity system?
3️⃣ How should the previous accounts be settled?
After not issuing a token, the most direct question is: what happens to the costs previously paid for Points and TGE expectations?
Over the past year, many users continued trading to farm Points, genuinely bearing fees, slippage, funding rates, and capital occupation costs. If the Token is ultimately not issued, these costs naturally will not disappear.
Just now, StandX provided a remediation plan: a one-time DUSD airdrop to the community, with no lock-up, and historical participation such as Pre-deposit, Alpha, Mainnet trading, market making, and referrals will all be included in the distribution.
The official explanation states that most past revenue has already been returned to users through SIP-2 and SIP-3, so this time all remaining project revenue will be used for the airdrop, with the team additionally contributing funds to supplement it.
Airdrop checking will open on October 26, claims will begin on November 1, and the deadline will be December 31.
4️⃣ Finally, the very end
StandX's end does not mean Perp DEX is failing. On the contrary, this track is still very hot, and new projects are still appearing continuously.
But StandX provides a rare sample: it did not fail to build a product, nor did it completely lack users; rather, after already generating trading volume and achieving a certain scale, it actively chose to stop.
Not issuing a token will of course disappoint many users who waited a long time. But at least compared with those projects that clearly have little progress left yet still keep the community hanging with Points, airdrop expectations, and "TGE is coming soon," StandX's handling this time can be considered decent.
It did not package a story that had already decided to end as another TGE and hand it to the secondary market; instead, it used remaining revenue and team funds to compensate the community, at least leaving StandX with a relatively decent ending.