In Brief
- Katana says its integrated stack is designed to support better capital efficiency, routing, liquidity, and execution quality for both crypto-native and institutional users.
- Katana Perps launched with market maker support from firms including GSR, Selini Capital, and Auros.
Katana, a blockchain project incubated by Polygon Labs and GSR, has acquired decentralized exchange IDEX and launched Katana Perps, a new perpetual futures venue that it says will combine spot and derivatives trading inside one onchain stack.
The move lands as U.S. regulators signal a friendlier posture toward crypto-linked perpetuals and as 24/7 trading becomes a bigger part of price discovery in digital assets.
The deal is the first major strategic step under new Chief Executive Officer Matthew Fisher, according to details shared by Katana. The company said the acquisition is meant to bring more of the trading infrastructure, and the revenue attached to it, under one roof.
Katana Perps is now live, with support at launch from market makers including GSR, Selini Capital and Auros.
Perpetuals have become one of the biggest products in crypto trading. CoinGecko said total crypto perpetuals volume rose 75% over the last two years, reaching $7.24 trillion in January 2026. Within that, perp DEX volume climbed to $739.48 billion from $81.74 billion two years earlier, pushing decentralized venues’ share of perpetuals activity to 10.2% from 2.0%.
Those numbers help explain why newer trading projects are racing to build derivatives rails rather than just token swap interfaces. CoinGecko also found that Hyperliquid was the only DEX to rank among the top 10 largest perps exchanges over the six months through January, with $1.59 trillion in cumulative volume. That suggests there is room for onchain challengers, but also shows how hard it is to dislodge an incumbent once liquidity starts to concentrate.
Current market data shows how concentrated the field already is. DefiLlama lists Hyperliquid as the dominant perp DEX, with roughly $190.2 billion in 30-day perp volume and about $6.83 billion in open interest.
The same rankings also show other active venues including edgeX, zkLighter, GRVT, Paradex and dYdX. This shows that Katana is entering an increasingly crowded market.
Markets are no longer waiting for business hours. That case grew stronger this month as Middle East tensions jolted oil prices outside traditional trading windows.
Cumulative volume in Hyperliquid’s oil futures jumped to about $7.3 billion by March 13, up from $339 million on Feb. 28. JPMorgan noted a surge in activity from non-crypto investors using perpetual futures, derivatives with no expiry, to gain round-the-clock oil exposure. Hyperliquid’s CL-USDC contract hit daily volume of $1.7 billion during the volatility as traders looked for exposure while CME markets were closed.
That episode gave crypto derivatives platforms a use case that goes beyond speculative token trading. It suggested that always-on venues can absorb demand when macro news breaks on weekends or overnight, particularly for traders who want immediate exposure and are willing to accept crypto-style infrastructure in exchange for uninterrupted access. That is the market shift Katana is trying to position for with a combined spot-and-perps product.
IDEX gives Katana a recognizable early-era DeFi brand and exchange technology built around a hybrid structure. Katana said IDEX, founded in 2017, was among the earliest decentralized exchanges and the first to combine a high-performance matching engine with onchain settlement. IDEX built an offchain trading engine and order book designed to deliver millisecond latency while sending completed trades onchain for settlement. The model aimed to bring centralized-exchange speed to self-custodied trading.
That design history is relevant because one of the enduring constraints in onchain derivatives has been execution quality. Traders want tight spreads, fast matching, reliable uptime and capital efficiency. Katana said the IDEX acquisition will help it scale throughput and liquidity, while Katana Perps is meant to offer leveraged trading and directional exposure inside a unified environment rather than routing users across separate products.
“When I became CEO, I decided that Katana needed to own more of its stack and the revenues attached to it. IDEX and Katana Perps are the first moves in that direction,” Fisher said.
He added that the company wants its infrastructure in place before always-on markets and a more permissive regulatory environment push onchain perpetuals further into the mainstream.
The regulatory scene is now harder to ignore. CFTC Chairman Michael S. Selig announced earlier this month plan to allow crypto-linked perpetual futures in the U.S. within weeks, potentially bringing onshore a product that has largely remained offshore. Selig was sworn in as 16th chairman of CFTC on Dec. 22, 2025, and his March 9 remarks at FIA framed digital assets as part of a broader push to modernize U.S. markets.
Even so, the opening is not unlimited. In those same FIA remarks, Selig said some asset classes “may not be suitable for 24/7 trading and perpetual contracts.” For crypto-native platforms, that still amounts to a notable change in tone after years in which perpetuals largely sat outside the U.S. regulatory perimeter.
Katana’s launch also comes against a backdrop where centralized venues remain dominant. As per CCData, centralized exchanges handled $4.40 trillion in derivatives volume in January alone, while decentralized futures volume was about $1 trillion for the month. So the strategic opportunity is real, but it is still a share-gain story rather than a completed market handoff.
Polygon Labs, which incubated Katana, the transaction is also a statement about where DeFi infrastructure may be heading next. Spot swaps helped define the first generation of decentralized exchanges.
“This next phase reflects both the strength of the foundation already in place and the growing demand for more advanced onchain trading infrastructure,” said Polygon Labs CEO, Marc Boiron.
The next battleground looks more like integrated trading architecture: matching engines, routing, liquidity, leverage and collateral management operating together in one system. Katana is betting that owning more of that stack will matter more than simply adding another token market.
Hyperliquid’s rise shows that onchain perpetuals can scale when speed and product breadth improve. But, once a venue becomes the default destination for price discovery, rivals need more than a new platform to catch up. Katana now has IDEX’s exchange rails and a timely market narrative. The next test is whether it can turn both into sustained order flow.
IDEX’s native token plunged over 40% last week following news that Binance would delist its spot trading pairs. IDEX was trading at $0.00430 at the time of writing, according to CoinMarketCap data.
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