This is Stork Research’s monthly report on real-world asset (RWA) perpetual futures (“perps”): equities, commodities, ETFs, and indices traded as perps on onchain and offchain venues.
Key takeaways for October:
Equities remained the largest category at $328.0B, up 13.6% from September. Their share of total volume slipped from 49.6% to 48.2%.
ETFs drove most of the month’s growth. ETF volume rose 79.4% to $167.0B, and ETF share rose from 16.0% to 24.6%. ETFs now trade almost as much as commodities.
Commodity volume fell 9.9% to $167.8B, or 24.7% of the total, belying what looked like a return to a commodity-dominated market for weekend macro trades in September’s RWA perps volume report. Indices rose 20.0% to $16.9B, still a small slice at 2.5%.
SOXL, the Direxion Daily Semiconductor Bull 3X ETF, was the most traded underlying in October at $84.66B, more than double its September volume of $41.00B. Gold fell to second at $75.09B (down 8.6%), and Sandisk (SNDK) fell to third at $72.40B (down 4.2%).
Other moves among the top ten:
The top ten accounted for $449.5B, or 66.1% of all RWA perp volume. Four of them, SOXL, SNDK, SKHYNIX, and MU, are semiconductor or memory exposure. Together they traded $224.3B, one third of the month’s total.
Binance was the top market for all ten underlyings and handled 63.4% of their combined volume.
DASH on Bitget was the top new market in RWA perps in October, with $2.92M in first-24-hour volume, followed by VIST on Bybit ($2.55M) and VKTX on Bitget ($2.05M).
October’s listings opened much smaller than September’s. September’s top listing, TEAM on Bybit, traded $38.0M in its first day, and four September listings passed $10M. No October listing passed $3M. The 18 October listings combined for $21.0M in first-day volume, against $123.4M for September’s top 20.
Binance and Bitget each launched eight of the 18; Bybit launched two. Four underlyings trade at home outside the US: Jio Platforms (India), Taiyo Yuden (Japan), Elice Inc. (Kosdaq), and LG Energy (S Korea). Two were ETFs, ZCSH and EIDO. Several names, including IBKR, VKTX, EQT, ABBV, PFE, and JIO, launched on more than one venue during the month; the table shows the venue with the larger first day.
Binance cleared $412.3B, up 15.4% from September. Its share of RWA perp volume was 60.7%, close to September’s 61.3% and up from 40.7% in January.
OKX was second at $75.7B (up 10.5%). Hyperliquid’s trade[XYZ] markets were third at $69.6B (up 18.3%). OKX has traded more RWA perps than Hyperliquid every month since August. Hyperliquid’s share has fallen from 24.5% in January to 10.2% in October, and its October volume sits 39% below its July high of $114.2B.
Bitget posted the largest gain among the top five, up 50.3% to $46.8B. Bybit rose 12.2% to $33.6B.
Other venues combined traded $32.0B. Aster accounts for almost half of that at $15.3B, after its volume jumped from $2.5B in August to $17.1B in September. Lighter added $7.8B.
Price discovery on weekends is a major value proposition for RWA perps, many of which trade 24/7, even when underlying spot markets are closed. This table looks at the top weekend traders—not by absolute volume, which would mainly duplicate a list of the most-traded contracts, but by weekend share of total volume, among absolute-volume leaders.
October had nine weekend days out of 31, or 29% of calendar time. No underlying in the top 20 came close to that share of its volume. Weekend share ranged from the State Street SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust (SPY) at 16.59% to SpaceX (SPCX) at 4.78%. Across all 20, weekend trading was $49.6B of $510.8B, or 9.7%.
Commodities had the highest weekend share as a group at 13.2%, against 8.3% for ETFs and 8.0% for equities. WTI (14.34%), Brent (13.56%), gold (12.72%), and silver (12.56%) all ranked in the top six.
SPY ranked first in weekend share, but traded the least of the 20, at $3.26B for the month. The largest names sat lower: the Direxion Daily Semiconductor Bull 3X ETF (SOXL) at 8.42%, Sandisk (SNDK) at 9.46%, and SPCX at 4.78%.
Weekend trading takes place while the underlying markets are closed, so mark prices and funding during those hours depend on how each venue and its oracle handle off-hours pricing.
This table starts with the 50 largest RWA perp launches from July 1 to October 15 by first-72-hour volume and ranks them by average daily volume through October 31, showing the top 20. A few patterns stand out.
One caveat: average daily volume covers each market’s full life, including its first 72 hours, and July launches are averaged over a longer window than later ones.
Sources: Aster, Binance, Bitget, Bybit, Crypto.com, Deribit, edgeX, Extended, GMTrade, GRVT, Hyperliquid XYZ, Kraken, Lighter, OKX, Ondo Perps, Orderly. Coinbase data is not included in this run.
Category totals exclude FX, which traded $0.33B in October. "Other" in the exchange chart is Aster, Crypto.com, Deribit, edgeX, Extended, GRVT, Kraken, and Lighter. New listings include only underlyings with an identified home market, with one row per underlying. The launch table includes two Kalshi markets; Kalshi is not in the standard source list above.
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