Onchain Perps Close Execution Gap With CEXs, Castle Labs Says

Castle Labs examined live order books to compare execution characteristics across trading venues and reported that Hyperliquid, an onchain perpetuals platform, provided as much resting liquidity as the median of three major centralized exchanges — Binance, Bybit and OKX — for four out of five crypto assets included in the study. The analysis also found that trading on Hyperliquid cost less for those assets than on the centralized platforms sampled.

The report identifies the principal remaining divergence between onchain and centralized venues as how each prices contracts tied to stocks and commodities when the underlying markets are not open. That discrepancy in off-hours pricing practices is where the bulk of the execution gap persists, according to Castle Labs.

By focusing on live order-book data, the study aimed to measure practical trading conditions such as available resting liquidity and immediate execution costs rather than theoretical liquidity metrics. Castle Labs' findings indicate that for many crypto-native instruments, onchain perpetuals can now offer liquidity and cost characteristics comparable to established centralized exchanges.

The study implies that structural differences in how venues handle assets dependent on external markets continue to differentiate venue behavior, particularly outside regular trading hours for those underlying markets. Castle Labs' work highlights both the progress of onchain derivatives in matching centralized offerings for many crypto assets and the remaining areas where centralized venues retain an advantage.