DFINITY founder Dominic Williams has sparked discussion within the Internet Computer community by asking whether MULTI/DEX should launch perpetual futures trading entirely on-chain, arguing that it could offer a stronger alternative to existing decentralised trading infrastructure.
Dom posed the question in a public post comparing MULTI/DEX with several of the largest perpetual futures platforms, including Hyperliquid, dYdX v4, GMX v2, Drift, Vertex and Aevo.
The comparison focused on five areas that are often used to assess decentralised trading platforms: whether trade records are stored on-chain, whether order matching occurs on-chain, whether the user interface is served directly from the network, whether the platform supports multi-chain trading and whether its code is open source.
MULTI/DEX is currently operating in a play mode environment that supports simulated multi-chain spot and margin trading. According to Dom, the platform runs entirely on Internet Computer canisters and is governed through the Network Nervous System (NNS), with the aim of reducing trust assumptions that can arise in hybrid or centralised exchange models.
The proposal centres on whether perpetual futures, one of the most active segments of decentralised trading, should also be executed entirely on-chain. Many existing platforms use a mix of on-chain and off-chain components to improve speed and reduce costs, particularly for order matching and user interface delivery.
Supporters of fully on-chain systems argue that they can improve transparency, verifiability and censorship resistance because trading activity and matching logic remain on the network. Critics generally point to performance, liquidity and user experience challenges that can emerge when every part of the trading process is handled on-chain.
Dom did not announce a launch timeline, but the post framed the question as a technical and infrastructure decision rather than a marketing exercise.
A community poll attached to the post showed strong support for the idea, with 91.7 per cent voting in favour of putting perpetual futures fully on-chain and 8.3 per cent voting against it.
The discussion reflects a broader trend across decentralised finance, where developers continue to debate how much of an exchange should operate directly on-chain. Platforms such as dYdX v4 have moved further towards decentralised infrastructure, while others continue to rely on hybrid models that combine network settlement with off-chain execution systems.
For Internet Computer developers, the debate also highlights the network’s ability to host applications directly through canisters, allowing both backend logic and frontend interfaces to be served from the protocol itself.
Whether MULTI/DEX ultimately launches fully on-chain perpetual futures remains an open question, but Dom’s comments have placed the issue at the centre of a wider conversation about how decentralised trading infrastructure could evolve on the Internet Computer.
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