signing up for a perp dex used to be a high-friction process. there were two real options and they both required a long onboarding. in 2025 you can have an account on a new perp dex in under a minute, which is great for ux and terrible for due diligence. most people do not even ask the basic questions before they send funds. this article gives you ten questions to run, in order, before you sign up for any new perp dex. it takes about ten minutes total. it has saved many friends of ours a lot of money.
we built uponly. we route execution to a third-party protocol on base, so we are on the user side of this exact question whenever we integrate a new venue ourselves. these ten questions are the version we actually use internally, condensed for a consumer reader.
1. "what is the counterparty model"
this is the first question. you want a clear, one-sentence answer. examples of acceptable answers: "a pool of lps is the counterparty," "an on-chain orderbook of other traders is the counterparty," "we route your order to an external on-chain protocol and that protocol is the counterparty." unacceptable answers: anything that takes more than one sentence to explain, anything that involves the phrase "proprietary risk engine," anything that does not name the actual counterparty.
2. "where do the contracts live and are they verified"
every legitimate perp dex publishes its core contract addresses, and those contracts are verified on the relevant block explorer. you do not need to read the contract. you need to confirm that it exists, that it is verified, and that the team links to it from the docs without prompting. if the contract is not findable in 60 seconds of doc reading, that is a major red flag.
3. "what is the price oracle, and is it independently verifiable"
name the oracle. chainlink, pyth, redstone, switchboard, a documented multi-oracle aggregator. you should be able to find the answer in the docs and confirm it on the oracle's public dashboard. a proprietary price feed is not an answer to this question, it is a flag.
4. "what are all the fees, including the ones not on the home page"
on the home page, every perp dex looks low-fee. inside the docs and the actual ui, the fee stack can include open fee, close fee, borrow fee, funding rate, withdrawal fee, gas fees, spread mark-up, and platform tip on net winnings. you do not need every number memorized. you need a complete list, and you need to know which fees apply on losing trades. some platforms (uponly is the cleanest example) charge zero on losing trades and only take a slice on net winnings. most charge regardless of outcome. neither is wrong, but you should know before you sign up.
5. "what is the actual maximum leverage on a small position"
platforms advertise a leverage maximum that is technically true but functionally unreachable on most positions because of caps that kick in at specific size thresholds or specific assets. before you sign up, open the trade ui on the demo or testnet and try to set the slider to the advertised max on a tiny position. if you cannot, the advertised number is marketing, not a usable feature. for context on how to think about leverage at the top of the band, see max leverage trading 101.
6. "is execution on-chain or off-chain"
this matters less than people think for normal trading, but it matters a lot for understanding what happens in a stress event. on-chain execution is slower but inherits the security and the public verifiability of the chain. off-chain execution is faster but introduces an additional trust assumption about the platform's matching engine. neither is bad. you just need to know which one you are using and what it means for downtime risk.
7. "does the platform require kyc, and at what stage"
some perp dexes require kyc to sign up. some require kyc to deposit. some only require kyc to withdraw above a threshold. the worst pattern is "no kyc to deposit, kyc to withdraw above a small amount," because it turns the platform into a one-way door for any user who values privacy. you want this answer up front, in plain language, before you fund.
8. "what happens on a stress event, and is there a public post-mortem culture"
search the platform name plus terms like "downtime," "liquidation cascade," "post-mortem," or "incident." every platform that has been live long enough has had at least one notable event. you are not looking for the absence of incidents (impossible) but for the presence of public post-mortems and clear remediation when warranted. silence after an incident is a worse signal than the incident itself.
9. "is there a real community, and how are complaints handled"
go to the discord or telegram. find a recent complaint. read how it was handled. an honest platform will have visible, public responses to user complaints even when the response is "this is working as intended, here is why." a dishonest platform either deletes the complaint or pivots the user to a private channel where the resolution is invisible. read three recent threads and you will know.
10. "would i be embarrassed to recommend this to a friend tomorrow"
this is the gut-check question and it matters more than the technical ones. after you have run questions one through nine, sit with the answer. if you would be a little ashamed to send a friend the signup link tomorrow, do not sign up. you are not ready to use it. either the platform is not ready or your confidence is not ready. either way, that gut response is real data, and it is the closing question for a reason. you can always come back later when the answer to this question is "yes."
the bonus question we run internally
we have one internal question that did not make the main list because it is a bit specialized for a product team but is useful for serious users: "if i had to integrate this platform as a developer, how long would it take to get a working example running." perp dexes with good docs, public examples, and clean apis tend also to be the perp dexes with honest user experiences, because the discipline is the same. it is a useful inverse correlation. for a closer look at how we ran this evaluation when picking the underlying protocol for uponly, the writeup is in 10 things to check before funding a new perp dex.
a worked example
as a sanity check, here is how the answers come out for uponly. counterparty: on-chain market on avantis. contracts: published and verified on basescan. oracle: pyth. fees: zero on open, zero on losses, small variable fee on net winnings only. max leverage: 75x to 500x and the slider actually reaches the top on small positions. execution: on-chain on base. kyc: none. stress events: documented publicly. community: public complaints get public responses. would we recommend it to a friend tomorrow: yes, with the standard "size like an arcade" caveat. you can verify each of those points yourself in under fifteen minutes.
how to actually use this list
run the ten questions in order. write your answers in a notes app. if any of the first five fail, stop, do not sign up, save yourself the time. if the back half is wobbly but the front half is clean, you can usually proceed with a smaller funded amount than you originally planned. when you are ready to test a platform that clears every one of these questions, try uponly and verify the answers yourself. that is how every relationship with a perp dex should start.