# Perpetual Futures in Decentralised Finance: Mechanics, Economic Claims, and the Drivers of Trading Volume

> A multi-asset study of DeFi perpetual futures across crypto, tokenized equities and tokenized commodities, using endogenous event detection to identify 1,797 volume anomalies and a systematic 24/7 trading premium.

- Author: Siddhant Shah, Eugene Pinsky
- Published: 2026-07-08
- Canonical URL: https://siddhants.com/research/perpetual-futures-defi/
- Published in: International Journal of Financial Studies 14(7): 178
- DOI: https://doi.org/10.3390/ijfs14070178
- PDF: https://doi.org/10.3390/ijfs14070178

## Thesis

Perpetual futures now trade around the clock on assets whose underlying markets
do not. That mismatch is measurable, and it produces a persistent structure in
volume that a conventional event study — anchored to an opening bell and a
known event calendar — cannot see.

Perpetual futures in DeFi reached roughly
$41B in daily notional by early 2026, across three quite different underlyings:
native crypto, tokenized US equities, and tokenized
commodities. Those three inherit very different reference markets, and comparing
them is the point.

## The dataset

17 assets — 5 crypto, 8 tokenized US equities, 4 tokenized commodities — across
three DeFi platforms, collected over 7.5 months from public REST APIs and
cross-referenced against conventional market data.

## Endogenous event detection

Classical event studies begin with a calendar: you know the announcement date and
measure around it. A market that never closes has no bell and no agreed calendar,
so the method has to invert. We detect abnormal volume first, using rolling
three-day *t*-tests, and only then ask what each anomaly coincided with.

That surfaced **1,797 statistically significant volume anomalies**, which we map
back to identifiable catalysts.

## The 24/7 premium

The clearest structural finding is a systematic weekend and holiday effect: volume
craters on Saturdays and spikes on days when traditional markets are closed. There
is also a maturity gradient in how faithfully each contract tracks its underlying —
crypto perpetuals track closely, equity perpetuals less so, and commodity
perpetuals worst of all.

## Disclosure

The views expressed here are my own personal opinions. This is **not investment advice** and should not be relied upon as such. Nothing here is connected to, endorsed by, or written on behalf of Rosenblatt Securities.

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