The Japan Times - PopDEX Surpasses $61M TVL and $2B Trading Volume in Closed Beta

The milestones provide an early indication of trading activity and liquidity developing on PopDEX while access remains in Closed Beta. The platform has used this period to test its market structure under live conditions, gather feedback from traders and liquidity providers, and expand the range of markets available through its onchain trading environment.

"Closed Beta was meant to tell us whether traders would actually use what we were building, and $2 billion in trading volume gives us a pretty clear answer," said Zach Prater, Head of Traders at PopDEX. "The more important part now is what we learn from that activity. Traders are telling us where they want deeper markets, faster execution, and better tools, and we're using that feedback to shape PopDEX before we open it more broadly."

PopDEX is building around a CLOB-based market structure designed to support professional liquidity provision while maintaining a responsive trading experience for individual users. Through block batch processing and intra-block transaction ordering, the platform targets approximately 100–150ms execution responsiveness under normal conditions. More frequent index-price and mark-price updates have also been introduced to support liquidation monitoring, conditional orders and risk management, while the platform continues to test liquidation and ADL scenarios under extreme market conditions.

Market coverage has expanded alongside the underlying trading infrastructure. PopDEX has added crypto, RWA-related and community-driven markets throughout Closed Beta, most recently introducing perpetual contracts for PONS, CASHCAT and MARSCOIN in response to interest around Robinhood Chain and BNB Chain assets. Further market expansion is planned as PopDEX develops broader global asset exposure.

Closed Beta has also served as a live development environment. Feedback from traders and API users has informed improvements across account access, deposits and withdrawals, position management, risk visibility and API execution. PopDEX is now extending that work toward a more trader-friendly mobile experience through H5 browser support and a dedicated mobile app.

The platform is also experimenting with how trading incentives are structured. Its third Closed Beta reward distribution recognized early traders and community contributors, with the highest reward in the latest round exceeding $3,300 for a single address, based on public community receipts. PopDEX's Meme Gang War, running from September 7 to September 21, adds another approach by determining the winning side according to the proportion of eligible participants achieving positive PnL rather than trading volume alone.

PopDEX's Closed Beta development follows a $30 million strategic seed investment led by Foresight Ventures in May 2026, supporting liquidity, trading depth, product development and global market expansion. PopDEX is also working with ecosystem partners including Bitget Wallet to reduce friction for users accessing onchain perpetual markets.

As Closed Beta progresses, PopDEX will continue focusing on deeper liquidity, additional markets, execution infrastructure and greater access across devices. The longer-term goal is to build an onchain derivatives venue where crypto and broader global markets can be traded with the market depth, execution and risk infrastructure required by active and professional traders.

About PopDEX

PopDEX is a trader-first perpetual decentralized exchange focused on capital efficiency, professional trading experience, transparent market structure and value return for active contributors. PopDEX is building an onchain trading venue spanning crypto, RWA-related markets and broader global asset exposure.

For more information:

Website: https://popdex.xyz/

X: https://x.com/popdex_

Contact

Source article: https://chainwire.org/2026/09/14/popdex-surpasses-61m-tvl-and-2b-trading-volume-in-closed-beta/

K.Nakajima--JT