In contrast, perpetual swaps never expire. Instead, they use a funding rate mechanism to anchor the contract price to the spot index, theoretically offering investors the closest possible proxy to trading the actual VIX spot price.

“Traders don’t have to worry about expiries and decay and just focus on the direction of where they think the underlying is heading. The VIX is one of many more indexes, assets and metrics that will be perpified. We expect to see a strong wave of perp-ification to occur in the coming months,” Martin Lee, market insights lead at DWF Labs, told CoinDesk.

Some crypto exchanges like Gate already offer VIX/USDT perps, but the market is highly illiquid with little noticeable volume. Recently Hyperliquid listed…