Decibel activates mainnet perpetuals trading on Aptos with $50M in pre-deposits

Decibel, a perpetuals exchange developed by Aptos Labs, launched today on the Aptos mainnet, bringing fully on-chain derivatives trading to the blockchain network.

The platform executes all trading operations directly on-chain, including order matching, settlement, and risk management. During its public testing period, Decibel attracted more than 700,000 unique accounts and processed over one million trades daily.

The exchange secured over $50M in pre-deposits before going live. Daily active users during the testnet phase exceeded 132,000.

A new dollar-denominated stablecoin called usDCBL will serve as the primary collateral for perpetual contracts. The token is issued through Bridge, a stablecoin infrastructure company that Stripe acquired.

Reserves backing usDCBL consist of cash and short-term U.S. Treasury bills, with yield retained within the protocol rather than paid out to external parties.

The platform features a central limit order book operating entirely on-chain, along with a risk engine that applies fixed margin and liquidation rules. Gauntlet, a blockchain risk management firm, designed the parameters for the liquidity backstop system.

Traders can access the exchange from multiple networks through a feature called X-Chain Accounts, which supports onboarding from Aptos, Ethereum, Solana, and centralized platforms.

The Decibel Foundation indicated plans to expand beyond perpetual contracts, with future development targeting spot trading, unified accounts accepting multiple forms of collateral, and tokenized real-world assets.