Decibel Launches Fully Onchain Perpetuals Exchange on Aptos Mainnet
GEORGE TOWN, Cayman Islands, February 26th, 2026, Chainwire
Protocol goes live following testnet phase producing 700,000+ accounts, 1 million daily trades, and $58 million in pre-deposits
The Decibel Foundation today announced that Decibel, a fully onchain perpetuals exchange incubated by Aptos Labs, is live on Aptos Mainnet. The launch transitions Decibel from a validated testnet phase — which produced 700,000+ unique accounts, 132,000 daily active accounts, over 1 million user trades per day, and $58 million in committed capital during its pre-deposit campaign — to a fully operational trading venue with user capital deployed at launch.
The standard for trading infrastructure across both traditional and digital asset venues has long been built on private risk engines, and settlement controls that remain opaque to market participants — determining who gets filled, what gets listed, and who captures liquidity. The next evolution of trading should replace that structure entirely: a decentralized exchange that unifies liquidity, enforces deterministic risk, and scales without hidden intermediaries. That is the vision for Decibel: to build the world’s most trusted, high performant decentralized exchange and the rails beneath it.
Built on Aptos — a Layer 1 blockchain with sub-50 millisecond block times and sub-500 millisecond finality, parallel execution via Block-STM, and an encrypted mempool that reduces the risk of front-running and MEV — Decibel delivers the speed required for tighter spreads, faster order cancellations, and precise liquidations, with matching, settlement, and risk logic operating entirely onchain. At mainnet, the protocol launches with:
- Fully Onchain Central Limit Order Book: Every order, match, and settlement is publicly verifiable and deterministic, with sub-second finality.
- Onchain Risk Engine: Margin limits, mark price logic, and auto-deleveraging are enforced directly onchain through deterministic, verifiable rules. No offchain discretion. No opaque interventions. Risk behavior is transparent before volatility arrives.
- Decibel Liquidity Pool (DLP): A protocol-native market-making and liquidation backstop engine with risk parameters developed in collaboration with Gauntlet, a leading onchain risk management firm.
- X-Chain Accounts: Traders can arrive from Aptos, Ethereum, Solana, or directly from a CEX without complex bridging flows – during Decibel’s pre-deposit campaign, 50% of deposits came from Solana and Ethereum. Capital moves directly into execution, reducing operational friction from day one.
- usDCBL: A protocol-native, dollar-denominated stablecoin issued by Bridge, a Stripe company, serving as default collateral and retaining stablecoin-generated economic value within the protocol — reducing dependence on trading fees and creating future flexibility for long-term token alignment.
- Institutional Tooling: Professional-grade APIs, subaccounts, real-time risk dashboards, and security-audited smart contracts. Pricing and liquidation infrastructure is powered by Chainlink, providing resilient, low-latency price feeds designed to reduce anomalies and strengthen liquidation safety.
- Builder Codes: An open distribution layer that allows developers and integrators to route bona fide volume directly through Decibel’s execution layer and earn a share of fees, compounding liquidity depth rather than fragmenting it.
“I’ve spent my career on both sides of these markets, trading and now developing one. The existing infrastructure has always been a black box, and traders have just had to live with that.” said Brylee Whatley, Head of the Decibel Foundation. “We built Decibel because that’s not good enough anymore. Everything onchain, everything verifiable, with user centric experience and economics. With the mainnet launch, we take the first step towards the new standard for traders.”
The Decibel Foundation intends to expand the protocol from crypto perpetuals into a full exchange stack — spot markets, a unified account and multi-collateral system, real-world assets, and infrastructure designed to welcome institutional trading flows. Additionally, it expects to bring real-world markets onchain, including equity indices, FX, and tokenized assets. The destination is a unified, transparent exchange capable of settling any asset, for any trader, anywhere.
To start trading, users can visit https://app.decibel.trade/trade.
About Decibel
Decibel is a fully decentralized perpetuals exchange incubated by Aptos Labs. It operates a transparent Central Limit Order Book where order matching, settlement, and risk controls are enforced directly onchain and publicly verifiable. Designed for institutional-grade performance, Decibel emphasizes capital efficiency, deterministic risk management, deep liquidity, and high-speed execution.
About Decibel Foundation
The Decibel Foundation is dedicated to advancing the Decibel Protocol, a decentralized non-custodial trading engine designed for high-performance, full-stack trading of perpetuals and spot digital assets. The Decibel Foundation supports protocol development, governance, and ecosystem growth to drive the future of onchain capital markets.
About Aptos Network
Aptos is a high-performance proof-of-stake layer-one blockchain designed to power the next generation of financial systems through unparalleled throughput and low latency.